Debate contribution: Holiday Hunger

Debate contribution by Mr Paul Givan on 19 March 2024.

MLA

Mr Paul Givan

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

19 March 2024

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Holiday Hunger

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4279656

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I welcome the opportunity to respond to the motion and engage on what is a very important issue. At the outset, I recognise the pressure on families, especially those with school-age children, from the rising cost of living and, in particular, increasing food costs. Recognising the challenges facing parents of school-age children, I set out, in the debate on 5 March, my intention to bring forward proposals to help reduce or limit the costs associated with purchasing school uniforms. My Department also has a range of policies and interventions in place to support children who may be impacted on by social disadvantage or poverty. Those include funding for schools that we have worked hard to protect, as far as we could, given the very constrained Budget settlement in the 2023-24 financial year. Policies include the £75 million for targeting social need, which is provided to schools through the common funding formula. That funding provides for a wide range of interventions, including teachers, other education professionals, special educational needs support, and literacy and numeracy support at all Key Stages. There is £8·1 million for the extended schools programme, which supports over 400 schools, 200,000 pupils, 80,000 parents and 30,000 community representatives. Again, those interventions are wide-ranging and include breakfast clubs and after-school activities. Over £700,000 is provided to full-service schools in North Belfast and West Belfast to provide further support for children and young people in those particular areas through transition support, breakfast clubs, literacy and numeracy support, GCSE revision classes and many other supports. My Department also continues to support school-age children through the provision of free school meals to low-income families in receipt of certain benefits. I recognise the educational benefits that that provision brings to those children, particularly to their ability to concentrate, their behaviours and, ultimately, their learning outcomes. Holiday hunger is an important issue, and one that many Departments have been seeking to address for a number of years. The pandemic exacerbated the issue of food poverty across our society. Although the rising cost of food has resulted in all of us paying more in the shops, it has been especially difficult for families on a low income, where making ends meet can be a daily struggle. As an Executive, I trust that we will seek to support low-income families with the range of pressures that they face. For many families, that is particularly challenging outside of term time, when their children are not able to access a daily free school meal in the way in which they can during term time. That continues to be a significant issue for many families in Northern Ireland. In recognition of those challenges, in 2020, the Executive decided to establish a school holiday food grant scheme. The scheme was funded by the Executive to provide payments to cover the cost of food during school holidays for pupils who were entitled to free school meals. The Education Authority already had in place an established payment mechanism, so the Department of Education was identified as the interim lead Department to take forward the scheme. It was agreed by the Executive that a wider strategic decision on the way forward with tackling food poverty, including holiday hunger, was required, including the identification and resourcing of a lead Department. That interim approach was agreed by the Executive to run up until Easter 2022. In the absence of an Executive, my predecessor as Minister of Education, Michelle McIlveen, approved the extension of the school holiday food grant scheme up until March 2023. The necessary ring-fenced funding was made available each year to the Department of Education to undertake those payments on behalf of the Executive. As a result, around £20 million was provided in each year of the scheme to low-income families to help with food costs outside of term time. The ring-fenced funding ceased, however, and was not part of the 2023-24 Budget that the Secretary of State set. With no ring-fenced funding in place, the permanent secretary had little choice but to discontinue the scheme in March 2023. Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, support for families with the cost of food for children during school holiday periods varies. In Scotland, where there is a more generous financial settlement from His Majesty's Treasury relative to need, funding for food is provided to low-income families during school holiday periods, and Social Security Scotland provides the Scottish child payment of £25 a week for each child of those who are in receipt of certain benefits. That is to help with the everyday costs of supporting children. In Wales, however, the holiday free school meals scheme for payments to families entitled to free school meals was discontinued in May 2023. In England, a holiday activities and food programme funds local authorities to offer holiday club provision, and those who are entitled to free school meals receive a free meal if they attend that programme. No child in our society should go hungry, and although my Department continues to support school-age children during term time to access healthy, nutritious meals, initiatives to tackle holiday hunger or provide support with food outside term time need to be aligned to social welfare support for families. It is therefore appropriate that the Executive take a wider and more holistic decision about how they tackle the issue of food poverty across society. What has been characterised as "holiday hunger" for children outside term time should be an important consideration in the context of the Executive's anti-poverty strategy. Seeking to isolate holiday hunger for children as an issue that stands alone, apart from the greater impact that food poverty has across society every day of the year, is an imperfect and disjointed solution to what is a wider societal challenge. Food poverty is an issue that cuts across all age groups every day of the year, and the Executive should seek to address it as part of their wider anti-poverty work for all our citizens. In reality, although the Executive can fund almost anything that they wish to, they simply cannot fund everything that they would wish to. Difficult choices therefore have to be made. The proposed amendment to the motion calls on me to:

"urgently progress and publish the review of the eligibility criteria for free school meals."

The Department's review of the eligibility criteria for free school meals and uniform grants continues to examine a range of options for increasing the numbers of children and young people who are able to access free school meals and uniform grants. My officials are engaging with officials from the Department for Communities in seeking to update the modelling that will be used to inform the review. That is particularly relevant as families migrate from legacy benefits to universal credit. The options being considered by the review include raising the income thresholds that apply to some of the means-tested criteria, the introduction of universal free school meals provision to pupils in some school years and options that are a combination of the two. Ahead of any decisions on changes to the eligibility criteria, a full public consultation on the options and associated impact assessments will need to be undertaken, and I plan to do that as soon as possible. However, a key issue in the review that we cannot simply ignore is affordability. The Department of Education faces significant funding pressures and is struggling to support existing key services. Increasing the number of children who are eligible for free school meals has potentially significant budgetary implications, and I will need to take those implications into account before taking any final decision. Let me conclude by reiterating a point that I have made previously. I trust that, if Members back motions such as this one, they will also ensure that they support the provision of the funding necessary to make laudable motions a reality in practice; otherwise, they will reduce the Chamber to a forum for virtue-signalling, where they will the ends but not the means. That is not practical politics and is of no use to the people who send us here. I will support the motion and the amendment, but we need Members, particularly those in the Executive, to support me.

1,374 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:53 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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