Debate contribution: Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Nick Mathison on 13 April 2026.

MLA

Mr Nick Mathison

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

13 April 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5483579

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker: no apology required. I will make some very brief opening remarks as Chair of the Committee for Education. The Committee has not considered issues around holiday hunger in particular detail. The subject has come up at various junctures during deliberations on other matters, and Committee members from across the parties are very much of a mind that anything that can be done to tackle poverty through our schools and education system should be a priority. The Committee has heard about the UNISON campaign for widening access to free school meals and moving towards a universal model. We received an informal briefing on that, but, beyond that, we have not had detailed formal briefings. From the Committee's perspective, therefore, I will leave it at saying that I am sure that, if the Bill passes its Second Stage today, the Committee will be ready to do the necessary scrutiny work. There is, no doubt, a wide range of stakeholders who will be very interested in this policy area and who will want to engage with the Committee on these issues. Every Member who has spoken in the debate so far has, I think, outlined the fact that we come to a debate on an issue such as this or on a Bill such as this with a degree of regret. None of us wants to be discussing child poverty and the huge challenges that families face, simply because we should not, in this day and age, be dealing with such levels of poverty in our society. Sadly, however, that is where we are, and so I put on record my thanks to the Bill sponsor for introducing the Bill and for taking a proactive approach to try to do something about the issues that so many families face in relation to poverty and the ever-rising cost of living, of which we are all so well aware. A lot of statistics have been quoted today, but I will add a few more. In 2024, research by the Trussell Trust, which is a key stakeholder, showed that, at that stage, 32% of children in Northern Ireland were growing up in food-insecure households. That is not a figure about which any of us should be casual, because it is a really serious matter. Among those households, 14% had three or more children, compared with 6% of households overall in Northern Ireland. On child poverty, we know that approximately 109,000 children live in relative poverty and 86,000 in absolute poverty. Again, it is easy to trot out such statistics in such a debate, and it can feel trite to do so, but it is important that we take the time to pause, listen and reflect on the real lives, the real children and the real families behind them. I think that we are all agreed that the issues are serious and therefore need a serious response. I welcome the fact that all parties in the Chamber agree that tackling child poverty should be a priority. Regrettably, however, so far in this mandate, we have not seen a huge amount of proactive action taken, and we have to be clear about that. It is regrettable that the Bill before us today may be the only clear and direct anti-poverty legislation to come before the Assembly in this mandate. I am happy to be corrected if there is something else coming forward from perhaps the Department for Communities of which I am not aware, but my understanding is that this Bill could be it. My party colleagues and I have already met the Bill sponsor to discuss the legislation. As a party, we recognise the need to ensure that we are providing support for those children most at risk of experiencing poverty, particularly food poverty. We of course want to ensure that any legislation on the issue that we pass reaches as many children in need as possible and does so in the most effective way. On that basis, it is important always to remember that tackling child poverty requires a cross-departmental approach. A single intervention in the education space will not cut it, and we need to be honest about that. There is a need across Departments for the issue to be taken seriously. The PAC's 'Report on Child Poverty in Northern Ireland' gives a damning account of the child poverty strategy that ran from 2016 to 2022. It states:

"preventative and early intervention measures were not prioritised."

It further states:

"many of the strategic actions focused on improving the health and wellbeing of children living in poverty, rather than preventing them from falling into poverty in the first place."

It appears that the current draft anti-poverty strategy may also fall short of delivering the transformative change that is needed to tackle poverty and its root causes across Northern Ireland. We are therefore potentially still treating symptoms rather than causes. We know — other Members have referred to this — that school holiday food grants were previously made available to families who were eligible for free school meals from July 2020 until March 2023, so what is proposed today as an intervention is not new. An opportunity was missed following the decision that civil servants then took, when there was no sitting Assembly, to cease funding for the programme. I do not think that the nettle was grasped even to begin to undertake any serious research or analysis of the prevalence and impact of holiday hunger in Northern Ireland, particularly of the impact that the payments that were made under the scheme had. The review of free school meals and the uniform grant eligibility criteria would have been a really good opportunity last year to explore some of that further in order to get an evidence base for the scale and scope of the problem to determine the most effective interventions. We are therefore at risk in this scenario where there is a lack of clear evidence on which children and families are most impacted on by food poverty, or, to use the language, "holiday hunger", and on what the most effective interventions may be. It is not clear to me whether we have an evidence base that tells us that the children most affected by food poverty are those in receipt of free school meals. Perhaps those on the fringes of entitlement to free school meals who do not receive any support from any source in government are struggling even more than those who may be in receipt of free school meals. I do not know. I do not have the evidence, so I cannot speak to that.

The picture is potentially more complex. It varies from household to household, and it may vary based on the number of children in the household.

The scrutiny of the Bill will be really important to make sure that the lack of a clear evidence base does not mean that we end up making an intervention that feels like the right thing to do, but, potentially, does not target those who need the support the most. However, that is a discussion for the scrutiny stages, when the evidence base can be looked at and we can see where Education Committee lands on the most effective intervention. However, the fact that we are approaching the Bill without a clear evidence base will make that work challenging, and we need to be clear about that. Over the Easter break, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) published her evaluation of the programmes that address educational disadvantage. Other Members have referenced educational disadvantage, and, clearly, poverty and food poverty feed into the groups of children and young people who are most at risk of experiencing educational disadvantage. Concerningly, the report found that, despite incurring a combined annual spend of over £100 million, the Department of Education cannot currently demonstrate that major programmes aimed at reducing educational disadvantage, including the SEN transformation programme, are successful or deliver value for money. That should give us all pause for thought, and I draw attention to it because it highlights just how important it is that, if we are going to intervene and spend a large sum of public money, we need to be clear that it will make best use of that public money and be the most effective way that any intervention can be made.

1,396 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:18 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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