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

Debate contribution by Mrs Michelle Guy on 13 April 2026.

MLA

Mrs Michelle Guy

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 5483702

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I support the Bill's passing Second Stage. I will welcome getting to look at it in more detail in the Education Committee, but I will say a number of things about it up front. I wish that the Bill was not needed. Child poverty is absolutely intolerable. I wish that the original scheme had not been withdrawn by a permanent secretary without political oversight or accountability during an Assembly collapse. I also wish that the Department for Communities had listened to calls for a long-term life cycle approach to tackling poverty, and child poverty in particular, but there is no action plan, no targets and no real strategy for children living in poverty. The Bill, therefore, is not only the best option that we have to deliver something for those children right now but the only new pathway available. When faced with the choice between doing something and doing nothing for children who are facing holiday hunger, I will absolutely vote to do something. The framing of the Bill externally will be tackling holiday hunger, but I will broaden the context slightly, because we are also talking about childhood. School holidays are a precious time for families to make memories with their children. If these payments mean that a family can budget to provide a treat for their children during the holidays, I am so, so comfortable with that. I also hope that the scheme, if implemented, might offer an evidence base that expanding this type of support to kids who fall just outside the threshold is worth exploring. Ultimately, the Bill is about child poverty and food security. There are well-rehearsed and devastating statistics and reports that show the impact that poverty has on the lives of children in Northern Ireland. There are impacts on education, health and future life opportunities. They are repeated in the Chamber time and again, so we need to ensure that they do not lose their meaning and that the reality of those reports and statistics does not escape us. Dr Julie-Anne Maney, a paediatric consultant, speaking to the BBC in an interview about the impact of child poverty, said that "poverty obliterates children's futures". She spoke about repeatedly witnessing the reality of child hunger and malnutrition and about the awful disparity between children from disadvantaged families and those who have more. That is the devastating reality. Of course, the Bill does not promise to deal with child poverty, its complicated and myriad causes and its huge number of consequences, but it would ease the financial burden that some families face over school holiday periods. It would help to feed children and young people who would otherwise turn to food banks or go without. It might, in some way, support parents who are struggling with the rising costs of rent, childcare, heating and essentials. Following the end of the free school meals payment, Northern Ireland is now the only region in the UK without a specific government funding scheme or a programme for holiday food. Given that we have had a recent school meal payment scheme here, I will be interested at Committee Stage to understand in more detail the impact that that had on the lives of children and young people and whether the mechanism that was used then could be used again. I also note the equality and human rights policy screening of the discontinuation of the holiday food payment grant scheme at the end of 2022-23, which noted the disproportionate impact that ending the scheme would have on children with disabilities. Of course, any proposal with budget implications will rightly be scrutinised, particularly when Departments are under significant financial pressure. If the Bill progresses to the next stage, I will be keen to understand how the financial responsibility could be shared with other Departments, because, fundamentally, the Bill has the potential to deliver long-term savings. The organisation Children in Northern Ireland (CiNI) has rightly asked us to consider the cost of intervention alongside the much greater long-term cost of child poverty, including its impacts on health, education and wider public services. When set against the scale of need, with tens of thousands of children affected, and the relatively low cost of delivery, the Bill feels like the right approach. Committee Stage will provide an important opportunity to examine the issues in detail, including how the Children's Services Co-operation Act (Northern Ireland) 2015 could support the effective delivery of such a scheme. There will be those who rightly point to pressures in the Education budget. We all recognise that our public services are underfunded, but we also know that there are inefficiencies in the system. School leaders consistently highlight waste in areas such as procurement and maintenance contracts. If identifying funding measures such as holiday hunger drives improvement in how resources are used more broadly across the education system, on balance, that trade-off is worth making. Before I wrap up, I echo the point that my colleague made about making sure that the Bill has no unintended consequences when it comes to benefits received: the outworking of the Bill cannot be to make people worse off than they are now.

Yes.

I appreciate the intervention. I support the Bill's passage at Second Stage, and I look forward to getting it into Committee and having a really good look at it. I thank the Member for bringing the Bill forward.

897 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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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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