Minister confirms free school meal fund increase

A minister has said offering free school meals to a greater number of pupils and increasing funding is a "breakthrough" for reducing child poverty.

Currently, households must earn less than £7,400 a year to qualify for free school meals, but soon all children whose parents claim Universal Credit will be eligible.

Speaking at the Victory Academy in Chatham, Kent, the minister for social security, Sir Stephen Timms, said the government was also increasing funding for each meal to £2.61 from September 2026.

But Labour has faced scrutiny over its plans to tackle child poverty, with calls for it to scrap the two-child benefit scrap.

The government said half a million more children will have access to free school meals thanks to removing the eligibility criteria, which the Prime Minister said would "help families who need it most".

Sir Stephen said: "For those children who can [now] be sure they're going to get a good, nutritious school lunch every day, it's a great boost for them, it'll help them to concentrate and do well at school."

When asked if £2.61 was enough money per meal, he added: "There's some very nutritious meals that can be provided for that amount. The schools do a fantastic job, I'm very impressed."

He added that he "probably couldn't" feed himself for £2.61, but "for lunch, I probably could".

Polly Billington, MP for Thanet, said she was pleased that "more than 6,000 children" in her constituency would benefit from the change.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was her "moral mission" to make sure fewer children grew up in the kind of poverty she experienced.

"We know if children are arriving at school ready to learn that makes a massive difference to their outcomes", she said.

"If you're hungry, it's really hard to concentrate."

But the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank said that while the rule change would cut child poverty to a degree and would be cheaper than making free school meals universal, "other measures, such as lifting the two-child limit, would have a lower cost for each child lifted out of poverty".

Labour is yet to decide whether to scrap the two-child benefit cap.

Speaking about the cap, Sir Stephen said: "We will have to wait for the child poverty task force to produce its strategy later on this year to see what extra levers they need to pull to help more children out of poverty."

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