Starmer describes free school meal expansion as ‘down payment' on child poverty
Charities and campaigners have urged the Government to axe the two-child benefit cap to ease child poverty as ministers set out plans to expand free school meals to all pupils in England from families on universal credit.
Asked whether he would go further and abolish the welfare limit, Sir Keir Starmer said: 'I would say this is a down payment on child poverty.'
The government just gave half a million kids the nutrition they need to learn, grow and thrive. What a win! 🍽️💥 @Keir_Starmer @bphillipsonMP @StephenMorganMP @leicesterliz #FreeSchoolMeals
— Jamie Oliver (@jamieoliver) June 5, 2025
The Prime Minister added that he was 'determined' to drive down child poverty and identify its root causes.
Currently, households in England on universal credit must earn below £7,400 a year (after tax and not including benefits) to qualify for free school meals.
More than one in four pupils in England are now eligible for free school meals, the latest figures show.
An additional 77,700 children became eligible for free school meals over a year, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).
Eligibility for free school meals stood at 25.7% of all pupils in January this year, the equivalent of 2.17 million children – up from 24.6%, or 2.09 million, in January 2024, the data shows.
The Government has said the expansion of free school meals to all pupils in families on universal credit from September 2026 will make 500,000 more children eligible for free lunches during the school day.
Ministers have also suggested that the change will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty.
During a visit to a school in Essex on Thursday, Sir Keir said the move was 'a statement of intent' to help give children 'the best possible start in life'.
Alongside the extension of free school meals, the DfE said it is working with experts across the sector to review the School Food Standards to ensure every school is supported with the latest nutrition guidance.
Sir Keir said Thursday's announcement was part of a broader package of provisions including breakfast clubs and 'so it needs to be seen within that group of measures'.
He added: 'But yes, it's a down payment on what I want to do in relation to child poverty.'
The Government's child poverty taskforce is due to publish its strategy later this year.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told Times Radio that the meals extension would be funded and the Government will 'make sure that schools have what they need to deliver this'.
Asked why the expansion was not coming into force now, Ms Phillipson told BBC Breakfast: 'We're working as quickly as we can because we do appreciate the urgency, but we also need to work with schools to make this change happen.'
Parents have to apply for their children to receive free school meals and eligible children are not automatically enrolled.
The announcement has been largely welcomed by education leaders and campaigners, but some organisations have called for the Government to go further and introduce auto-enrolment.
Arooj Shah, chairwoman of the Local Government Association's (LGA) children and young people board, said: 'Councils still face data sharing and resource challenges in ensuring as many eligible children as possible receive what they are entitled to.
'Introducing automatic enrolment, using existing government data to capture all those who are entitled to free school meals, would also streamline the process and ensure as many children as possible can benefit, at a time when many families are still under financial pressure.'
Christine Farquharson, associate director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank, said the policy would, in the long-term, lead to an additional 1.7 million children getting free lunches.
But she said it 'will not see anything like 100,000 children lifted out of poverty next year'.
Ms Farquharson said expanding free school meals to all pupils in families claiming universal credit will be 'cheaper and more targeted towards poorer families' than making free school meals universal.
But she added that other measures, such as lifting the two-child benefit cap, 'would have a lower cost per child lifted out of poverty'.
Last week the Education Secretary suggested that scrapping the two-child benefit cap was 'not off the table'.
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Is your mind boggling yet? We said it was complex. What the Welsh Government wants Because the Welsh Government isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending, the transport comparability factor really just reflects how much money is going on rail. The less that's spent on rail, the higher a share of the overall transport pot the Welsh Government gets. The more that goes on rail, the lower a share of the overall transport spot the Welsh Government gets. The real problem for Cardiff Bay then is not the comparability factor. Neither is it the fact that East West rail isn't classified as England-only. The problem, as far as the Welsh Government is concerned, is the fact that the England and Wales rail pot itself isn't shared fairly. HS2 and East Coast rail are the symbols of a system that is broken that pours vast sums into English rail projects while Wales misses out. 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I've been saying that we need reform for years and suddenly people have woken up to it." Wales' First Minister Eluned Morgan has said the same. "What we have is a situation where there is a pipeline of projects for England and Wales. Are we getting our fair share? Absolutely not. Are we making the case? Absolutely." "I've made the case very, very clearly that, when it comes to rail, we have been short-changed, and I do hope that we will get some movement on that in the next week from the spending review," she said. What does this mean for the spending review When Rachel Reeves stands up in the Commons on Wednesday, we fully expect she will announce some funding for rail in Wales, as you can see in our piece here, and our expectation is that will be about the rail stations earmarked in the work by Lord Burns after the M4 relief road was axed. They would be in Cardiff East, Parkway, Newport West, Maindy, Llanwern and Magor. But what matters is how much and when - and how that compares to the money being spent in England. Imagine the chancellor announces a few hundred million pounds for those rail stations in Wales in the spending review, what we do not - and will likely not know for many years - is whether that amount is a fair reflection of the mass spending she has announced in England because we know she has also touted £15bn of improvements in England. It will likely take years for academics to assess what kind of share of the rail pot has been spent in Wales. In the past, it certainly has not been fair. In 2018, a Welsh Government commissioned report by Professor Mark Barry estimated that the Network Rail Wales route, which covers 11% of the UK network, received just over 1% of the enhancement budget for the 2011-2016 period. In 2021, the Wales Governance Centre told MPs on the Welsh affairs select committee that had rail been fully devolved to the Welsh Government, Wales would have received an additional £514m for enhancements via Network Rail had rail infrastructure been devolved as it is in Scotland. So when Leeds West and Pudsey MP Ms Reeves gets to her feet in the Commons on Wednesday, you can pretty much guarantee there will at least one or two headlines relevant Wales. But we may not understand what they really mean for a while yet and East West rail won't help us understand either.
