Handing free school meals to all children from households that claim Universal Credit WON'T drag 100,000 out of poverty next year, says IFS - because most already get them
The Government's suggestion that expanding free school meals will lift 100,000 children out of poverty next year has been disputed by a leading think tank.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has announced that every pupil whose household is on Universal Credit will soon have an entitlement to free school meals.
The Department for Education said the extension, from the start of the 2026 school year, will see half-a-million more children benefit from a free meal every school day.
It also claimed that nearly £500 will be put back into parents' pockets every year, while the expansion will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the Government's announcement 'will not see anything like 100,000 children lifted out of poverty next year'.
This is because transitional protections introduced in 2018 - as parents on legacy benefits were moved on to Universal Credit - had 'substantially increased the number of children receiving free school meals today', the think tank added.
The IFS assessment will likely ramp up the pressure from Labour MPs for Sir Keir Starmer to do more to tackle child poverty.
The Prime Minister is facing widespread demands from within his own party to scrap the two-child benefit cap, amid the threat of a revolt over Labour's welfare reforms.
The IFS estimated the long-run cost of the expansion of free school meals at about £1billion.
But it said the short-run cost might only be £250million (plus around £50million in extra funding for devolved governments).
The think tank agreed the long-run impact would see around 100,000 children lifted out of poverty, but questioned the length of time it would take for this to be achieved.
Christine Farquharson, associate director at the IFS, said: 'Offering free school meals to all children whose families receive Universal Credit will, in the long term, mean free lunches for about 1.7 million additional children.
'But transitional protections introduced in 2018 have substantially increased the number of children receiving free school meals today - so in the short run, today's announcement will both cost considerably less and benefit considerably fewer pupils.
'This also means that today's announcement will not see anything like 100,000 children lifted out of poverty next year.
'Still, the Government estimates that around 500,000 children will benefit next year from today's policy, to the tune of about £500 per child.
'This is a group who are on low, though not the very lowest, incomes - so compared to making free school meals universal, the policy announced today will be both cheaper and more targeted towards poorer families.
'There is some evidence too that school meals can have benefits for children's health and attainment.
'But if the Government's main interest is to reduce child poverty, there are other measures - such as lifting the two-child limit - that would have a lower cost per child lifted out of poverty.'
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.
But the Government has announced that every pupil whose household is on Universal Credit will have a new entitlement to free school lunches from the start of the 2026/27 academic year.
Campaigners and education leaders had been calling for free school meals to be extended to all children whose families are on Universal Credit to ease pressures on young people living in poverty.
Nearly 2.1 million pupils – almost one in four of all pupils (24.6 per cent) – in England were eligible for free school meals in January 2024.
Sir Keir said: 'Feeding more children every day, for free, is one of the biggest interventions we can make to put more money in parents' pockets, tackle the stain of poverty, and set children up to learn.
'This expansion is a truly historic moment for our country, helping families who need it most and delivering our Plan for Change to give every child, no matter their background, the same chance to succeed.'
Ms Phillipson said: 'It is the moral mission of this Government to tackle the stain of child poverty, and today this Government takes a giant step towards ending it with targeted support that puts money back in parents' pockets.'
The Government's child poverty taskforce, which is considering the future of the two-child benefit cap, is due to publish its 10-year strategy later this year.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
26 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Hotel guest who was bitten 30 times by bed bugs in infested room tells how she woke up to see them 'crawling on the bed'
A woman was left with more than 30 red and itchy bites on her body after staying in a hotel room infested with bed bugs. Sharon Aggarwal, 53, shut herself in the bathroom for two hours after she woke up in the middle of the night 'scratching' at a three-star hotel in Henley-on-Thames. The IT worker, who frequently travels to the picturesque town in Oxfordshire for work, said she pulled back the sheet and could see several bugs 'crawling on the bed'. Mrs Aggarwal said she squashed a large one on the pillow and was horrified to see blood spurt out of it. The 53-year-old from the Midlands was staying at The Catherine Wheel last month - a historic 12th century pub and guesthouse that is now owned by JD Wetherspoon. Mrs Aggarwal told MailOnline: 'I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night - all itchy. 'I pulled the sheet back and all I could see were these things crawling on the bed. It was pretty gross. I squished on of them and blood spurted out onto me. 'After seeing them all over the news a couple of years ago, I was like oh no, I know what this is. 'I looked at my hand and I could see these bites. Then there was this quite big one on the pillow. I was like "oh God that was right by my head". 'At this point, I just went into the bathroom and shut the door. It was around 3am in the middle of the night. I just stayed there until 5am until the sun started to come up. 'I was covered in bites. I had like two on my face, three or four on my neck and another three around the waistband of my pyjamas. 'Then about ten on one hand and around seven or eight on the other.' Mrs Aggarwal said the bites were unlike anything that she had experienced before - and the itching only started to subside when she went to the pharmacist. 'I've been bitten by mosquitos in the past but these were the most itchy things. 'They came up like big welts on my face so I also went to the pharmacist to take some antihistamines. 'I had to take them every six hours.' Mrs Aggarwal said she managed to trap one of the bed bugs under a pint glass and showed it to the night porter at The Catherine Wheel. She said she also called the JD Wetherspoon customer service line to complain and left a note at reception when she checked out. 'I did not hear back from the Catherine Wheel for ages. It's not exactly the Ritz but I would expect it to be clean,' she said. 'This is a popular hotel and they have a busy summer period coming up. Obviously they have the Henley Regatta and Festival. 'The hotel did get back to me and admitted they did have bed bugs in the room but could not find them. 'I said sleep in the bed and you'll find them. I heard that environmental health are investigating as well and will eradicate the bugs. 'I've since heard back from Wetherspoons and they have offered to reimburse me for the night and the room.' A spokesman for Wetherspoons confirmed the presence of bed bugs in the room and said it had been 'immediately taken out of use'. He said: 'We were informed by a guest staying in the hotel on May 6 of the suspected presence of bed bugs in her room. 'This was confirmed after her departure and the room was immediately taken out of use. 'We are liaising directly with the guest concerned to address her concerns. Like all hotel operators, Wetherspoons has procedures in place to minimise this problem. 'These include daily checks by trained staff when servicing hotel rooms and regular preventative visits by qualified contracts, which means episodes such as this are rare.'
The Herald Scotland
29 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
NHS set for boost of up to £30bn as other budgets feel squeeze
The cash injection, which amounts to a rise of about £30 billion by 2028, or £17 billion in real terms, will see other areas including police and councils squeezed, The Times newspaper reported. Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to ensure that by the next election 92% of patients in England waiting for planned treatment are seen within 18 weeks of being referred. Latest NHS data suggests around 60% of people are currently seen in this time and figures released last month showed the overall number of patients on waiting lists had risen slightly from 6.24 million to 6.25 million. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has acknowledged that she had been forced to turn down requests for funding in a sign of the behind-the-scenes wrangling over her spending review. She insisted the blame for the tight economic situation lay with the Conservatives rather than her rigid rules on borrowing and spending. The Chancellor said despite a £190 billion increase in funding over the spending review period 'not every department will get everything that they want next week and I have had to say no to things that I want to do too'. On top of the increase in day-to-day spending, funded in part by the tax hikes Ms Reeves set out in her budget, looser borrowing rules will help support a £113 billion investment package. Economists have warned the Chancellor faces 'unavoidably' tough choices when she sets out departmental spending plans on June 11. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank said defence and the NHS will dominate the review, raising the prospect of cuts to other unprotected departments.
The Independent
38 minutes ago
- The Independent
Russia is already at war with Britain and we can no longer rely on Trump, defence adviser warns
Britain is at war with Russia already, one of the authors of the government's strategic defence review has warned, while arguing that we can no longer depend on the US as a reliable ally. Dr Fiona Hill, who served as the White House's chief Russia adviser during Donald Trump 's first term in office, said the UK is in 'pretty big trouble', warning that the country is stuck between 'the rock' of Russia and the 'hard place' of an increasingly unreliable US under Mr Trump. 'Russia has hardened as an adversary in ways that we probably hadn't fully anticipated,' Dr Hill told the Guardian, concluding that 'Russia is at war with us'. Arguing that the Kremlin has been 'menacing the UK in various different ways' for years, she pointed to 'the poisonings, assassinations, sabotage operations, all kinds of cyber-attacks and influence operations. The sensors that we see that they're putting down around critical pipelines, efforts to butcher undersea cables.' Unveiling the SDR last week - authored by Dr Hill, Lord Robertson and General Sir Richard Barrons - defence secretary John Healey said Britain's army needed to become '10 times more lethal' in the face of the 'immediate and pressing threat" from Russia and the rise of China. 'We are in a new era of threat, which demands a new era for UK defence,' he told MPs. The review found that the armed forces are not ready to fight its opponents as a result of inadequate stockpiles of weapons, medical services that cannot cope with a mass-casualty conflict and a personnel 'crisis' that means only a small number of troops are ready to be deployed. Meanwhile, General Sir Richard Barrons, warned that a cruise missile was 'only 90 minutes away from the UK'. But Sir Keir Starmer vowed to make Britain "a battle-ready, armour-clad nation' as he unveiled the SDR at the Govan shipbuilding yard in Scotland, which included an army boosted to 100,000 personnel, 12 new submarines, drones and a rollout of Artificial Intelligence. But questions were raised over the government's big ambitions to make Britain 'safer and stronger' after Sir Keir refused to commit to spending 3 per cent of Britain's gross domestic product on defence by 2034 — which the review warned was essential to ensure the plans were affordable. Dr Hill, who was highly critical of the Trump administration, said Britain could no longer rely on the US's military umbrella as it did during the cold war, at least 'not in the way that we did before'. It comes after the SDR contained a similar warning, saying: 'The UK's longstanding assumptions about global power balances and structures are no longer certain.' The defence adviser argued that the US president 'really wants to have a separate relationship with Putin to do arms control agreements and also business that will probably enrich their entourages further, though Putin doesn't need any more enrichment'. Speaking about Mr Trump's White House, Dr Hill warned it is 'not an administration, it is a court', arguing that the president is driven primarily by his 'own desires and interests, and who listens often to the last person he talks to'. Speaking about the rise of the populist right in the US, she expressed concerns it could do well in British electoral politics if 'the same culture wars' are allowed to grow in influence. Warning of the impact of Reform UK, she said: 'When Nigel Farage says he wants to do a Doge against the local county council, he should come over here [to the US] and see what kind of impact that has. 'This is going to be the largest layoffs in US history happening all at once, much bigger than hits to steelworks and coalmines.' Doge (the Department of Government Efficiency) is an initiative by the second Trump administration, which aims to cut wasteful spending.
