Free meals bid for college students

Ministers will discuss offering free meals to the poorest teenagers at sixth-form colleges, Education Minister Nick Gibb has said after coming under pressure to extend the handout beyond schools.

Only sixth-form students who stay at school are eligible for free meals but Labour and Tory MPs want the Government to spend another £30 million a year and extend the scheme to about 100,000 students at further education colleges.

Labour MP Frank Field said it was extraordinary that some youngsters still went hungry in a country like the UK in 2012.


Tory MP Robert Halfon said the money could easily be found from efficiency savings.

Proposing the debate, Labour former Home Secretary David Blunkett said free meals could decide whether a student decides to remain in further education. In some cases pupils were so hungry, teachers were having to bring in food parcels, he added.

"This is not a situation that we can countenance in 2012, whatever the deficit or the difficulties of the recession," he said.

But Mr Gibb said that while the Government believed the cost of offering free meals to some pupils in sixth form colleges would cost more than £30 million, there was an anomaly whereby school pupils could claim meals but college students were not eligible.

He said he "sympathised" with the arguments of MPs.

Mr Gibb said: "In the current fiscal climate it would be genuinely difficult to increase spending by between £35 million and £70 million, however desirable it would be to extend free school meals to students at sixth-form and FE colleges.

"Of course, we keep the matter under review and I will discuss the arguments that have been made today with my ministerial colleagues."

More stories