A law aimed at helping lower income families with food costs during school holidays has been passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Holiday Meal Payments Bill seeks to create a new payment for families whose children receive free school meals to help with food costs outside of term time. A majority of 49 to 24 assembly members backed the legislation, which was proposed by Sinn Féin’s Danny Baker and welcomed by some parents and charities. Education Minister Paul Givan described the bill as “fiscally reckless”, warning it would cost £20m to £30m a year and lead to cuts elsewhere within his Stormont department.
Baker said that “poverty isn’t green and orange” and the passage of the bill would support thousands of children “across all of our communities”. “When children are returning to school hungry, then they’re not learning,” he told assembly members during the bill’s final stage debate. “If you want to deal with educational underachievement then you have to deal with poverty.” Givan described the bill as “well intentioned” but said “sincerity is not a funding model”. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) minister added there was “no such thing as a free lunch” and the legislation “will require cuts to be made” to other services.
“So I ask those who support this bill, what cuts should be made to afford this payment?” The minister argued efforts at Stormont to tackle poverty should be made “in a coordinated way” across the entire four-party executive. Last month, Givan’s department tabled amendments that would have given him power to delay its implementation, but these were rejected by a majority of parties. Stormont assembly members voted on the bill on Tuesday night after more than four hours of debate during its final stage in the chamber. Alliance Party assembly member Nick Mathison, chair of the assembly’s education committee, said “holiday hunger” remained a significant issue for many families.
He acknowledged Stormont’s financial pressures but said the funding required for the bill was a “relatively small” proportion of the Department of Education’s budget. “When we are in a budgetary crisis we need to be ensuring that we do not end up penalising those who are least able to bear the costs,” he added. Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Jon Burrows commended Baker on the sentiment of his private member’s bill but warned “there is no funding stream and there is no money”. He said the bill “lacks any governance”, adding: “There are no guarantees the money given under this will end up in nutritious meals inside the stomachs of children.” “It’s a fundamental misapplication and misunderstanding of how the welfare system should work,” he told assembly members.
Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) assembly member Cara Hunter welcomed the bill, saying that “a child can’t learn on an empty stomach”. “Hunger shows up in concentration, in behaviour and attainment long before it shows up in the spreadsheets or the speeches that we have before us here today,” she added. Baker said he was motivated to introduce it by some of his experiences of breakfast clubs and meal schemes in youth work. “There was a young boy, about the same age of my youngest, around seven years old,” he explained.
“He was filling his wee pockets up and we caught on to this. “To cut a long story short, he was bringing home food for his siblings because there just wasn’t enough food in the house.” Baker said all ministers had choices to make and the legislation alone could not solve child poverty, but would act as an “early intervention”. Children are eligible for free school meals if their family’s household income is below £15,390 a year. Northern Ireland is the only UK region without government-funded holiday food support, after the Department of Education (DE) ended its £27-per-fortnight holiday meal grant in 2023.
Baker’s legislation was introduced in the Northern Ireland Assembly in March and has been scrutinised by members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) on a number of occasions over the past nine months. Community and voluntary groups have been publicly supportive of the bill, with some staging a demonstration at Stormont on Monday in a bid to urge MLAs to get it over the finish line. Louise McCullough, a mum-of-three from east Belfast, was among those who spoke at the event. She said her children receive free school meals and that she would be directly affected by the legislation.
“There are so many working families who need this, it will change their lives and be massively impactful,” she told BBC News NI. “I can’t afford to work full time because of the cost of childcare, and the cost of living. “We have to do what we can and schemes like free school meals make a difference but so much more needs done… if you can’t find money for hungry children what are you doing? “Our government should be scaffolding our families properly.” Edel Diamond from the South West Belfast Foodbank said organisations like hers had been “filling in the gaps” to help struggling families.
“We shouldn’t have to – it’s incumbent on our executive to put these initiatives forward,” she said. “This will make such a difference to families we’re seeing daily.” ‘Holiday hunger’ payments have been axed ‘You have to say no’: Families struggling with holiday food costs Campaigners claim minister attempting to undermine ‘Holiday Hunger Bill’ Why holiday meal money for cash-strapped parents is back on the menu
