Source · Select Committees · Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Recommendation 11
11
Paragraph: 58
The Government should now be more flexible and recognise the importance and success of most...
Recommendation
The Government should now be more flexible and recognise the importance and success of most community-led responses to the provision of free school meal substitutes. Schools should be allowed to provide vouchers for whichever retailers serve their community best, without financial penalty. In addition, schools should be encouraged to continue catering directly for their pupils without being put in a financially worse situation than those using the national voucher scheme.
Paragraph Reference:
58
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
Conclusions and Recommendations 10 and 11: With the need to quickly provide children with a substitute for free school meals after schools closed, the Department for Education (DfE) designed a national voucher system. The speed with which it was set up was commendable and some teething problems were inevitable. However, the system has been beset by significant problems, ultimately leading to about a third of children experiencing greater food insecurity in the first month. A particular problem was the Government’s immediate reliance on the larger retailers to participate in the scheme, with discounters and convenience stores excluded for technical reasons, even when they were able to offer workable voucher schemes which would have helped more children. There was a need for closer collaboration on the part of both Government and retailers. The Government did not sufficiently consider the realities of where families depend [...truncated...]