The Scottish government suffered a defeat in a Holyrood vote on free school meals today, with MSPs backing a Conservative motion calling for the rollout to include “all primary schoolchildren...as promised”.
The vote came after first minister John Swinney confirmed last week - in his first First Minister’s Questions after the summer recess - that universal free meals would not be extended to include pupils in P6-7. He blamed “the current financial situation”, saying that “universality will now not be delivered by 2026”, when this five-year parliamentary term is due to come to an end.
But opposition MSPs today argued that failure to deliver the policy was a political choice - and hit out at the SNP for presiding over a “litany of broken promises”, as Scottish Labour’s education spokesperson, Pam Duncan-Glancy, put it.
Liam Kerr, the Scottish Conservatives’ education spokesperson, said that “everyone knows our kids need food to be ready to learn”. By axing the universal rollout of free meals in primary schools, “the SNP has shamefully betrayed Scotland’s poorest pupils” and “played fast and loose” with people’s trust, he added.
He called on MSPs from all parties to “back the rollout of free school meals”.
Demand for free school meals
Education secretary Jenny Gilruth (pictured) said she continued to “believe emphatically in the principle of universality”. She said she knew, as a former teacher, that “hungry children cannot learn”. However, the government faced a £256 million funding gap “in order to deliver universality” and it “simply does not have the resources to deliver it”.
Today’s non-binding vote is not expected to lead to a change in tack from the government.
Speaking to journalists ahead of the debate, deputy first minister Kate Forbes said the financial situation meant it was not currently possibly to deliver universal free school meals.
She said there would be greater clarity about the Scottish government’s financial position after the UK Budget in October.
Ms Forbes said: “None of us want to be in the position of reducing our costs, none of us want to do that.
“We’ve been very clear in our policy: we’re still committed to rolling out free school meals. But at the moment the budget does not allow us to deliver universality.”
The rollout of universal free school meals in primary was promised in the SNP’s 2021 Scottish Parliament election manifesto. The rollout got underway in August 2021 and was due to be completed in August 2022, with children in the final two years of primary joining P1-5 pupils already benefiting from free meals.
Earlier this month Wales celebrated being the first country in the UK to deliver universal free school meals for primary pupils.
This week, Scottish children’s commissioner Nicola Killean said: “Any rollback or dilution of commitments to universal provision of school meals for P1-P7 can only be seen as a broken promise to children by the Scottish government - the same government that just put children’s rights into law this summer.”
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