School Breakfasts 2020

#Provision of School Breakfasts (Cost Saving Through Universalism) Bill

**A**

**BILL**

**TO**

*Reduce expenditure on administrative costs in the provision of school breakfast, and for connected purposes.*

**BE IT ENACTED by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—**

**Section 1: Repeals**
(1) The Provision of School Breakfast Act 2019 is hereby repealed.

**Section 2: Reinstatement of Original Wording**
(1) In Section 1 of the Provision of School Breakfasts Act 2016, in subsection (3) substitute:

> (3) In this bill “pupil” means a child receiving education at the school (whether or not the child is a registered pupil).

**Section 3: Short Title, Commencement, and Extent**
(1) This Bill may be referred to as the Provision of School Breakfasts (Cost Saving Through Universalism) Bill 2020
(2) This Bill will come into effect upon receiving Royal Assent.
(3) Amendments made by this bill have the same extent as the enactment to which it relates.

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**This bill was submitted by /u/DF44 on behalf of The People's Movement.

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#Opening Speech

Mr Speaker,

Before I actually begin my speech, I would like to contextualise this one a little bit. The “Provision of School Breakfasts Act 2016” introduced school breakfasts as a free, universal benefit, with positive outcomes on tackling obesity and improving educational achievement. The “Provision of School Breakfast Act 2019” was not introduced by myself, and introduced means testing to a previously universal benefit. On that note, I shall begin my actual speech!

Mr Speaker, It is very rare that I would do a Tory Government a favour. But as I look upon the black hole in their finances, I have decided to help them with one of their current problems!

Means testing at the best of times is a bad idea. It suffers from numerous problems - the assessment lag means that until means testing is completed many poorer families have to pick who in their family will go without food. The social stigma means that many don't use the available services they could be, and those whose work has notable swings in income - anyone who works short term contracts, say - often can't claim, because they're constantly swinging between "just enough" and "far below". But in particular, and the reason I'm hoping that people actually notice, is in the **administrative costs** - and I'll expand on that now.

Now, the addition of means testing has barely scraped at the primary costs here - the vast majority of those who were making use of the free system were, unsurprisingly enough, on lower incomes, which would easily fall within the means tested limit proposed. Sure, there'll have been a very small saving, but that's only the first half of the problem.

Let's look at the latter half - the increased costs of administration. Now, even when we look at means testing benefits in the tens of billions, we recognise that the costs of administration are a massive factor in reducing potential savings. When we're looking at a scheme costing less than a tenth of that range... we're looking at a case where administrative costs overshadow the cost of providing a universal service.

Even if you ignore the moral and human argument, Mr Speaker, the financial argument alone is clear here - we can quite literally do more for less - on an issue which can have massive impacts on educational achievement. So let's free up some wiggle room in the budget, and pass legislation to make lives better across the UK - I commend this bill to the house!