To ask the Minister for Communities to outline any engagement he has had with the Minister of Education in relation to the introduction of free school meals for families in receipt of Universal Credit.

Mr Lyons

The policy and legislative responsibility for the free school meals scheme sits with the Department of Education. Free school meals are available to children in households claiming universal credit where household net earnings do not exceed £15,390 per year. My officials met their Department of Education colleagues, most recently in May and December 2024, to provide assistance in developing guidance for claimants on uploading their universal credit statement to the Department of Education's online portal to allow their eligibility for free school meals to be determined.

Were data-sharing arrangements to make auto-enrolment possible discussed at those meetings with the Department of Education? Could that fit into the Executive's anti-poverty strategy?

Mr Lyons

My officials have engaged with the Department of Education to provide verification of UC award amounts for those who need to use that service. I am more than happy to explore what else we can do to make sure that that works more easily. When it comes to the wider issue of what could be included in an anti-poverty strategy, we should put everything on the table, assess all the options and measure them against one another. Many ideas have come forward, including further welfare mitigations and other plans for payments, for short-term support and for the longer-term support that can tackle the root causes of poverty. However, we should not do that in a piecemeal way. As an Executive, with input from the Assembly, we should put all the options on the table and decide what will give us the greatest return on our investment and what will make the biggest difference to the lives of children, young people and others in our society. I am open to hearing all those ideas, weighing them up and seeing what can make a difference.