£150m funding hole in free school meals pledge

A Department for Training source stated: ‘There is no spare money in the spending budget to spend for Clegg’s kitchens.’ Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Archive/Press Association Ima

The coalition is getting to raid its school capital price range to discover money to develop new college kitchens and fulfil its pledge to let all major schoolchildren aged 5 to seven get a free college meal, a pledge announced by Nick Clegg at his celebration conference in September.

Whitehall sources stated Clegg had been forced to consider cash from the colleges servicing budget to fund emergency building and improvement of school kitchens. The £150m shortfall stems from increased demand for college meals.

The want to build further kitchens had not been foreseen at the time of the £600m announcement.

Initial leaks had suggested the shortfall amounted to £200m, but right after the overspending story initially leaked, the Lib Dems mentioned the one-off capital allocation was in truth £150m. Of this £80m will be from the Division for Training schools maintenance price range, while an additional £70m will be new funds coming from the Treasury.

In an problem that was taken to the quad – the group of four most senior ministers in the coalition including Clegg, David Cameron and George Osborne – the Division for Training complained that the further funds could need ministers to raid its simple demands price range, the fund employed to deal with the rise in the quantity of main schoolchildren brought on by a baby boom.

Nevertheless, alternatively it was agreed that unspent money from the DfE’s maintenance spending budget would have to be deployed.

Cameron sided with Clegg in the Quad meeting, according to coalition sources, in return for the Liberal Democrats ceding some ground on environmental problems.

A DfE source explained: “There is no spare income in either the simple demands or servicing price range to shell out for Clegg’s kitchens.”

The source denied the funds due to be announced in the autumn statement would be new, but stated it would be taken from elsewhere in the department’s price range. One particular Whitehall supply mentioned: “Even for Clegg, this gimmick does not operate if he has to raid the budget for major school locations.” Negotiations were continuing on Wednesday.

Clegg won the further £600m for free of charge school meals for the scheme to start in September 2014 as component of last-minute autumn deal that permitted David Cameron to invest on a marriage tax allowance.

It is imagined that Michael Gove, the schooling secretary, regarded the totally free college meals proposal as political showmanship designed to win Clegg votes at the election, but unlikely to do anything at all considerable to boost schooling.

There are also wider reports of more and more tense relations between Clegg and the schooling secretary, with Clegg telling the cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, at one particular level that he identified it more and more tough to work with Gove.

At education concerns on Tuesday Gove went out of his way to praise Clegg in a bid to pour oil on troubled waters.

The two sides are at loggerheads in excess of the decision of Clegg, with out warning, to announce that he wanted certified teachers to perform in free schools, one thing the Liberal Democrats had endorsed before but had never been highlighted by the deputy prime minister.

At the outset of the coalition the two men appeared to be ideological allies.

Portion of the difficulty is that Clegg is taking an escalating curiosity in early-many years schooling, partly to mark out some distinctive personalized ground just before the election. Clegg has been closely concerned in announcements extending childcare assistance, the pupil premium and assisting the younger unemployed.

The autumn statement is anticipated to contain a dedication to lift employers’ requirement to spend national insurance coverage for employees aged underneath 21. This would reduce the price of using youthful folks by an common of £520 a year per worker.

The free school meals pledge has been well-liked with the public, but led to some criticism inside of Clegg’s own get together.

Nick Harvey, the former Liberal Democrat defence minister, described the announcement as “completely astonishing”.

He told the Huffington Submit he wished the cash to be much better targeted so free of charge lunches would be offered to bad youngsters from when they commenced school at 5 to when they completed at 18.

He said: “A person, somewhere, has identified £600m a year we did not know about down the back of a filing cabinet and has come up with the brilliant brainwave that the best way to invest it is to give a free of charge college meal to all 5-, 6- and seven-yr-olds – irrespective of their income degree. I am sitting there, gawping in open-mouthed astonishment.”

The Liberal Democrat schools minister, David Laws, mentioned: “Totally free college meals have a number of benefits – young children concentrate a lot more in school when they get a proper, wholesome, lunch they eat much more healthily stress on home budgets is relieved and households on low incomes who go back to perform are aided as well – by no longer shedding all their totally free college meal entitlements.”

£150m funding hole in free school meals pledge