Nick Clegg defends free school meals for children aged six and seven

Nick Clegg said there was ample research to demonstrate a sizzling school lunch assisted kids concentrate in the afternoon. Photograph: Rex

Nick Clegg has defended plans to provide totally free school meals for all 6- and seven-yr-olds, saying it is nonsense to suggest the cost of funding further kitchens will come from funds not obtainable in the schools maintenance price range.

He insisted the £150m required would come from £80m by means of the Treasury and £70m from underspend in the Department of Training (DfE) maintenance budget. He also insisted the program would go ahead since he had cleared it with the chancellor irrespective of whatever a single unnamed supply in the DfE had stated.

There have been fierce protests at the way the policy has been cobbled together, reflecting tensions among the department and Clegg.

Speaking on LBC 97.3′s Contact Clegg programme, the deputy prime minister also defended the principle of extending universal cost-free college meals to even the kids of footballers such as Wayne Rooney earning £200,000 a week.

He mentioned it was a basic principle that the wealthy need to be entitled to accessibility some public services this kind of as the NHS or a state pension regardless of income.

The measure, he stated, would specially support the 4 out of 10 households that are not wealthy but not entitled at existing to cost-free school meals, saving them £400 a yr.

He explained there was ample investigation to display that a sizzling school lunch aided youngsters to focus in schools in the afternoons, claiming there were justifications for the measure on the basis of expense of residing, health and education.

The previously unforeseen extra demands positioned on college canteens by the policy indicate an further £150m is needed to fund the emergency building and improvement of school kitchens, prompting a dispute in which the Liberal Democrats accused the training secretary, Michael Gove, of lying.

The concern had to go to the quad – the group of 4 most senior ministers in the coalition which includes Clegg, David Cameron and George Osborne – as the training division complained that the further money could require ministers to raid its fundamental demands spending budget, the fund used to deal with the rise in the number of principal schoolchildren caused by a little one boom.

So serious was the dispute that the Lib Dems accused the DfE of lying about the impossibility of discovering added cash from the schools servicing price range.

“Gove and the DfE had their eye on the underspend for cost-free schools,” explained the supply, “which I believe explains the slight bitterness from the DfE in some of the briefing. What we are seeing from DfE is them going rogue. They are totally out of stage. It is time for them to cease whining and get behind a policy that they are going to have to deliver. The DfE are lying if they say there is no money.”

Downing Street then made clear that it was Gove’s department that was out of line. “The place is absolutely the one particular the DPM’s [Clegg"s] office have set out,” the prime minister’s official spokesman explained.

Cameron sided with Clegg in the quad meeting, in accordance to coalition sources, in return for the Liberal Democrats ceding some ground on environmental issues.

But a DfE supply stated: “There is no spare funds in either the fundamental needs or servicing budget to spend for Clegg’s kitchens.”

Clegg won the unique £600m for free college meals as part of a last-minute autumn deal that permitted Cameron to invest on a marriage tax allowance. The meals scheme is due to get started in September 2014.

It is considered that Gove regarded the totally free college meals proposal as political showmanship made to win Clegg votes at the election, but unlikely to do anything significant to enhance schooling.

There are also wider reports of more and more tense relations in between Clegg and the schooling secretary, with Clegg telling colleagues he identified it increasingly hard to work with Gove.

At training questions 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 more than the determination of Clegg, with no warning, to announce that he wished competent teachers to perform in totally free colleges, something the Liberal Democrats had endorsed just 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.

Element of the trouble is that Clegg is taking an increasing curiosity in early-years education, partly to mark out some distinctive private ground ahead of the election. Clegg has been closely concerned in announcements extending childcare support, the pupil premium and helping the younger unemployed.

The autumn statement is expected to incorporate a commitment to lift employers’ necessity to pay nationwide insurance coverage for employees aged below 21. This would reduce the cost of employing younger people by an typical of £520 a yr per worker.

The totally free college meals pledge has been common with the public, but led to some criticism inside of Clegg’s very own celebration.

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

He advised the Huffington Post he wanted the money to be much better targeted so totally free lunches would be offered to poor kids from when they began school at five to when they finished at 18.

He explained: “A person, someplace, has identified £600m a yr 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 school meal to all 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds – irrespective of their cash flow degree. I am sitting there, gawping in open-mouthed astonishment.”

The Liberal Democrat colleges minister, David Laws, said: “Free of charge college meals have numerous benefits – children focus far more in school when they get a proper, wholesome lunch they eat much more healthily strain on family budgets is relieved and families on lower incomes who go back to function are aided also – by no longer shedding all their free of charge college meal entitlements.”

Nick Clegg defends free school meals for children aged six and seven