6. How much funding has the Welsh Government provided for out-of-term free school meals across Mid and West Wales? OQ55790

Since March, the Welsh Government has made available additional funding of over £52 million to all local authorities in Wales, to continue free school meal provision during the pandemic. This includes provision for school holidays up to and including Easter 2021.

I thank you for that. With so much uncertainty around, at least those families now know that holiday provision will continue, as you say, over the Christmas period, and through to next April. Now, that, of course, is with no thanks to the Conservative MPs in my region, including the Secretary of State for Wales, Simon Hart, who voted against giving families in England that same security. Neither is it commensurate with the views of Philip Davies, Tory MP, who thinks it's mere virtue signalling and that it is the responsibility of parents, not the state, to feed hungry children. But, I do remain concerned, though, that more families who don't have recourse to public funds may struggle to make ends meet this winter. I know local authorities have the discretion to provide free school meals to any pupil that they know to be in need, but I would ask you, First Minister, if you would encourage local authorities in Wales, before the Christmas break, to ensure that the needs in their area are being met, and that no child goes hungry. And again, thank you for the most generous provision for free school meals in any part of the UK. 

I thank Joyce Watson very much for that. Welsh Conservative MPs will be answerable for denying help to children who go hungry in a part of the United Kingdom that they do not represent. Here in Wales, thankfully, children are protected from the action of those Conservative MPs, because, as Joyce Watson said, we were the first Government in the United Kingdom to guarantee that children would go on having free school meals and we provide the most generous level of help to local authorities to go on doing that. In the spirit of Angela Burns's last question, let me also say, Llywydd, that I want to pay tribute to all those businesses and other organisations in Wales who have gone beyond what we are able to provide through the free school meals service, to make sure that children who have other needs in their lives are able to be helped. Many of us will have seen the example in my colleague Alun Davies's constituency of a fantastic group of people who have been helping hundreds and hundreds of families over and above what schools themselves are able to put in place. I think that just tells us that the instinctive spirit of people in Wales is an entirely different place from the way that the Conservative Party has approached this basic issue. Apparently, we could afford to subsidise people to eat out in order to help out, but it isn't possible to provide for children who go hungry during school holidays. That tells you all you need to know. I'm immensely grateful to our local authorities for the way that they do this, and we do indeed talk to them, as Joyce Watson has said, about the extra discretion they have. I know that our local authorities often apply that discretion to make sure that children who are at the margin of the rules get help, and to use that to make sure that no child suffers in their education because they simply don't have food in their stomach. 

First Minister, you've mentioned the need to support those on lower incomes. It's been 42 days now since your Government announced that it would roll out payments of £500 per week for those on low incomes who are asked to self-isolate, but the payments are yet to be received. Now, people in England and Scotland have been entitled to payments of £500 since 28 September, with grants being paid from 12 October. Earlier today Paul Davies, in his questions, asked you when people in Wales will receive the £500 self-isolating grants. You didn't answer his question, so can you tell us now when these payments will be made?

Llywydd, these payments are available in Wales and they'll be backdated in Wales as well; all of that has already been announced. It's for Conservative Members to keep up with policy in Wales, not to use First Minister's questions as some sort of personal research service. 

If I can return us, First Minister, to free school meals, I'd associate myself with a lot of what Joyce Watson said about how positive it is that we are still providing those, particularly in school holiday times. The First Minister will be aware of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report that was published yesterday, calling for a Welsh benefits system. One of the issues that we still have with free school meals is that approximately 20 per cent of those families who are entitled are still not taking that up.

Now, it has been put to me that there may be an issue, particularly in some smaller communities—for example, the village communities in the Gwendraeth, places like Pontyberem, Pontyates and Tumble—where people may still feel some stigma in making a request for this support. Can I invite the First Minister today to re-emphasise that this is not in any sense charity? This is an entitlement that we all would want every single family who are entitled to it to take up. What more can the Welsh Government do, working with communities and with local authorities, to ensure that every single child who is entitled to support so that they are not hungry here in our country does get that support?

I entirely agree with Helen Mary Jones: of course, this is help that children are entitled to receive. The old days when children were singled out if they were receiving a free school meal are, surely, long over here in Wales, although the long tail of stigma can take a long time to disappear. But we have a whole new set of ways in which schools make sure that children who are entitled to free school meals aren't discriminated against or picked out from other children, and I know that huge efforts are made.

Some local authorities in Wales do succeed more than others in making sure that entitlement to free school meals is automatic—that it is linked to other benefits that the local authority already knows a family to be in receipt of. The more that we can make free school meals not a matter of families having to apply for it, but it being done through the other systems that local authorities have available to them, the greater the take-up will be. The ambition of the Welsh Government is exactly as Helen Mary Jones set it out: that every child who is entitled to this benefit should be in a position to take it.

We have been working with local authorities—as I say, some of them are already more advanced down this path than others—to find ways in which not just free school meals but a whole range of other help to which families are entitled comes to them as a result of things that the local authority already know about them because of information that they've supplied, rather than requiring people to make repeated applications for help that ought to be straightforwardly available to them.