School lunch programme to be funded, minister confirms

ASSOCIATE education minister David Seymour has confirmed temporary funding will be put in place for the free school lunches programme until a review is completed.

Funding would continue for the ‘‘immediate few years’’ while officials worked out what the alternative programme would look like, Mr Seymour said.

‘‘They won’t end, but they will continue in a different form. ‘‘Right now we are saving the scheme; keeping it going for the foreseeable future until we’ve made those policy decisions.’’ Budgeting temporary funding for the programme is what the coalition spent months criticising the previous government for doing.

It has repeatedly described Labour’s timelimited funding for free lunches in school as a ‘‘fiscal cliff’’.

Asked how it could accept one fiscal cliff on its watch, given its rhetoric directed at the previous government, Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she would not ‘‘categorise anything the government is doing as a fiscal cliff’’.

She said in the ‘‘vast majority of instances’’ permanent fouryear funding would be allocated in the Budget on May 30. On Monday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said all Budget programmes would be fully funded over four years. ‘‘What we’re focused on is delivering a Budget at the end of May where we are very transparent and very up front about our investment, so there is certainty about those programmes that we are supporting that they’re fully funded,’’ Mr Luxon said.

But by Tuesday morning, he had walked back that statement, telling Morning Report ‘‘there will be the odd incident where we’re actually putting more money into a programme where we’re testing or wanting to see the results before we follow it up with more’’.

There would be a ‘‘handful of things where there might be timelimited funding, but again we’ll be transparent about that’’, he said.

Mr Seymour, who was in charge of the programme’s review, last night defended the funding approach the coalition was taking.

He said it was different to Labour’s, which was to say it would continue the programme forever, but not fund it forever. Mr Seymour said last month that funding for the programme could be cut by up to half.

He said 10,000 lunches were wasted each day and there was no hard evidence the programme, which cost about $325 million annually, improved school attendance or achievement.

Mr Luxon said free school lunches would continue, as campaigned by National at last year’s election, but with some changes to make it more efficient.

‘‘We believe in the programme. We are now funding the programme, but we want to make sure that it’s been effective,’’ he said.

‘‘That’s quite a good question to ask a few years down the road as the programme’s got bigger and as we have made a big commitment to fund it — to make sure we’re getting a return on it.’’

Labour launched a campaign and petition in March to save the programme.

Leader Chris Hipkins said the Prime Minister was saying one thing and doing another.