The following article was written by the Liberal Democrat MP for Kingston and Surbiton Ed Davey and published yesterday on his website.

When a Government introduces a new policy you would hope Ministers have some evidence that the policy is likely to work. There are few areas more important than education for having an evidence-based approach to new policies than education. Children shouldn’t be used as experiments for a fashionable theory.

That’s why I (and my party) proposed and have introduced free school meals for all. There is good evidence this policy will actually work.

Free School Meals – delivered smoothly

So what is this policy I have championed, along with Nick Clegg? From September this year, every single child in infants has become eligible for a free school lunch. This means that 1.89 million children in reception classes and in year 1 and 2 can eat a free, nutritious meal at lunchtime every day. In 16,500 schools.

Despite press reports this wouldn’t happen (mainly the Daily Mail), it has. Including here in the Royal Borough. Thanks to hard work by headteachers and many others in our primary schools, it’s happened smoothly too.

Having visited the one school in Kingston and Surbiton reporting difficulties in implementing the free school meals, they now have got the grant of £68,000 to extend their dining hall, to avoid the inconvenient staggering of meal times they adopted in the first term of free school meals.

Free school meals – evidence of education and health benefits

The reason I and others fought so hard for this is – the evidence. Pilot studies showed that where children were given free school meals, they were found to be up to 2 months ahead of peers elsewhere in Maths and English. The pilots found giving every child a free school meal improved concentration and raised educational performance, regardless of the child’s background.

To be more concrete about the evidence, pilots found that around 2% more children reached target levels in Maths and English at Key Stage 1. Even more interestingly, at Key Stage 2 the impact on achievement was between 3% and 5% – a bigger improvement than the 3.6% boost that followed the introduction of a compulsory literacy hour in 1998. Significantly, the academic improvements were most marked among children from less affluent families.

And the evidence from the pilots suggest benefits aren’t isolated to education – there are health benefits too. The studies showed children were more likely to eat vegetables, rather than unhealthy snacks like crisps. With schools providing higher quality, tasty meals and not just “turkey twizzlers”, positive eating habits are established. Given almost 20% of children are now obese by the time they leave primary school, the long term benefits to society of this simple policy may turn out to be huge – benefitting all taxpayers of the future.

Families £400 a year better off

And there’s more. For some families these free school meals will make a big financial difference too. Whilst children from the poorest families have always been eligible for free school meals, the evidence also showed many children from low incomes families were not – up to 4 in 10 of children living in poverty were not getting free school meals.

Government estimates suggest the free school meals policy is worth around £400 a year per child to a family with infant children.

Other evidence of the benefits are more anecdotal and difficult to quantify – but they seem like common sense to me. Behaviour and discipline may be improving as some children where families don’t always eat together learn how to socialise better – chatting over lunch.

Some teachers reported that the previous stigmatisation of children receiving free school meals went overnight and have said they feel this has led to improve self-esteem for some pupils and perhaps less bullying. The previous division of pupils eating a packed lunch from those eating a school meal was also identified by some as important.

There will be some who will oppose this policy on principle. Michael Gove’s former special adviser at the Department of Education has been particularly hostile.

Some many oppose it and question the evidence. But to be fair, Ministers can only act on the evidence they have. And given we have seen education policies implemented over the years without any evidence or pilots, at least our free school meals policy has more grounding than most policies dreamt up by politicians.

For me, free school meals was a “no brainer”. It was common sense. Moreover, it was one of those policies which are sometimes called “no regrets” – in other words, even if the evidence proves wrong, the worst that’s happened is young children enjoying meals together. I am afraid to say we’ve seen too many education policies that we have lived to regret. Our policy of free school meals will not be one of those.