Erica Stanford And David Seymour Meet Over Free School Lunches Programme Fiasco

Russell
Palmer, Political Reporter

Erica
Stanford and David Seymour have met to talk about the school
lunches programme.

The Education Minister and her
associate were set for one of their regular meetings last
Tuesday amid heavy criticism of the performance of the free
lunch programme Seymour is in charge of.

However, he
did not show up to that meeting and the pair struggled to
reschedule until Wednesday morning.

He told reporters
on Wednesday afternoon the meeting covered “all sorts of
things, mainly education, but it was a fantastic meeting as
we always have”.

“We discussed a whole range of issues
around the school lunch programme and how it’s getting
better, and what our plan to do that is,” Seymour
said.

Stanford characterised the meeting this morning
as “really productive”.

“We went through some of the
complex and challenging issues, and I offered David my full
support: anything he needed from my office, we would be
providing it,” she said.

The meeting comes a day after
Libelle Group, which was subcontracted by the main
contractor Compass to provide 124,000 of the 242,000 lunches
a day, went into liquidation.

Seymour earlier told
Midday Report he had
been aware for “weeks” there were issues with Libelle,
but the government was not aware the company might fold in
the way it has.

Receiver Deloitte yesterday told
Checkpoint the company had been struggling
for months and still owed money to multiple suppliers
and staff.

Seymour has consistently refused to get
into the details of Libelle’s struggles, saying that was
commercially sensitive – and a matter for Compass to handle
with Libelle.

Asked why the government had not
contracted Libelle directly, given it was providing more
than half the lunches across the country, Seymour said it
could be argued either way.

“It’s simpler for us to
have one line of accountability – one contract, one price –
and let them manage the complexity of other relationships I
would have thought.

“It’s an interesting hypothetical
but look at the outcome. The outcome is there’s been a
problem with Libelle – that problem’s been resolved.
Yesterday they went into liquidation and we delivered 99.96
percent of meals on time. So if people want to talk about
the outcome and should we have structured it differently,
actually the way we’ve structured it has allowed a really
good outcome.”

Stanford said questions about why
Seymour did not pass that on that Libelle was in trouble was
a question for him. She said she was not at all annoyed he
did not tell
her.

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