Education Minister Erica Stanford and Associate Education Minister David Seymour have again had to reschedule a meeting over school lunches. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
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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