Jamie Oliver has called for the threshold to be opened for who qualifies as having a free school meal. Currently, the children of parents who are on Universal Credit and have an annual income of no more than £7,400, or are on another benefit such as jobseeker's allowance, are eligible for free school meals.
Mr Oliver told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If you earn over £7,400, you won't get that free school lunch. But I think we'd all agree that there's a massive gap between the means test for free school lunches as it stands and Universal Credit. I think what the Government are saying is Universal Credit tethers off and can go up to sort of £30,000 - £40,000, but really we're talking about the bulk of them being around £14,000 per household."
Asked if he wanted the threshold to be met, he replied: "Well, now more than ever... if they were to open the threshold of who would be allowed to have a free school lunch, that would also inject funds into the system that would also really help to guarantee a much better service across 26,000 schools in the country."
