At the end of next year little Poppy, the seven-year-old from Liverpool whose engaging plea for Rishi Sunak to introduce free school meals was on the front of last Friday’s Daily Mirror, may need to write again, this time to Keir Starmer.
Because Labour’s Prime Minister-in-waiting is, unfortunately, as unappetisingly opposed to feeding all primary pupils as the cold-hearted rich Conservative he’s poised to replace in No 10.
Universal free school meals is not Labour Party policy, trilled a spokesman. Then why not? This is a cause that goes to the heart of what Labour stands for and the fairer, more decent country we could be.
Labour’s grassroots grasps that which is why 89% back universal free school meals for primary children.
But not the top brass. Starmer, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves and, in the Education brief, a Bridget Phillipson who was a free school meals kid, are all desperate to keep it off the menu for families in most of England.
Scottish pupils already eat them. They’re about to be served in Wales and London. Yet in much of England it’s thin gruel for most parents when three-in-every-four would be required to continue finding a tenner a week or more per son or daughter to buy lunches or go without.
Free breakfasts are our priority, say Starmer’s people. Really? They serve them too in Wales.
Labour’s forever telling us what it’s against – including many of its own old policies such as renationalising water that have huge public backing – and far less about what it would do.
Universal free school meals could be a sparkling jewel on a pledge card, a cost of living tonic appealing to workers on average wages, middle class parents and grandparents.
It would also end the scandal of denying existing free meals to families of officially skint families judged not far enough below the breadline.
The proportion receiving free school meals in England soaring from one-in-seven to one-in-four during recent years doesn’t tell the true extent of deepening inequality and hardship under the Tories.
Twisting arms to block Labour activists championing the initiative is unsavoury in a party preaching widening opportunity.
Durham and Newham in London pilots when Gordon Brown was Labour PM discovered “a significant positive impact on attainment for primary school pupils” which is a tasty result.
No wonder economist Lee Crawfurd in an assessment for the Social Market Foundation, a think tank traditionally closer to the Conservatives than Labour, warned dropping free school meals plans would be a false economy.
Teachers’ union NEU calculates the cost at £800million - a fraction of what the Tories squandered in Covid fraud and the proposed £3billion digital services tax on the likes of Amazon and Facebook which Labour abandoned.
I sincerely hope Poppy, when she’s 8 or 9, doesn’t have to write that second letter.
If she and others do, so be it. This noble campaign won’t stop until all kids are fed.
Social justice and economic prosperity go hand in hand.
