A teenager from the North East is campaigning for more free school meals support.
Bite Back 2030 is a youth-led movement for a fairer food system. The group wants every child to have access to healthy, affordable food, no matter where they live.
They have been demanding an extension to free school meal support since the end of the year.
In January, the group took more than 250,000 petition signatures to the Government and splashed their message across digital screens on the side of vans, which were driven through London.
One member of the group campaigning for change is Luke Hall, Youth MP for South Tyneside.
The 17-year-old said: "The Government isn’t listening to young people who have said time and time again that support with nutritious school food would make a massive difference to their health, wellbeing and futures.
"More than a quarter of a million people have signed our petition, but the Government is ignoring us instead of taking action to support children and their families.
"It’s in the Government's interests to fix this and they have the power to do so. We want to sit down with the Chancellor and help him understand the massive difference extending school meals would make to health and futures."
Figures from June 2022 showed that 800,000 school age children in England are living in poverty, but are not deemed "poor" enough to qualify for free school meals - with 40,000 of those living in the North East of England.
Families need to be taking home less than £7,400 per year for children to qualify for support, and there is evidence of children being forced to skip meals or search for cheap unhealthy options from outside the school gates.
Bite Back 2030 was founded in 2019 by chef and campaigner Jamie Oliver and philanthropist Nicolai Tangen.
It now has more than 80 young campaigners across seven Youth Boards and over two thousand teenagers have engaged with its programmes.
The group has been ramping up pressure on the Government. They want them to address the urgent need to ensure every pupil has what they need to do well at school - that includes lunch.
Their calls have now been backed by John Allan, Chair of Tesco, Barratt Developments and the Council at Imperial College. He wants to see more being done to support the future workforce.
Mr Allan said: "Improving young people’s employability skills and kick-starting their careers is a cornerstone of a successful business.
"It’s astounding that before they even get a chance to begin their careers with us, hundreds of thousands of young people living in poverty are being held back by a policy failure that denies them their most basic right: access to a nutritious and sustaining meal in school.
"A growing body of evidence and testimony from young people themselves uncovered by the youth-led movement, Bite Back 2030, points to the positive impact access to nutritious food can have on academic performance.
"And for those that wish to monetise this basic right of children, research from PwC found for every £1 invested in extending free school meals, £1.38 would be returned into the economy resulting in £8.9bn in core social, health and educational benefits over 20 years.
"The case for action is overwhelmingly popular. It seems like an economic, political and moral no brainer. In a political landscape where these are hard to come by, I hope the Government will recognise this opportunity."
Research, carried out by Savanta in December last year, revealed that four per cent of young people aged 16 to 21 agreed that the government cares if they have enough healthy food to eat.
The researched showed that one in five (19%) reported seeing a peer go hungry at school / college / university because they weren't able to afford lunch.
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