Rishi Sunak has come under increasing pressure to extend free school meals to all children whose families receive universal credit, as new polling suggested two-thirds of MPs back the policy.
As the cost of living crisis bites, the government is facing mounting calls to offer free meals to all of the 800,000 such children who are currently shut out of the scheme because their family’s income is more than £7,400 a year after tax, excluding benefits.
The Independent has partnered with the Food Foundation for its Feed the Future campaign, calling for free school meals to be given to all children in poverty in England. Nearly 225,000 people have so far signed our petition.
Heightening pleas for action on Tuesday, nine of the UK’s major supermarkets co-signed a letter to education secretary Gillian Keegan urging the government to commit to expanding the eligibility for free school meals.
“Food insecurity in the UK will inevitably rise” in the coming months due to inflation and while supermarkets “are committed to doing all we can to support them”, ministers must “do more to protect children and ease the burden on struggling parents”, warned the retailers.
It came as YouGov’s polling of a representative portion of MPs indicated a strong cross-party consensus in the Commons, where two-thirds of MPs were found to support immediately extending free school meals to all whose families receive universal credit.
Furthermore, nearly half of the politicians polled also backing the idea of opening the scheme to all primary school students without means testing.
London’s mayor Sadiq Khan is among those in support of universal free school meals, a policy already in place for primary pupils in four of the capital’s boroughs – Newham, Tower Hamlets, Southwark and Islington – and set to go ahead for those in Scotland and Wales.
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YouGov’s findings, commissioned by the Food Foundation, came as research also carried out for the charity by Childwise suggested that 10 per cent of children in England – aged seven to 17 – were worried about not having enough food for lunch.
This rose to one in four pupils who said there had been a problem getting enough to eat during the summer holidays – an increase of approximately 25 per cent since the summer break in 2020.
More than 30 per cent of the children surveyed said they had shared food with friends at school because they didn’t have enough to eat, while more than one in five knew friends who were hungry and did not have enough to eat at school.
Asked last week if the low threshold for eligibility will be changed, the education secretary said that “these things are always kept under review”, adding: “The reality is you have to wait for the autumn Budget for any answers on funding.”
“More than one-third of children now are eligible for or receive free school meals or food in schools. So I think that’s a lot of children,” Ms Keegan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, adding that the number of children with access to free school meals had risen by 300,000 in recent years.
Pressed on the fact that this means there are more people falling into poverty, Ms Keegan noted that children stay on free school meals for a number of years even if their circumstances change.
Furthermore, while inflation is expected to be a major driver of rising hunger this winter as incomes are squeezed, analysis by the Lib Dems has found that some 110,000 more children would currently be eligible for free school meals had the £7,400 earnings limit been allowed to rise in line with inflation.
Speaking last week at a Feed the Future event, Tory former health minister Lord Bethell said “there are very strong moral and social arguments” for extending the policy to all in need, adding that free school meals “remove a whole set of traumas that many children have around hunger” and food security.
Calling YouGov’s findings of widespread support among MPs “heartening”, the Food Foundation’s executive director Anna Taylor said: “We cannot just sit back and let children pay a lifelong price for this cost of living crisis. Providing more children with free school meals is absolutely essential.”
