Child Food Poverty

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Stephen Pound

Friday 16th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Smeeth]

I could not agree more. In my own constituency, 10,800 young students will be affected by the cuts.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an intensely powerful and very timely speech. The London borough of Ealing, like many other boroughs, set up summer play schemes, which were initially intended to provide entertainment, amusement and healthy exercise for young people during the summer holidays. Now we have to provide hot food, but when our budget is cut by £96 million over the next four years, we may not be able to sustain that. Will my hon. Friend please urge the Minister—whom I know to be a decent, humane man—to recognise the impact of local government cuts on these essential services?

[Ruth Smeeth]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. We have yet to see the impact of wider cuts on local government, but I cannot imagine that it will make the present position better.

Following the proposed tax credit changes, a single parent with two kids who works 16 hours a week on the minimum wage will be £460 a year worse off. A couple with two kids, when one parent is earning the national average, will be down two grand a year.

We know that what is really holding children back in constituencies like mine and those of my hon. Friends is not a lack of will, or talent, or perseverance; it is a lack of opportunity, a lack of support, and a lack of hope for a better future. That is the challenge that our children face. It is a challenge that could be met if only the helping hand of Government is extended to them, and that is what I am asking the Government to do today. I am asking them to begin to take concrete steps to address the issue of child food poverty in school holidays. So I ask the Minister to meet the holiday hunger taskforce as a matter of urgency to discuss the detail of this issue, to free up innovation funding for local trials beginning in the worst affected areas, and to develop best practice in holiday provision, and, of course, I offer Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove as the perfect constituency for an initial pilot. Finally, I ask the Minister to support further research into the impact of holiday hunger here in the UK, particularly on learning loss among vulnerable students.

This issue is simply too important to be a party political football, but it is also an immediate challenge to our very definition of responsible and caring Government, so we need actions, not words. Let us meet to get something done so our children are well fed, well educated and able to fulfil their potential.