Free School Meals/Pupil Premium: Eligibility Debate
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Afzal Khan
Main Page: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester Rusholme)Department Debates - View all Afzal Khan's debates with the Department for Education
Free School Meals/Pupil Premium: Eligibility
Afzal Khan Excerpts(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Let me begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for securing this debate and for eloquently and forcefully putting across the reasons for it and the flaws in how things are processed.
I want to discuss this issue in context of my region. The Greater Manchester area has the highest rate of child poverty in the country. I have three concerns about the Government’s proposed changes to the eligibility criteria for free school meals. First, and from a regional perspective, the areas worst affected by child poverty stand to lose the most from the proposed changes. Places with among the highest rates of child poverty, such as my constituency of Manchester, Gorton, will have a high number of children who are no longer eligible for free school meals. The effects of this will need to be picked up by already-stretched local councils and charities.
Secondly, the Government are turning their back on the 10% of pupils from poor households who would not be eligible for free school meals under the proposed changes. In the city of Manchester, there are 5,000 children eligible for free school meals under universal credit who would not be eligible under the proposed criteria. Thirdly, the Government are undermining their own principle that universal credit should make work pay. In some cases, taking on additional work would mean families ending up on a lower overall income, instead of people being rewarded for working harder.
Changes to universal credit are already projected to push a million more children into poverty by 2022. We must not additionally take away the right for children in poverty to access free school meals.