Support for Children Entitled to Free School Meals

Janet Daby Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab) [V]]

Although it is a real pleasure to be able to speak today, it is disturbing to be speaking in a debate about children going hungry, especially as the UK is the fifth richest country in the world by GDP. A quarter of the country’s wealth is held by a mere 1% of the population, however. That is an absolute shame. That is why, in 2021, I and other Members are still having to call on the Government to keep children fed during the school holidays.

The issue of food poverty goes well beyond children relying on free school meals; it affects our whole community. Indeed, it is a crisis of the Government’s own making. Cuts to funding have resulted in a reduction of local authorities’ spend, which has meant the loss of youth services and children’s social services. The cuts have also reduced the third sector’s capacity to deliver services and, in some cases, the ability of those services to exist at all. In my borough of Lewisham, the council has to make additional £28 million of cuts for this coming year, after 11 difficult years of austerity. Schools desperately want to support families in need, but they have also had their own budgets decimated.

Members have already heard this, but they will hear it again: the Joseph Rowntree Foundation writes that

“food poverty is just poverty”

and that the only way to solve poverty is

“with better jobs, affordable homes and strong social security.”

I agree. Too many adults continue to struggle through jobs that are high effort but low income. Indeed, food banks in my constituency, like those in other Members’ constituencies, have seen a rise in users and people suffering from in-work poverty. Those people may have two or three jobs, but still have little security and measly wages. They are struggling, their families are struggling, and the people around them are struggling.

Universal credit’s initial five-week delay to benefits harms families by presuming that debt is the norm. That was ludicrous at the beginning and remains ludicrous now. Universal credit works against women as it is only paid into one person’s bank account, and its two-child limit discriminates against families. Child Poverty Action Group estimates that childcare costs have risen by 42% since 2008, but child benefit has not risen accordingly. With rising rents in London and higher energy bills as a result of the pandemic, families repeatedly have to make sacrifices to make ends meet. Many parents are themselves going without food so that they can feed their children.

That is a miserable and cruel situation for any parent, but it is not inevitable. The last Labour Government brought 900,000 children out of poverty. We can do it and we must do it, so why are we not doing it again? The real question is this: why have this Government chosen to keep children in food poverty?

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

From south-east London to south-west London, and from the virtual world to the Boothroyd Room, I call Siobhain McDonagh.