Free School Meals

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

As someone who personally benefited from free school meals as a child, I congratulate Marcus Rashford on his vital and selfless campaign. Between him and Andy Burnham, I do not think the Prime Minister will be setting foot in Manchester any time soon.

In a previous debate, I said that the Government’s initial U-turn on free school meals was a case of them having to be embarrassed into feeding hungry children. Well, it looks like the Conservatives have moved beyond that. They truly have no shame. What astounds me most about this Government’s approach is the complete lack of responsibility. They are acting like child poverty is purely the fault of the parents and ignoring the leading cause of child poverty: Tory Governments.

It is a fact that this Government have increased poverty. Before this pandemic, their own Social Mobility Commission stated that there are 600,000 more children living in poverty in 2020 than there were in 2012. They cannot blame Labour for that. And let us not ignore the reality that holiday hunger hits the north-east the hardest. Not only does the region have the highest proportion of children in receipt of free school meals, but that number is rising at a faster rate than anywhere else. So much for levelling up.

The coronavirus pandemic and the Government’s incompetent handling of it will only make this crisis worse. Thousands of people will be experiencing poverty for the first time, through absolutely no fault of their own, yet the Government are going to deny them this small bit of help. Even if we ignore the argument that this Government have increased poverty over the last decade, it still does not change the fact that children do not choose to be born into poverty and they do not choose to go hungry during the holidays. Poverty is never the child’s fault. To punish them is as cruel as it is illogical.

The Government believe that it is right to feed these children when they are at school, so why not during the holidays? Poverty does not stop at the end of term. Are the Government planning to let impoverished children go hungry in order to teach them some sort of perverse lesson—to show them the realities of sink-or-swim Conservatism? If, as some Members claim, it is a question of not being able to afford to fund these £15-a-week lunches, I am sure we can make savings somewhere else, such as by cutting some of the £7,000 a day that consultants are being paid for working on the failing track and trace system. Personally, I would rather put food into the stomach of a hungry child than money into the pockets of wealthy consultants.

No matter how they try to justify it, if Government Members oppose the motion, they will be voting to let children go hungry, for no other reason than that they just do not care.