Free School Meals

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate, not just as the Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central or the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the national food strategy, but as someone who is disappointed and saddened by the divisive nature of the debate. There is no need for today’s point-scoring motion—a sticking plaster, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) called it—which will no doubt cause unnecessary concern for our constituents. A consensus exists between hon. Members on both sides of the House that one child hungry is one too many. Any suggestion that an hon. Member would think otherwise is deeply offensive.



The coronavirus restrictions introduced in March this year presented a challenge as the boundaries between our public services and our private lives became blurred. This Government rightly listened to public opinion and acted by extending the provision of free school meals over the summer holidays at a time when we were facing school closures. However, we are now in a very different position. With schools and classrooms now in session, it is only right that the exceptional measures introduced at the height of this pandemic come to an end. Instead, we must have a constructive debate considering the longer-term and most sustainable solutions to tackling this problem.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree with me that the very fact that we have reopened schools—99% of state schools are now open—shows just how committed this Government are to tackling child poverty, because saving our children’s education and catching children up where they have fallen behind is the No. 1 thing we can do to help bring people out of poverty?

[Jo Gideon]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I absolutely agree with what she says.

There is no question about it: there is a problem, but headlines do not help these children and their families, and the sticking plaster this motion calls for would be woefully inadequate. Before the pandemic, the Government commissioned an independent and comprehensive review of our entire food system from field to fork. The national food strategy review now being conducted is a top-to-bottom examination, and it will publish long-term and sustainable recommendations that will inform Government strategy on some of the biggest challenges to improving the health of our nation. As chairman of the APPG on the national food strategy, I am determined to work cross-party to develop support for more comprehensive, more fundamental and more long-term solutions. The work of the group will be integral to developing these proposals and it will help inform the White Paper. Addressing the issues of child obesity, malnutrition and food poverty is central to the levelling-up agenda. As with many aspects of the Government’s levelling-up agenda, outcomes cannot be delivered overnight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I will do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The motion calls on the Government to extend free school meal provision throughout the school holidays until Easter next year. Although on the Order Paper this is a debate about free school meals, even if the motion passes, the result will not be more free school meals. To risk stating the obvious, during the holidays schools are closed, and they do not provide physical meals—free or otherwise—to any child. Let us be clear: what is really being called for here is an extension to the voucher scheme that would start in half-term next week by giving supermarket vouchers to parents of children who are eligible. That is not the same as providing a daily nutritious meal to a child in a school environment to help them get the most out of their education. It is important to recognise the difference between free school meals and what they are for, and supermarket vouchers.

The initial supermarket voucher scheme was set up in March and was not an attempt to solve child poverty, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) rightly pointed out, is a matter for the welfare system, not our schools. No one denies that child, and therefore family, poverty does exist, or that we should be doing everything that we can to bring people out of it—I will talk about that more in a moment—but the initial voucher scheme was a practical, administrative response to the unforeseen necessity of closing schools for an indeterminate period. No one suggested at the time that it was anything other than a temporary measure.

The truth is that far too many families do not have enough. They do not have enough money, enough food or enough help. There are many and complex reasons for that, and, sadly, to suggest that supermarket vouchers will somehow fix it is like putting a sticking plaster on a serious wound. But what will work? When the welfare state was launched, the vision was to provide a safety net for those who found themselves out of work and to help them get back on their feet, but now we find ourselves in a position—pre-covid, anyway—where far more of our welfare budget is spent on those in work than those out of work. In other words, at present, work is not always the route out of poverty that it should be.

How do we help people into better paid and secure work, and away from the addiction, the family breakdown and the social issues that all too often trap people in poverty? Education is part of the answer, and I commend my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary for the catch-up schemes, but research shows that the barriers to good work are not just material or educational poverty; lack of social, relational capital prevents many people from finding a way out.

There is no time for me to say more, but I recommend that hon. Members read the work of Hilary Cottam, whose book “Radical Help” proposes a very radical relational community approach to tackling poverty. These are the kinds of things that we should be debating in this House. Child poverty is a serious and complex issue; we need serious and complex solutions.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Well, there we are. I call Mary Kelly Foy.