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Dozens of councils have pledged to feed underprivileged children during the school holidays as they joined a wave of public support for a campaign led by England and Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford.
Amid mounting outrage over the government’s refusal to extend free school meals in England next week, the conservative-controlled Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall and Birmingham Town Hall, the UK’s largest local authority, were among those who took part in the offense.
A wave of cafes, businesses, charities and community groups also said they would donate food over the next week’s semester and over the Christmas holidays, inspired by Rashford’s campaign to end child food poverty.
The 22 year old Twitter feed highlighted a flood of offers to help amid the economic crisis caused by the Covid pandemic. His petition to implement a national food strategy was close to 500,000 signatures on Friday night.
The government is understood to be preparing for a partial decline amid the dispute, with an expansion of children’s access to Christmas activity clubs, including meals.
But local government sources told The Guardian that the Treasury was delaying the plans before its spending review. Last year, some 50,000 disadvantaged children used the holiday activities and the meal plan in just 17 local authorities.
Official figures from earlier this year showed that 1.4 million disadvantaged children were eligible for free school meals in England. That number is estimated to have increased by hundreds of thousands since the coronavirus outbreak, and may now be closer to 2 million.
In the summer, following a campaign by Rashford, who had talked about benefiting from free school meals growing up in Manchester, the government changed direction and agreed to provide coupons of £ 15 a week to ensure children did not go hungry. during the holidays.
With schools reopened since then, a motion to repeat the measure was rejected in the Commons on Wednesday despite the poor economy and rising unemployment. On Thursday, the chancellor unveiled a multi-billion pound package to support businesses and underpaid workers during the crisis.
With days to go, England will be alone among the nations of the United Kingdom in not extending support for free school meals during the mid-term holidays. Scotland and Wales have committed to offering free meals during Christmas and Easter as well.
Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons education committee in the Tory Parliament, urged ministers to meet with Rashford and the child food poverty task force to discuss solutions to child hunger.
“What the government should do is sit down with Marcus Rashford and the task force … there are people like Henry Dimbleby. [co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain] and some of the big food companies, and before Christmas we worked on a long-term plan to fight childhood food hunger, ”Halfon said.
Halfon was one of five Conservative MPs who voted in favor of the Labor motion and said he supported an increased provision of breakfast clubs, funded through the £ 340 million sugar tax.
“If the government wants to look at it in terms of cost-benefit and return for taxpayers, breakfast clubs are a no-brainer. If a child receives a regular breakfast, their performance increases by up to two more GCSEs and attendance increases, ”Halfon said.
While nearly 40 Labor-run councils rushed to set meal plans in time for the middle of the term in the wake of this week’s parliamentary vote, most Conservative councils were reluctant to join, partly for reasons of costs and because the problem was in danger of becoming, as one source put it, a “political party.”
The London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was a rare outlier, promising £ 15 meal vouchers for half the term for its 3,300 local children eligible for free school meals. Councilman Josh Rendall, Senior Member for Family and Children’s Services, said, “This is not a long-term solution, but this is an exceptional year and we know it has been difficult for many families.
Conservative-controlled Essex became the first county council to support Rashford, announcing the expansion of a Christmas starvation program and an emergency fund for food banks facing increased demand. It fell short of offering promising support for all children registered for free school meals.
Many city councils appeared to be drawing on reserves despite financial pressures, shuffling cash between budgets or using the remainder of their share of a £ 63m hardship fund set up by the government earlier this year to pay for plans.
Lewisham’s council, run by workers in South London, where there has been a 13% increase in registrations for free school meals since March, pledged to use £ 19,000 from its mid-term appeal for collectively funded packed lunches to provide meals to 12,500 local children.
Nick Forbes, Newcastle City Council Leader and Local Government Association Labor Group Leader, said: “Children should never be allowed to go hungry; the fact that this conservative government cannot see that shows that it has completely lost its moral compass.
“They’ve wasted millions on well-paid consultants and given Serco billions to run a test-and-trace system that doesn’t work, but they draw the limit by using a tiny fraction of that to keep kids from starving this half-term. . It’s disgusting “.
Barnsley council leader Sir Stephen Houghton said: “We cannot put a voucher system in place at this late stage, but we will make sure that local families receiving free school meals get money over the next week. And since the government has said that they are not going to do anything, we are going to start preparing for the Christmas holidays ”.
Birmingham City Council also committed to providing food stamps to the 61,000 eligible children within the city.
Downing Street repeatedly refused to praise companies or city councils that offered free meals to underprivileged children for the middle of the period, saying only that it did not believe that free school meals were necessary outside of the period.
“As we have established before, we are now in a different position, with schools once again open to all and the vast majority of students back in school,” said a spokesman for No. 10. “As the prime minister said, school meals Free will continue throughout the school term, and he wants to continue supporting families during the crisis, so they have cash available to feed the children when they need it. “
Pressed on whether the government supported such offers, or believed they were not a good use of the money, the spokesperson declined to say. “We are in a different position now, with the schools reopening. But we have done a lot to make sure that the most vulnerable in our society are protected, ”he said. “While schools continue to play an integral role in the community, it is not the responsibility of schools to regularly provide food to students during school holidays.”
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