The free school meals debate shows the lack of commitment to reducing poverty in the new coalition

By Rachel Reeves MP / @_RachelReeves_

I attended my first adjournment debate – led by backbenchers – yesterday. The debate, on free school meals, was called by Sharon Hodgson, Labour MP for Washington and Sunderland West, who has campaigned tirelessly on this issue.

Free school meals were introduced in the 1944 Education Act and have over sixty six years given millions of children access to decent meals – often the only good meal they will have in the day. Under the last Labour government, access to free school meals was extended with three pilots – providing universal free school meals in Durham and Newham, and extending eligibility in Wolverhampton to children in homes where income are below £16,000. These pilots were due to be extended again in September – with every region having a pilot of its own. But, the new government has now scrapped this roll-out, despite lobbying from the Child Poverty Action Group, Barnado’s, Save the Children, teachers and health practitioners.

Sharon Hodgson, as well as Lynn Brown, Roberta Blackman-Woods, Kate Green and Diana Johnson made impassioned speeches, on the difference free school meals make – on health, child poverty and educational achievement. They have seen the difference that free school meals have made to their constituents, and know that giving access to more children will bring more benefits.

If continued, the roll-out of these pilots to children in the lowest income working families would have lifted 50,000 children out of poverty, encouraged parents to get back to work (because currently you lose free school meals if you come off benefits) and saved families on low incomes £600 a year – making a huge difference to families struggling to make ends meet.

If this cancellation of an excellent scheme was being pursued in isolation it would be depressing enough. But it isn’t. This decision comes on the back of scrapping the child trust fund, free swimming for children, freezing of child benefit and cuts to housing benefit. Of course there is the promise of the pupil premium – the one policy Liberal Democrats with social consciences still cling to. But, as a headteacher said to me earlier today, she doesn’t expect it to be much more than a peanut to share round. The reality is we have not been given any commitment to how much the premium will be, and given the withdrawal of so much support for low income families, it would be extremely surprising if the premium outweighed those things that have already been taken away. Indeed, evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that the poorest 10% of households will be 2.6% worse off as a result of the budget – that is £5 a week worse off on incomes of £190 a week. This compares to a sacrifice of a mere 0.7%, or £11 off a £1,600 income for the top ten percent of households – entirely more affordable when you already have so much.

Families who already struggle to get by are going to be pushed further in to poverty by the budget and now by the cuts to free school meals.

The minister responding to the debate today told us that the extension of free school meals was not affordable. The truth is that it is a matter of choice. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has chosen to reduce the deficit further and faster than required, and in a way that is disproportionately impacting on families on modest incomes.

The extension of the free school meal pilot would have made a huge impact in my constituency of Leeds West. Already more than 30% of children in Leeds West are entitled to free school meals – rising to 56% and even 58% at two schools on the poorest estates. This compares with a national entitlement of around 15%.

But, with average incomes of £16,000 a year in Leeds West, the roll-out of the pilots to cover parents in work but on low incomes would have meant that around half of children in Leeds West could have had access to free school meals. The failure to stick with the ambitions of the previous government means more children will continue to live in poverty – revealing the shallowness of the new government’s commitment to abolish child poverty by 2020. Health outcomes will also be more unequal and fewer parents will have the financial incentives they need to get back to work.

The new government say that they will channel money to children from poorer families – yet what they are doing is taking money away from precisely those children who would benefit from extra resource and support. And they say that work is the best route out of poverty – yet their policies reduce the incentives to go back to work.

While I welcome some of the language of the new government, their failure to back it up with concrete policies, and the derisory turn-out of Conservative and Liberal Deomcrat MPs to the debate today – there were three in total including the minister – shows how little commitment there really is to progressive politics in the new coalition.