Sunak ‘no’ to United star’s call for more free school meals
THE Chancellor appears to have rejected Marcus Rashford’s call for the free school meal programme to be extended.
The United striker urged ministers to keep providing the meals to vulnerable children in the school holidays for the next three years.
The 23-year-old, who forced the government into a U-turn after fronting a successful campaign for school meal vouchers over the holidays last year, joined forces with supermarket bosses and food industry leaders in the bid to prolong the scheme.
In a letter to the Sunday Times, they said that the programme last year had been ‘a great success, bringing nutritional and educational benefits to children.’
They added that to go against recommendations in the National Food Strategy to extend this by three years would ‘both deepen and extend the scarring caused by the pandemic on our youngest citizens and ultimately our economy.’
However, Rishi Sunak told The Andrew Marr Show that as other support such as the furlough scheme had come to an end, so should the provision of free school meals in the holidays.
The Chancellor said: “So we put in place some measures to help families during coronavirus, that was the right thing to do, and in common with the other things that have now come to an end, whether it was furlough or other things, that’s right that we’ve transitioned to a more normal way of doing things.
“But we have replaced... but we have actually already acted, is what I’d say to Marcus and everyone else. We’ve put in place something called the holiday activities programme, which provides not just meals but also activities for children during holiday periods for those families that need extra help.
“That is a new programme, it was announced earlier this year, it’s being rolled out across the country, and I think that can make an enormous difference to people.”
The joint letter in the Sunday Times said: “Better jobs are the route out of poverty, and the virtue of these children’s food schemes is that when working families shore up their income they can buy school and holiday meals themselves.
“Until this happens, surely equality of opportunity and levelling-up begin with guaranteeing that every child in Britain can eat well - at least once a day.”
It added that extending the free school meal scheme and the Healthy Start programme, which provides free vouchers to buy milk, fruit and vegetables, would cost £1.1 billion a year.
This is the equivalent to 1 per cent of the education budget and 4 per cent of annual spending on the immediate consequences of obesity.
Rashford, who grew up in Withington before moving to Wythenshawe, also previously called for the expansion of free school meal eligibility to all children aged 7-18 in all households earning £20,000 or less after benefits.
The striker said that all children that are undocumented or living in immigrant households with ‘no recourse to public funds’ should be eligible too.