Tributes to Rashford

MPS have heard it was ‘Marcus Rashford one – Prime Minister Johnson nil’ as east Runcorn MP Mike Amesbury paid tribute to the footballer’s efforts to secure food vouchers for disadvantaged children.

The Manchester United player has won plaudits for forcing a U-turn by the Prime Minister on the issue of support for some of the country’s most vulnerable children, with up to 1.3m facing going hungry over the summer.

Having initially rejected the pleas of Rashford and antipoverty campaigners, the Prime Minister backtracked and all pupils qualifying for free school meals in England will now be given supermarket food vouchers to cover the six-week summer holiday, in a £120m government U-turn.

Speaking in the Commons, Mike Amesbury, Labour MP for Weaver Vale and also a Manchester Utd fan, said: “From one Wythenshawe-born lad to another, thank you Marcus Rashford.

“Marcus stated passionately that this was about ‘humanity’, not politics – a humanity shaped by his direct experience of growing up in Wythenshawe, Manchester in child poverty.

“He is a change maker, striking his political goal of feeding 1.3m children this summer – Marcus Rashford one, Prime

Minister Johnson nil.”

Hailing the U-turn a ‘victory for children and a victory for common sense’, he added: “Before the Prime Minister’s U-turn, minister after minister told us ‘We don’t normally fund free school meals outside term time’. Well, we do not normally furlough 9m workers.

“We do not normally ask people to isolate, distance and bubble.

“We do not normally close down schools in the middle of the school year.

“Nothing has been normal since March.

“This pandemic has required an extraordinary response from the party of small government and an extraordinary response from society.”