166,512 Londoners received assistance from a Trussell Trust
foodbank – just under 60,000 of recipients were children.
Today, the London Assembly called on the Mayor and the Chair of
the London Assembly to jointly write to Secretary of State for
Education to outline the case for extending the provision of
universal free school meals.
AM, who proposed the motion
said:
“Food insecurity blights the lives of hundreds of thousands of
children in our capital, with many forced to go into school
hungry and under-nourished. In one of the richest cities in the
world, this is simply unacceptable.
“Foodbanks and other charities do an incredible job of providing
emergency food parcels to those affected by food poverty, but the
simple truth is they shouldn’t exist in the first place.
“Many of the solutions to tackling food insecurity lie in the
hands of national Government. However, City Hall should also play
its role and build the case for extending the provision for
universal free school meals.”
The full text of the motion is:
This Assembly welcomes the steps the Mayor has taken to tackle
food insecurity. It notes the Mayor has developed a measure of
food insecurity which shows that 400,000 children in London have
low or very low food security.1 The Assembly further notes that
166,512 Londoners received assistance from a Trussell Trust
foodbank –
just under 60,000 of recipients were children. This cannot be
acceptable in one of the richest cities in the world. We are
concerned that the chief operating officer of Food and Drink
Federation has said that the Government’s planned future
relationship with the European Union means that food prices are
likely to rise at the end of the year.
The Assembly praises the work of a number of voluntary
organisations that are working to tackle food insecurity such as
the Trussell Trust, Sustain, End Hunger UK and local food banks
such as the Pecan foodbank in Southwark.
This Assembly agrees with the Mayor that London should be a
zero-hunger city. We call on the Mayor to commit to undertake
research which examines the benefits universal free school meal
provision could have on educational attainment and health
outcomes in London. This should be done with a view to the Mayor
and Chair of the London Assembly jointly writing to the Secretary
of State for Education to outline the case for extending the
provision of universal free school meals.
Notes to editors:
Watch the full webcast
The motion was agreed by 12 votes for and 4 against.
