(Liverpool, Riverside)
(Lab): I do agree; children cannot learn on empty bellies.
It is scandalous that, even at this young age, the futures of the
most of them have already been decided. Their life expectancy,
job opportunities, salary, housing and so much more have already
been predetermined by their background—by situations that are
outside their control.
The National Education Union’s campaign, “No
Child Left Behind”, clearly identified child poverty as the
biggest scandal of our time, with 4 million already living in
poverty and a further three quarters of a million projected to be
plunged into poverty in the coming months. In a
recent NEU survey,
over eight in 10 teachers said that their students demonstrate
fatigue and an inability to concentrate as a result of poverty.
Nearly three quarters said that their students were unable to
complete homework and more than half said that their students had
experienced hunger or ill health. Millions of children are going
hungry every single day. The current restrictive eligibility,
complicated registration procedures and the stigma built into a
system that separates rich and poor mean that children are
already missing out on existing support.
(Stockport) (Lab): I
thank my good friend for giving way and congratulate her on
securing this important debate. I also paid tribute to her for
organising an event with the National Education
Union earlier this week in Westminster Hall to highlight
the issues in our schools. The former Prime Minister preached to
us about the benefits of levelling up, but one easy way to level
up the north and the south, and also address the educational
attainment gap and the lack of productivity, would be for the
Government to make a universal free school meal offer to everyone
so that our children are not segregated between rich and poor at
our institutions.
: I thank my hon. Friend
for the intervention and I definitely agree that universality is
the way forward for free school meals.
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing
the debate. In York in 2021, 25.3% of children were in poverty,
and that number will have gone up substantially in the last 12
months. One thing that really struck me about the event that my
hon. Friend the Member for Stockport () is talking about was the
stigma that children experienced because they were different from
other children. For that reason alone, surely we should have a
universal offer of free school meals for children, so that they
have the same stature as their peers and are not marked out as a
child needing free school meals.
: I thank my hon. Friend
for the intervention and will come on to the point about stigma
later.
More than 200,000 children are eligible for free school meals but
are currently missing out. At my free school meals event with the
National Education Union on Tuesday in
Parliament, which received cross-party support, we heard some
heartbreaking testimonies from youth ambassadors for the End
Child Poverty coalition...
To read the whole debate, CLICK HERE
