Southwark’s education chief has marched to Downing Street, urging the Prime Minister to give free school meals to every primary school child in the country.
The council has offered free school meals to all its primary school pupils since 2013. In a hand-delivered letter to Rishi Sunak, Cllr Jasmine Ali demanded the national government follows suit.
This comes just weeks after Southwark’s Labour council decided not to extend its own free school meals scheme to secondary school pupils, saying it would be too expensive.
Secondary school pupils will not get universal free school meals
Cllr Ali said: ‘Young people are contending with hunger and cold every day, with holiday hunger likely to increase this winter without additional government support.
“The prime minister must now take decisive action to extend, like we have done in Southwark, free school meals to all primary school children, to ensure they are provided with a hot, nutritious lunchtime meal.
“He must also properly fund the Holiday Activities and Food programme and open it to all, so that no young person is left hungry during the holidays.”
She was joined on Downing Street’s steps by Kim Johnson, MP for Liverpool Riverside and Education Select Committee member, and some of her young constituents.
Cllr Ali has also written to the Secretary of State for Education urging her to take immediate action on the expansion of free school meals to avert a “calamitous hunger crisis”.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, universal free primary school meals would cost £950 million – an estimate made before the current wave of inflation.
But according to a study by not-for-profit health foundation Urban Health, every £1 investment in free school meals would return £1.38 over the next twenty years.
The data, analysed by PwC, said that the money would be made through subsequent improvements across social, health and educational areas.
But Southwark Council is aware of the high costs associated with such a scheme.
When the Lib Dems suggested the council extend its own scheme to include secondary school pupils, Champion Hill councillor Sarah King said they had “failed to recognise” the “very serious” financial challenges facing Southwark.