Who will be making sure our poorest children eat this half term?

One of the pleasures of being a Member of Parliament is seeing the great work of local schools and hearing about the hopes and ambitions of young people in my constituency. In recent weeks I’ve met a team of young teenagers preparing to launch a camera into space, spoken to a student council about making pupils’ voices heard, and even delivered an impromptu lesson to a class of inquisitive Year 6 students.

What makes the work of my local schools even more extraordinary are the day to day challenges that they face. The majority of children in my constituency are eligible for free school meals. In some schools the number of children who depend that provision in term time is as high as 70%.

Many of those children will be facing a half-term of hardship this week as their one guaranteed hot meal is taken from them. Over 100 years after free school meals became a recognised duty of care, families who we know are struggling in term time are still receiving little or no support during the school holidays.

For many families, school holidays are not a period of relaxation but one of even greater pressure. The extra costs of feeding kids during the day, and the difficulty for working families in securing affordable childcare, see many parents falling into debt or borrowing money just to get by.

And for the children themselves, malnutrition, boredom and anxiety can have a chronic impact on their development and send them back to school well behind their classmates and struggling to fulfil their potential.

I have been campaigning since the last election for the Government to tackle Holiday Hunger and ensure that our children are being fed during the school holidays. I always knew that getting a Tory government to care about the plight of the most vulnerable would be a tough sell. But the truly shocking thing is that they refuse to even recognise the scale of the problem.

I recently asked the Department of Education how much of the Pupil Premium Summer School funding was used for food provision during the holidays. They couldn’t give me an answer because they don’t bother to record it.

Last year I asked the Education Minister to meet with me to discuss the issue. He refused.

This disregard for the food poverty of our children serves to highlight the Government’s own poverty of generosity, and its lack of will to tackle a serious problem.

We cannot allow the Tories to sweep this under the carpet, we need a national plan to tackle holiday hunger to ensure that every child in this country has the opportunity to fulfil their potential.

We don’t have the votes to force the Governments hand on this, but we can lead by example. That’s why I am urging CLPs and affiliated organisations across the country to support the Holiday Hunger campaign and ensure that the next Labour Party manifesto includes a commitment to provide national food provision for children during the school holidays.

If you are interested in helping with the campaign through your CLP or trade union please contact me and sign up here.

The last Labour government lifted millions of children out of poverty, but 10 years of Tory rule is taking us backwards. As the party of social justice, Labour can and must put forward and new vision to give all of our children the best possible start.