THE Government’s decision to increase free school meals to all children whose parents receive Universal Credit has been warmly welcomed by the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, and the Children’s Society.
An announcement from the Department for Education on Wednesday evening confirmed that, from September 2026 — the beginning of the college yr — every pupil whose household is on Universal Credit, no matter income, might be eligible at no cost school meals. Currently, households on Universal Credit must earn lower than £7400 a yr to qualify — a policy in place since 2018.
The change will extend free school meals to half one million more children, the Government said, and “lift 100,000 children across England completely out of poverty”. The department has put aside one billion to fund the change until 2029.
The Prime Minister said: “Feeding more children every single day, at no cost, is considered one of the most important interventions we will make to place more cash in parents’ pockets, tackle the stain of poverty, and set children as much as learn.”
The Government has also announced greater than £13 million in funding to be offered to 12 food charities across England “to redistribute 1000’s of tonnes of fresh produce directly from farms to fight food poverty in communities”.
The move is an element of a wider manifesto commitment to deal with the cost-of-living crisis and comes ahead of the publication of the Child Poverty Taskforce’s ten-year strategy later this yr.
The chief executive of the Children’s Society, Mark Russell, described the announcement as a “practical, compassionate step that can make an actual difference. It may also cut through the present confusion on eligibility, making it easier for families to get the assistance they’re entitled to.”
He said: “This is a transparent, easy and targeted move that might be a lifeline to families, lifting 1000’s of youngsters out of hunger and helping to ease the pressure on households which are struggling to make ends meet.”
Responding on social media, Bishop Snow said: “I warmly welcome the Government’s motion in extending free school meals, which is nice news for 1000’s of youngsters and families. This represents a very important step towards reducing poverty and enabling children to grow up happier and healthier.”
The two-child cap on advantages stays, though the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, told the BBC that, while not a “silver bullet”, “it was on the table.”
Earlier this week, Bishop Snow said that the cap was “driving poverty and harming the health, well-being, and life probabilities” of youngsters. He was responding to evaluation of presidency statistics — published on Monday by the End Child Poverty Coalition, with the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University — which suggests that 4.5 million children within the UK reside in poverty. The data include a breakdown of numbers of impoverished children in each Westminster constituency.
Devolved policies, similar to the Scottish Child Payment, have contributed to overall lower levels of poverty across Scotland, compared with the remainder of the UK, the report says, although multiple in five children remain in poverty.
In two-thirds of parliamentary constituencies, at the least one in 4 children is in relative poverty after housing costs. Constituencies with the best levels of kid poverty are well above the national average: greater than half of all the youngsters in these areas reside in poverty.
This includes: Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (52 per cent), Manchester Rusholme (51 per cent), Liverpool Riverside (50 per cent), Dewsbury and Batley (58 per cent), Bradford West (57 per cent), Bradford East (55 per cent), Leeds South (52 per cent), Birmingham Hodge Hill (55 per cent), Birmingham Perry Barr (52 per cent), Birmingham Yardley (51 per cent), Walsall and Bloxwich (51 per cent), Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley (50 per cent), and Bethnal Green and Stepney (50 per cent).
The constituency with the best level of kid poverty is Birmingham Ladywood, where 62 per cent of youngsters live in poverty.
The researchers state that constituency-level child poverty rates are “directly and strongly correlated with the share of youngsters affected by the two-child limit in that area, providing further evidence that the policy is a key driver of kid poverty”.
Responding on Tuesday, Bishop Snow, who’s the Church of England’s lead bishop on poverty, said that the findings revealed the “sheer scale of kid poverty and the particularly high levels in certain parts of the country. Churches are doing all they’ll to like their neighbour and offer hope and opportunity to people within the communities they live amongst and serve.
“But we all know from the struggles of many individuals in our congregations, and the demand we see for our projects every single day, that there’s much work to do to show the tide on poverty. I pray that the Government’s child-poverty strategy will rise to the challenge we face, addressing the two-child limit and other policies which drive poverty and harm the health, well-being, and life possibilities of our kids.”
