How might a workable policy be salvaged from the seemingly inevitable decline of universal infant free school meals (UIFSM) that you report (Budget cuts could serve up an end to free school dinners for infants, 1 September)? Your reporters found that since the scheme’s introduction fewer parents have registered their children for free school meals and, as a result, their schools have lost out on mega sums of vital pupil premium funding. This echoes the findings of last year’s cross-party inquiry on hunger, which I co-chaired with the bishop of Truro.
We proposed in our report, Feeding Britain, that all local authorities should be given the duty and accompanying powers in law to automatically register all eligible children for free school meals. Local authorities’ existing housing benefit records allow them to do this, and a handful of enterprising councils, such as Calderdale, are already pioneering this approach. The result? Hundreds fewer children go without food and hundreds of thousands of pounds of additional funding goes to support their education. I have applied to bring a 10-minute rule bill to the House of Commons later this year which seeks to implement this practice in full.
The threat to UIFSM could also give the education secretary a golden opportunity to make better use of her department’s limited resources. Some 1.5 million poor children are currently disqualified from receiving free school meals because their parents claim tax credits to top up their income from low-paid work. Abolishing this penalty would help, in some considerable way, to cement the government’s commitment to ensuring work is the best route out of poverty.
Together, these two policies could provide the next major breakthrough in tackling child hunger in Britain.
Frank Field MP
Labour, Birkenhead
• There is an easy answer to Dr Tilford regarding excess sugar and Food Standards Agency action (Letters, 11 September). In July 2010 the FSA was stripped of all work related to diet and nutrition by the incoming coalition ministers. Policy was transferred to discussion behind closed doors in the Department of Health, where industry leads. This is in stark contrast to the open discussions that take place at the FSA (witness recent discussion on “pink burgers”).
As a consequence, the Scottish government took the sensible action of creating its own FSA to deal with the whole food chain of safety, diet and nutrition.
Jeff Rooker
Chair, FSA 2009-13
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