A mum who is relying on food parcels to keep her daughter fed during lockdown has described the ‘sad and depressing’ moment she first saw its contents.
The ‘Roadside Mum’, whose real name is Sarah, sparked a national outcry towards the government after posting a picture of the free school meals bag on Twitter on Monday (January 11).
It resulted in Marcus Rashford, who successfully campaigned for the Government to extend its free school meals scheme at the end of last year, describing it as "unacceptable".
Sarah, who does not want to be identified to protect her two children, is disabled and relies on free school meals.
On BBC Breakfast this morning, she explained: "As I unpacked that food parcel in my living room and looked at the contents, it felt very sad and very depressing, and one of my children came in and saw me laying this out on the floor and asked why.
"I said I was going to picture it because I didn't think it looked like a lot and I could see the child's realisation that this is what I've been given to eat for a week and just the sense of sadness.
"Where has the rest of the food gone? You know, this is meant to be a week's food. Why is it so mean?"
The contents of the bag included bread, cheese, two carrots and a tin of baked beans, with the mum estimating the cost of the parcel was around £5.22, rather than the £30 vouchers she is entitled to.
Many more people posted their lunch bags on social media following the tweet, with similar stories of a limited amount of food being provided in comparison to the value of the £30 vouchers.
In another tweet Rashford added: "Children deserve better than this."
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has since told a committee of MPs he was “absolutely disgusted” after seeing a picture of a meagre food parcel.
He warned companies that supply poor free school meal parcels will be named and shamed, and has told MPs that the national voucher scheme for free school meals will relaunch next week.
Speaking to the Commons Education Select Committee on Wednesday, he said: “As a dad myself, I thought: ‘How could a family in receipt of that really be expected to deliver five nutritious meals as is required?’ It’s just not acceptable.”
Mr Williamson said it had been made clear to Chartwells, the company that provided the pictured parcel, as well as the entire education food sector, that such behaviour “will not be tolerated”.
Roadside Mum Sarah has since welcomed the response from education food service provider Chartwells, telling the BBC: "It's a very positive step that they're going to look at where gaps have occurred, why they have occurred and seek to resolve them."
In Prime Minister’s Questions today, Labour Leader Keir Starmer blasted the government’s handling of the food parcels provided to struggling families.
“The Prime Minister says that the parcels are disgraceful but it shouldn’t have taken social media to shame the Prime Minister into action,” he said.
Sir Keir added: “I’ve checked the Government guidance on free school meals, published by the Department for Education.
“I’ve got it here, it sets out example parcels for one child for five days, the Department for Education, Prime Minister, you want to be held to account – one loaf of bread, two baked potatoes, block of cheese, baked beans, three individual yoghurts, sound familiar? That’s the image you just called disgraceful.”
A spokesperson for Chartwells said: “We have had time to investigate the picture circulated on Twitter. For clarity this shows five days of free school lunches (not 10 days) and the charge for food, packing and distribution was actually £10.50 and not £30 as suggested.
“However, in our efforts to provide thousands of food parcels a week at extremely short notice we are very sorry the quantity has fallen short in this instance.”
