A millionaire Tory minister has claimed holiday activities are "more important" than getting food for the poorest kids.
Oil tycoon Nadhim Zahawi made the eyebrow-raising claim after Boris Johnson refused to extend £15-a-week free school meal vouchers for poor families in the school holidays.
Instead the Prime Minister is looking at extending a Holiday Activity and Food programme, drawn up be Leon founder Henry Dimbleby, that would pass the responsibility to local councils.
Mr Zahawi told Sky News such clubs would not just focus on meals - and claimed they were not the "most important" thing.
The Business Minister said: "The best way to deal with this is through both local government and through the welfare system and that’s the right thing to do.
"We’ve run a pilot costing £9m this summer feeding 50,000 children. We’ll take learning from that. And it’s not just about the food.
"I spoke to [businesswoman and charity trustee] Carol Shanahan in Stoke-on-Trent.
"She tells me that in wards where families want to keep their children safe during those activities, they also appreciate the food - but more important than the food to them was the activities."
Tory MPs have faced an outpouring of anger for voting down a bid to extend the £15-a-week meal vouchers, provided over summer, to half term and Christmas.
But Mr Zahawi said the issues facing children were "complex" adding: "It’s a team effort, this isn’t about pointing fingers."
Ms Shanahan, who has looked at child hunger in Stoke for four years, said the Tory minister had represented her views. She told the Mirror: “What I learned very, very quickly is I thought it was all about the food and it isn’t.
“The food’s important - it’s not all about the food.
“For a lot of kids, it’s that contact with other people and it’s the socialisation.”
But she added: “Until we’re working with every school and picking up every child that needs the help, it will never be enough - from any government.”
Mr Zahawi's comments were based on a pilot of the holiday clubs scheme. Last week he said poor parents "actually prefer" to pay a "modest sum" for their kids' meals rather than have them for free.
He told the BBC last week: "The research when we did the pilot demonstrates that families didn't just want the meals.
"Although they valued the meals, they didn't like the labelling of them being free.
"They actually prefer to pay a modest amount, £1 or £2."
At the time of his remarks last week, Shadow Early Years Minister Tulip Siddiq said: “The minister’s absurd comments are completely out of touch with families struggling to make ends meet, or concerned about their job.
“The Government should wake up to the worries of families across the country and change its decision to withdraw support for children on free school meals.”
Mr Zahawi is one of Parliament's richest MPs with millions of pounds of property interests.
He earned £241,000 a year in his second job as an oil executive before becoming a minister. The job at Gulf Keystone Petroleum also paid him a £253,200 bonus with no additional hours in 2017.
All the interests were declared to Parliament and there is no suggestion he broke any rules.
It comes after Boris Johnson's own food tsar has said he "isn't doing enough" to help hungry kids and "must act".
Henry Dimbleby's Holiday Activity and Food programme is being considered by ministers as a way of breaking the free school meals deadlock.
But the Leon founder today intervened to say he had no idea what the government is planning - and there must be quicker action.
Mr Dimbleby agreed his holiday club programme would be the best way to solve the problem - but also called for free school meals eligibility to extend to all families on Universal Credit, and a ramping up of Healthy Start vouchers for younger kids.
Mr Dimbleby told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: “This problem is real, it’s serious, it’s immediate and it’s going to get worse as employment gets worse.
“The government isn’t doing enough.
“One in seven families already are reporting not being able to afford enough food.
“Projections of unemployment range from 1.4million at the end of the year to 4.4million… and we know that before this crisis 17million working people only had £100 of savings to fall back on.
“So we’re going to have a situation where a lot of people with high fixed costs, who didn’t imagine for a moment they would find themselves unemployed at the beginning of the year, are going to struggle to feed their family.
“The government really must act."
