Sadiq Khan fights child hunger with free meals
In a game-changing move, the London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced a £130m emergency package to provide free school meals for all primary students in the capital for a year from September 2023.
The announcement by London Mayor Sadiq Khan to provide free school meals to all primary school children in the capital has been hailed as a landmark moment in the fight against child hunger.
The initiative, which will cost £130m and last for a year, will benefit around 270,000 state primary school children in London who do not currently receive free school meals, with an estimated 100,000 living below the poverty line.
The move has been praised by anti-poverty campaigners and nutrition experts who believe it will have a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of children.
“I know from personal experience that free school meals are a lifeline,” said Khan. “My siblings and I depended on them to eat while at school and my parents relied on them to give our family a little extra breathing room financially. The difference they can make to children who are at risk of going hungry – and to families who are struggling to make ends meet – is truly game-changing.”
Khan has revealed that the scheme will be funded through higher-than-expected business rates and council tax collections. The initiative is expected to save families around £440 per child across the year, based on an average cost of a hot meal of £2.30 over 190 school days. The mayor has also stressed that the scheme will extend to all primary school children “so as to reduce the stigma that can be associated with being singled out as low income”.
Said Khan, “I still remember that feeling of embarrassment and shame being a minority in receiving free school meals, getting my token after the other kids and sitting separately. And I know that social skills we develop eating together but also that lack of stigma is so important.”
The announcement comes after a recent investigation by the Evening Standard, which highlighted the plight of 210,000 primary and secondary pupils in London who live in households on universal credit but miss out on free school meals due to the low threshold of £7,400 a year, irrespective of the number of children in the family. The investigation further revealed that some children had been reduced to stealing food from the school canteen and local supermarkets.
Charities, union bosses, and campaigners have welcomed the move. Said Victoria Benson, CEO of the single parent charity Gingerbread, “The cost-of-living crisis has been brutal for single parents and has meant that children have gone without basic essentials because household budgets have been stretched beyond breaking point. We have heard from many single parents that they have had to go without food. It will be a huge relief that their child will now be fed at school, and we welcome the Mayor’s initiative.”
Khan heavily criticised the Government for their “inaction” and made it clear it will be for the Government to step in after the scheme comes to an end. There have also been calls for free school meals to be provided to all primary school children across the rest of the country in the long term. Said Barbara Crowther of the Children’s Food Campaign, “Healthy school food for all must not just be an emergency measure, it should be a core part of a fully inclusive education system.”
According to figures from accounting firm PwC, investment in free school meals has been shown to yield a net economic benefit to society of £2.45bn over 20 years. Good nutrition has also been proven to significantly improve academic performance, with research showing that free school meals are essential for children's health, wellbeing, and academic success.
As the former head of the government's National Food Strategy and co-author of ‘The School Food Plan’ in 2013, Henry Dimbleby has also stressed the importance of free school meals. As he told Radio 4, “There was a recent study released in Sweden, who now have free school meals. They found that while the incomes of richest people who went onto universal free school meals only rose by 2%, the poorest children's lifetime income improved by 6%. If we got a Swedish return, even on economics alone, it would pay for itself.”
The Leon co-founder also believes free school meals could be the beginning of a wider conversation about changing the country's food culture, with potential benefits for both the economy and the health of the nation. “If you look today at the biggest drag on our economy, it’s long-term sickness. And the biggest cause of avoidable disease is food. It's the biggest cause of the cost on the NHS – £74bn every year. So I think that not only should we look at this as an intervention, we could look at it as the beginning of thinking about how we change our food culture.”