At Rice Lane City Farm in Liverpool, we have noticed the problem of children – and parents – not getting enough to eat (Teachers reveal scale of pupils’ hunger as 100,000 frozen out of free school meals, 10 November). During school holidays this is worse. So for several years a school holiday “fun and food” programme has run every day, with volunteers cooking lunches. In two years the average number of children coming has increased from 20 to 50 a day.
During the October half term, parents were also given lunch and a food parcel for an evening meal and breakfast the next day. There is as well a free food table where donations are available. Keeping this going depends on funds to buy food and volunteers to prepare meals and provide constructive activities for children. Volunteer trustees are barely able to cope.
Lewis Lesley
Chair of trustees, Rice Lane City Farm
• Rishi Sunak has promised fairness and compassion. It is neither fair nor compassionate for oil companies to rake in huge unearned profits while children go hungry. It would be good to read letters from CEOs and shareholders justifying why they deserve huge dividends, especially at Christmas, while children go hungry. Maybe we should march in the mother of all marches against child hunger in this, one of the richest countries. Maybe we need Bob Geldof to inspire pop singers. Something must be done.
Liz Byrne
Letchworth, Hertfordshire
• Where is the anger at the justification of subsidised food in parliament for MPs while the government resists extending free school meals for those children deprived of food at such an essential time for growth and learning? It is beyond all logic.
Jan Mortimer
Lewes, East Sussex
• You really could not find a better example of the inequality in our society than two items published last Thursday. In the first (Hungry children miss out on free meals – and struggling schools cannot help, 10 November), a headteacher at a West Midlands secondary school refers to parents who can’t afford the £2.60 charged for lunches each day. In the second (Prices at UK’s top restaurants ‘have doubled since Brexit’, 10 November), you report that the Ynyshir restaurant in Eglwys Fach, Wales, can get £410 per head for a meal there. The cost of one person’s meal at Ynyshir would pay for more than 150 lunches in the school.
John Thow
Overton, Hampshire
• It was excellent to read that free school lunches are being provided at Urswick school in Hackney, London (‘The benefit is massive’: the school offering free meals to all students, 10 November). However, I was rather appalled to read that the children were being given “bottled water to drink” (presumably in plastic bottles). Surely there is nothing wrong in drinking tap water from reusable glasses or reusable bottles?
Jane Harding
Winchester
• While reading your report (‘We’re in a hellhole’: Newcastle food bank struggles with drop in donations, 10 November), I couldn’t escape from the fact that I now live in a country where those with very little are donating to those with even less, just so that those who already have plenty can get even more.
Pete Lavender
Woodthorpe, Nottinghamshire
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