KEIR Starmer’s plans to rule out free school meals for all children in England is set to trigger an internal party battle, with one Labour MP saying there is a “moral and economic” argument to introduce the policy.
According to reports, Starmer’s party does not want to make the commitment – which would cost around £1 billion a year in primary schools in England – in its manifesto for the General Election.
Currently in schools south of the Border children in reception, year one and year two can apply for free meals, while older pupils are eligible if a parent is on certain benefits.
In Scotland, free meals are available to all pupils between primary one to five and the Scottish Government has committed to extending the policy up to primary seven.
Scottish Labour have been critical of delays to the rollout north of the Border, with MSP Monica Lennon saying: “If Humza Yousaf can’t prioritise rolling out universal free school meals during a cost-of-living crisis, why should people trust him and his SNP-Scottish Green government on anything else?”
Labour are due to debate making free meals national policy at their national policy forum next month after a proposal by the Communications Workers Union, while senior party figures in some areas have already introduced local programmes.
But a Labour spokesman told The Times: “This is not Labour policy and we have no plans to implement it.
“Labour recognises the cost of living crisis that families are facing across the country. That’s why our policy of universal free breakfast clubs for primary school pupils will make a big difference to families facing financial pressure while giving children the best start to their day.”
However speaking on BBC Politics Live, Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey, who ran against Starmer in the party’s leadership race, said there was a “moral and economic argument” for introducing free school meals.
She said: “We know that four million children are experiencing food insecurity and that means when they are at school they are unable to learn, they are unable to achieve or reach their full potential as how can you reach your full potential if you are hungry all the time.
“But the knock-on effect of that is when we have children who don’t achieve their aspirations, that knocks onto our economy detrimentally because we don’t fill the skills gap we currently face and we don’t grow our economy overall.
“So I think there was an interesting bit of economic analysis done by Price Waterhouse Cooper that showed that for every £1 invested in free school meals, we’d actually see a wider economic benefit of £1.71 and that runs into the billions.”
Asked whether that argument would be falling on “deaf ears”, Long-Bailey added: “We have not set out our manifesto yet and I completely understand we are going to be coming into government in a really difficult economic period, but ultimately if our goal is to grow the economy we have to ensure that children have the means to be able to reach their potential and to do that they have to have full bellies.”
She added the party leadership should listen to its membership and MPs and that “hopefully as a group collectively we can formulate the best policies for the country going forward”.
SNP MP Philippa Whitford, also speaking on Politics Live, pointed out Scotland already has universal school meals up to primary five.
“We will be rolling that out to P7 in the near future. We aspire to bringing that to secondary schools,” she added.
Quizzed on whether the policy has been clarified yet, she added: “A lot of it is about expanding school kitchens and after Covid there were real issues about construction materials, we had challenges when we doubled our free nursery places, so some of it is around that. But we are trying to do it as quickly as we can.
“But we need to realise that exactly as Rebecca is saying, if you don’t invest in children when they are little and give them the best life opportunities, you will spend an absolute fortune picking up the pieces later, whether that’s in poorer educational outcomes, poor job outcomes or in the justice system.”
Scottish Labour have been approached for comment.
