With high levels of food insecurity among UK children, Cllr Ryan Hack introduces an important local initiative that should be widely emulated elsewhere

Given the Tory Government’s inaction, the Brent Right to Food campaign aims to address the connected issues of fuel poverty, cramped housing, low wages, precarious working conditions, overpriced transport and unaffordable care through the everyday reality of food inequalities, now compounded by the cost-of-living crisis. A third of households in Brent live below the current poverty line, resulting in a lack of access to fresh, healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food.

The Mayor of London’s decision to provide a one-off £130m to ensure all primary schoolchildren in the capital can receive free school meals for the 2023/2024 academic year will tackle food insecurity and social stigma surrounding food aid in schools across the capital. Fundamentally, it will help develop the infrastructure that is needed for a long-term plan to provide Free Universal School Meals on a permanent basis. Hungry children cannot learn and poor nutrition is leading to cohorts of young people being unable to function properly in the classroom. A good education is also about children having access to healthy food in a school kitchen.

As a former student at Preston Park Primary School and Claremont High School who received free schools, I know personally how the issue of food insecurity for children has been alive in our capital for decades. Before electronic fingerprinting became the contemporary method to de-marginalise us from the lunch queue, I vividly remember having to wait for my brown paper bag with an unhealthy sandwich and apple before school trips or having to wait separately for my lunch tickets. This created social stigma and social marginalisation, whereas a system of Free Universal School Meals for all children would eradicate the stigmatisation surrounding food aid in our education system.

I raise this issue because so many children in the capital of London have a deep story of struggle and perseverance over hardship, particularly the 10,000 children in my Borough who get free school meals today. This statistic is largely under-estimated as thousands more children do not register for Free School Meals because of the stigma surrounding food aid.

Parents may feel embarrassed to register their children because of a Tory agenda that has established stigma to food aid by calling it a system of ‘dependence’ since the days of Thatcherism. Or, they do not meet the draconian Tory-implemented policy of a family having to earn less than £7,400 to be eligible for Free School Meals.

This has created a society where the children of parents who are in precarious pay, yet taking on extra hours at work, are ineligible for Free School Meals and their families are now dependent on food banks. Currently, it is evident that children from working families in poverty are not entitled to free school meals.

Reducing the health inequalities surrounding the lack of access to healthy, fresh and culturally appropriate food in diverse communities across London will also provide a strong argument for shaping a long-term plan for Free School Meals. The extension of Free School Meals by Labour-run City Hall will help around 270,000 primary school children and save families around £440 per child across the year.

The clinical article written by Louise McEvoy in June 2023 explicitly reported how food hunger leads to a deterioration in children’s health. Evidence from a survey she cited showed how 53% of children noted a slowness in being able to put on weight.

Back in June 2021, I illustrated how 1.7 million children in the United Kingdom are experiencing food insecurity, which means that many families are forced to make difficult day-to-day decisions such as giving up healthy food to afford school uniforms for their children. In England, Free School Meals stop after Year 2. That means children as young as 7 are going hungry at school.

Join us in a public discussion on how to shape a Food Strategy for Brent borough. Panel discussion will include Gwen Grahl (Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Schools), Rajesh Makwana (Director, Sufra NW London), Katie Pascoe (Let’s Grow Brent) and Representatives from Granville Community Kitchen and Brent National Union. The public discussion will be on Saturday 8^th July between 1 and 4pm at the Newman Catholic College on Harlesden Road (NW10 3RN) in the Main Hall.

Our grassroots campaign, tailored to the needs of Brent, is driven by a strong desire to ensure that every child has access to Free Universal  School Meals. The declaration of Brent as a Right To Food Borough brings with it a commitment to co-design a Brent food justice strategy with relevant stakeholders, to prioritise a transition from food banks to an ethical and sustainable and ethical food system in Brent.

Food hunger will always be a political choice. In 2020, Scotland promised Universal Free School meals for every child in primary school. In 2021 Wales did the same. Everyone deserves access to healthy and nutritious food in a dignified way. This is just the start of a process that aims for a Brent beyond food banks. Food banks are not, and never will be, part of the welfare state: they are a symbol that the welfare state under the Tories is failing.

The road to that goal is long , and the years ahead will prove especially challenging as the Tory cost-of-living crisis bites deeper. But in our view the slow build-up of focused campaigning that links workplace, community and government guarantees its longevity and ensures the needs of Brent’s working people remain embedded in it. Together, let us campaign to ensure that every child in Brent and across the capital has access to Free Universal School Meals to build a fairer society, where every child is able to learn and thrive with dignity.

Cllr Ryan Hack is Food Justice Champion for Brent Council and Labour Councillor for Brondesbury Park ward in the London Borough of Brent.

Image: https://www.rawpixel.com/image/8708570/photo-image-public-domain-person-kids. Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication