Marcus Rasford - Stand up for 200,000 Children

Dear Constituent,

Thank you for contacting me about this matter.  On Tuesday, MPs debated free school meals during the summer holidays.

I am delighted that the Government has said it will provide free school meal vouchers over the summer holidays. It will prevent the poorest children going hungry this year, but attention must now be turned to
the root causes of child poverty which mean free school meals are needed in the first place.

The shameful reality is that for so many people in Britain today, no matter how hard they try, they cannot make ends meet. Opportunities are too few, wages are too low and bills are too high. Before the pandemic, more than 4 million children in the UK were living in poverty and that is expected to rise to 5.2 million by 2022. Child poverty is a pandemic of its own in this country and one that has got far worse, unfortunately, over the
last few years.

Shamefully, children go hungry every year, but this summer will be especially difficult for many families, as job losses and reduced incomes hit household budgets. Research from the Food Foundation shows that more than 200,000 children have had to skip meals because their family could not access the food they need during lockdown.

I believe the Government must develop a national plan for education, where local authorities are funded to make a summer holiday local offer to children and young people; where schools are provided with additional
resources, such as an enhanced pupil premium to help disadvantaged children; and where public buildings such as libraries and sports centres are used to expand the space available to schools to ensure safe social distancing.

Furthermore, I would like to see the creation of a taskforce to bring together all those in the education sector to come up with the safety principles that need to be put in place in schools to ensure their
safe reopening, and to produce a national plan for education so that pupils receive the emotional and academic support that they deserve.

I would also like the Government to have discussions with Ofqual about changes to account for the work that has been lost during this period in order to provide a fair assessment of young people’s attainment. We
also need provisions in the event that there is a second spike resulting in pupils being sent back home and being unable to take exams in the usual way.

I will continue to encourage the Government to bring forward a raft of economic and social policies with one aim—to eradicate child poverty.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Dowd MP