My Lords, I declare my interests as president of both the Children First Alliance and Young Citizens. This is a valuable opportunity to put the issue of nutrition once again on the agenda and to press for more serious thinking, not to mention better implementation and better impact monitoring. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for this.
We continue as a nation to spend billions annually on overseas aid, and of this we should be extremely proud; we are an example to the world, although there is evidence that spending and monitoring need a great
deal more attention. However, this evening, I want to bring up a domestic aspect of nutrition and children, and in so doing pose the question that, however great our goals as a donor nation are in our overseas development and humanitarian efforts, we might also pay attention to homegrown problems.
Today, I will speak about holiday hunger and the fact that many of our school-age children in socially and economically deprived areas go hungry during the long school vacations due to the lack of a daily meal, which in turn is due to poverty, ignorance and even sometimes religious reasons. Preliminary research for a pilot holiday activity and well-being programme, which the CFA intends to set up in three deprived areas of Tower Hamlets, north Bristol and Blackpool, indicates that 57% of local authorities do not provide a holiday meals scheme.
The statistics on hunger in our children are alarming. In 2019, 15.4% of all pupils in England and Wales were eligible for and claiming free school meals. It is reliably estimated that up to 3 million children are at risk of hunger during the school holidays—1 million of them as a result of extreme poverty, and a further 2 million excluded from free school meals due to one parent being in work. More than 4 million children in England and Wales live in relative poverty, with two-thirds of these children having one working parent.
These figures have disastrous consequences for the child. The effects of such poverty are multiple, severe and long-lasting, and include poor physical health, mental health issues, underachievement at school, and added risks of stigma and bullying. Again, these factors predispose children to antisocial behaviour. Furthermore, children on free school meals are more likely to be placed in lower sets, have access to less qualified teachers and have lower expectations from their schools.
The exponential rise in the use of food banks is evidence of the increasing pressure families now face. In the last three years, there have been several reports indicating that parents in deprived areas report eating less or skipping meals in order to provide more for their children and that demand from food banks almost tripled at Christmas, when access to free school meals is cut off. Almost three-quarters of teacher respondents to an NUT survey said that holiday hunger was having a marked negative impact on children’s education.
Recent research by Citizens Advice demonstrates that investment in children at an early stage to eliminate severe poverty and holiday hunger is massively cost-effective. For example, for every £1 invested in Citizens Advice, the charity was able to generate £2.05 in savings to government and public services. This is achieved by helping prevent issues escalating and thus reducing pressure on public services such as health, housing or out-of-work benefits. Additionally, debt advice, an increasingly used service, resulted in social benefits savings of around £300 million to £570 million annually across the UK.
There is emerging evidence from bodies such as Sports England that activity, well-being and holiday meals schemes increase social cohesion and decrease both violence and gangs, as well as obesity. There are many admirable schemes afoot in specific areas, run by dedicated NGOs and often sponsored by major
food companies. There are, too, some local authorities which, with extremely stretched budgets, continue to run breakfast and lunch clubs. Many teachers, acutely aware of hunger in their pupils, are sufficiently concerned to fund breakfast clubs themselves. But in this day and age, can we really accept that hunger in our children remains largely the responsibility of non-governmental bodies and a few local authorities and individuals? Is this not an issue that central government should be addressing nationwide?
The problem is clear and the remedy simple. All it requires is a bit of money. Again, preliminary figures suggest that a five days a week for five weeks’ activity and lunch programme, including welfare advice, costs between £10,000 and £25,000 per school, depending on free food provided by organisations such as FareShare or via local food companies and the amount of volunteer help.
If we are to nurture happy, healthy, empowered and resilient children, we need the political will to enable schools through local authorities to run these programmes on a regular and statutory basis. There are some temporary pilot schemes funded by government, but these are somewhat haphazardly located and a competition to win funds for a holiday meal scheme was won by a single school. What, one asks, about those that did not win? We need the political commitment to set up a countrywide system, bearing in mind devolved responsibilities. The fund of knowledge as how best to do this cost-effectively and how to engage the wider, especially corporate sectors is now abundant. It just needs doing.
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