Dominic Raab said the story of a mother skipping meals to feed her son “breaks your heart” – but rejected calls to expand free school meals ahead of the summer holidays.
The deputy prime minister was grilled about the plight of Emma, forced to rejected her son’s request that she eat breakfast because he had not “seen you eat in days”.
“I read that story – it just breaks your heart and melts your heart,” Mr Raab told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “And that’s why dealing with the cost of living challenge is so important.”
Asked again about families struggling to get enough to eat, the deputy PM said: “Look, I’ve got kids – I can’t imagine my children being in a position to say that to their mum.”
But the senior cabinet minister ruled out an expansion of the free school meals, following calls from teaching unions and charities to widen it out to all families on Universal Credit.
“I think the question fairly is whether applying free school meals to everyone on UC [Universal Credit] actually will target the most vulnerable in our society,” said Mr Raab.
Mr Raab said the government’s approach to helping those in hardship had been to “strengthen and increase the money” put in the Household Support Fund – which allow councils to give out crisis payments or provide more to local charities.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has committed an extra £500m to the fund, and Mr Raab also pointed to the £200m put into the holiday activities and food programme.
A group of 11 education groups said existing support was not enough, calling on ministers to make an “urgent” expansion so all children from families who receive universal credit are eligible.
Around 1.7 million children are currently eligible to receive free school meals, but the Food Foundation has estimated that 2.6 million children live in households that missed meals or struggled to access food.
Labour’s shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy told The Independent: “It was so striking for me during the last few school holidays, when the government was refusing to keep free school meals going, how councils and businesses across the country stepped up and did it anyway.”
She added: “That’s communities coming together to level themselves up. Imagine what they could do with a government that backed them.”
Both Justine Greening, the former Tory education secretary, and Alan Johnson, ex-Labour education secretary, both backed the idea of expanding free school meals before the summer holiday.
Emma, a mum struggling to pay bills despite working three jobs, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she had told son to put one bowl away after he had prepared two bowls of breakfast cereal.
“They’re not both for me, mum,” he said. “One of them’s for you because I haven’t seen you eat in days. At least I’ll know you’ve eaten today.”
