THE Government’s decision to extend free school meals to all children whose parents receive Universal Credit has been warmly welcomed by the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, and the Children’s Society.
An announcement from the Department for Education on Wednesday evening confirmed that, from September 2026 — the start of the school year — every pupil whose household is on Universal Credit, regardless of income, will be eligible for free school meals. Currently, households on Universal Credit must earn less than £7400 a year to qualify — a policy in place since 2018.
The change will extend free school meals to half a million more children, the Government said, and “lift 100,000 children across England completely out of poverty”. The department has set aside one billion to fund the change until 2029.
The Prime Minister said: “Feeding more children every day, for free, is one of the biggest interventions we can make to put more money in parents’ pockets, tackle the stain of poverty, and set children up to learn.”
The Government has also announced more than £13 million in funding to be offered to 12 food charities across England “to redistribute thousands of tonnes of fresh produce directly from farms to fight food poverty in communities”.
The move is part of a wider manifesto commitment to address the cost-of-living crisis and comes ahead of the publication of the Child Poverty Taskforce’s ten-year strategy later this year.
The chief executive of the Children’s Society, Mark Russell, described the announcement as a “practical, compassionate step that will make a real difference. It will also cut through the current confusion on eligibility, making it easier for families to get the help they are entitled to.”
He said: “This is a clear, simple and targeted move that will be a lifeline to families, lifting thousands of children out of hunger and helping to ease the pressure on households that are struggling to make ends meet.”
Responding on social media, Bishop Snow said: “I warmly welcome the Government’s action in extending free school meals, which is good news for thousands of children and families. This represents an important step towards reducing poverty and enabling children to grow up happier and healthier.”
The two-child cap on benefits remains, though the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, told the BBC that, while not a “silver bullet”, “it was on the table.”
Earlier this week, Bishop Snow said that the cap was “driving poverty and harming the health, well-being, and life chances” of children. He was responding to analysis of government statistics — published on Monday by the End Child Poverty Coalition, with the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University — which suggests that 4.5 million children in the UK are living in poverty. The data include a breakdown of numbers of impoverished children in each Westminster constituency.
Devolved policies, such as the Scottish Child Payment, have contributed to overall lower levels of poverty across Scotland, compared with the rest of the UK, the report says, although more than one in five children remain in poverty.
In two-thirds of parliamentary constituencies, at least one in four children is in relative poverty after housing costs. Constituencies with the highest levels of child poverty are well above the national average: more than half of all the children in these areas are living in poverty.
This includes: Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (52 per cent), Manchester Rusholme (51 per cent), Liverpool Riverside (50 per cent), Dewsbury and Batley (58 per cent), Bradford West (57 per cent), Bradford East (55 per cent), Leeds South (52 per cent), Birmingham Hodge Hill (55 per cent), Birmingham Perry Barr (52 per cent), Birmingham Yardley (51 per cent), Walsall and Bloxwich (51 per cent), Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley (50 per cent), and Bethnal Green and Stepney (50 per cent).
The constituency with the highest level of child poverty is Birmingham Ladywood, where 62 per cent of children live in poverty.
The researchers state that constituency-level child poverty rates are “directly and strongly correlated with the percentage of children affected by the two-child limit in that area, providing further evidence that the policy is a key driver of child poverty”.
Responding on Tuesday, Bishop Snow, who is the Church of England’s lead bishop on poverty, said that the findings revealed the “sheer scale of child poverty and the particularly high levels in certain parts of the country. Churches are doing all they can to love their neighbour and offer hope and opportunity to people in the communities they live among and serve.
“But we know from the struggles of many people in our congregations, and the demand we see for our projects every day, that there is much work to do to turn the tide on poverty. I pray that the Government’s child-poverty strategy will rise to the challenge we face, addressing the two-child limit and other policies which drive poverty and harm the health, well-being, and life chances of our children.”
