Government urged to give impoverished parents cash instead of vouchers after uproar over free school meals

Vouchers ‘both deeply patronising and really inefficient’, campaigners say

A food parcel offered to children who receive free school meals during the UK’s most recent national lockdown (Twitter)

Charities and campaigners have urged the government to offer impoverished families “dignity and respect” by providing them with financial support instead of “appallingly inadequate” food parcels, or vouchers.

The government was forced to accept food provided for children from low income families during lockdown was “completely unacceptable” after pictures began to circulate online of meagre offerings given out through the scheme.

Chartwells, a school meal brand owned by Compass Group UK, which has a turnover of almost two billion pounds a year, said it will “further enhance” the meals it provides after receiving an additional £3.50 per child per week from the government to bolster the parcels.

And The Department for Education has since said its national voucher scheme, which offered stand-ins for cash to be used at supermarkets during the first coronavirus lockdown, would resume “shortly”, while local authorities have been allowed to use central funds to set up their own voucher systems.

However campaign groups have urged the government to give the money spent on meal provisions directly to families - saying it is “not right” that private firms should make money off meagre provisions while vulnerable people live with hunger and poverty.

Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, a campaigner on women’s equality and human rights and director of think tank Women’s Budget Group told The Independent: ”I’m concerned about this idea that somehow poor people can’t be trusted to make good decisions for themselves - that what you need to do is give people vouchers because otherwise they will spend the money on other things. It’s both deeply patronising but also really bad policy - it’s really inefficient."

She added: “It’s this idea that poor people just should be grateful for what they get and aren’t entitled to make the same choices that the rest of us make.

“What do you do if you have a child who was allergies? What do you do if you have a child who has really complex dietary requirements? It’s just ridiculous - parents are the best people to know how to feed their children.”

Acknowledging concerns around money being spent on things other than essentials, an argument against free school meals provisions made by some Tory MPs in 2020, Dr Stephenson said: “Which is the greater risk - that some of the money provided for children’s meals might get spent on something people don’t want them to spend it on, or that private corporations are going to be profiteering out of children’s poverty. We can see quite clearly what the greater risk is, because we’re seeing it happening”.

It comes as anti-poverty groups continue to call on the government to maintain a £20 a week uplift to universal credit introduced by the government last year - with research suggesting 700,000 people could fall below the poverty line if the provision is cut.

Introduced to mitigate the impacts of the virus, the additional money is set to be cut in April - with the Chancellor dodging questions in parliament on Monday when asked if he would allow the provision to come to an end.

Helen Barnard, Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said: “As well as being appallingly inadequate for feeding your family, the food parcels many have received are a bad way of doing the crucial job of keeping children fed through this pandemic.

“Families in poverty need to be able to buy the food their children will eat, and they also need to be treated with dignity and respect. Boosting family incomes is the only good solution to this problem – as both food parcels and vouchers bring practical problems and stigma.

“Last year the Government rightly increased Universal Credit by £20 a week to help ease the pressure on people already trapped in poverty before the pandemic, and those newly struggling due to recent job losses.

“They must now do the right thing and confirm that the £20 uplift will be made permanent and extended to people receiving legacy benefits”.

Victoria Benson CEO of single-parent family charity Gingerbread, added: “It’s not right that the most vulnerable in our society are made to go hungry while commercial companies profit from this scheme.”

“30 per cent of single parents have at least one child who relies on free school meals. Families entitled to this support would benefit far more from receiving the cash equivalent rather than the meagre amount of food supplied by a government contractor.

“This, alongside maintaining the £20 uplift to Universal Credit, should be the bare minimum if the government is serious about protecting children from persistent poverty. The pandemic has pushed many single parents into deeper hardship and we need to see this addressed urgently before more children suffer from the disadvantage that poverty brings.