This council recognises:
This council believes:
This council calls on Welsh Government to:
This council calls on UK Government to:
Councillor R L Penhale-Thomas
Co-signed by Cllr Alex Williams and Councillor Malcolm James
Minutes:
The following Notice of Motion was put forward by the above Member:-
“This council recognises:
This council believes:
This council calls on Welsh Government to:
This council calls on UK Government to:
The Notice of Motion was supported by way of co-signatories by Councillors Alex Williams and Malcolm James.
The proposer of the Motion and one of the Members that supported this, gave at the meeting, the following further submissions in the support of this.
Proposer: In Wales more children in poverty miss out on free school meals compared to England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
That figure stands at 55,000 children – that’s 42 per cent of school aged children who are in poverty in Wales and missing out on a school lunch.
The income threshold in Wales for free school meals is £7,400. I can’t fathom that any elected member of this authority might believe £7,400 is a significant sum of money when considered as an annual household income.
In Northern Ireland that threshold is almost double at £14,000.
Moreover, the current criteria is prohibitive to families who literally have nothing – people with no recourse to public funds such as those seeking asylum in the UK who are effectively destitute on arrival while their immigration status is determined.
Some children are eating lunch at school that consists solely of jam sandwiches. In the fifth richest country in the world, that cannot be right or justifiable.
The over-complicated, tangled web that is the existing welfare and benefits system can mean that children in receipt of the lowest level of child support are just over the threshold and miss out on free school meals. It forces families to food banks and while we can appreciate the relief that foodbank support can bring, their very existence is an indictment on our modern society.
Utility bills are rising.
National Insurance. Rising.
Cost of living. Rising.
And the Universal Credit uplift is disappearing making matters all the worse.
Again, this winter, many families will be forced to make the decision between heating or eating. All against the backdrop of the most uncertain financial and economic outlook in modern times.
The benefits are all too clear to see. Not just the nutritional value of a proper lunch, but the development of social skills and the higher levels of concentration in afternoon sessions. Long term, we’re talking impacts on life chances, with proven links later in life to depression, suicidal episodes and developing chronic illnesses.
We only have to look to our neighbours in parts of Scandinavia, where free school meals are a universal provision.
And the cost? The Wales Anti-Poverty coalition puts the estimate of expanding the programme at £10.5m per year, while universal provision would be nearer £140 million. Still less than 1% of the Welsh Government’s total revenue budget.
Members may recall that more than £550m was found mid-way through the financial year just a few weeks back for the NHS and social services; and more recently, officials just ‘wrote off’ £75m relating to the last stages of the M4 Relief Road project. That’s a project that won’t see one inch of tarmac laid but had £135m spent on it.
Too often, however, it’s a case of knowing the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Invest now, save later and reap the rewards of a healthier and more prosperous population.
Seconder: I’m sure that all Members would agree with the motion’s laudable aims both in recognising the achievements which the Welsh Government has made to date including free breakfast clubs and during the pandemic but also in calling on them to go further in introducing universal free school meals which would ensure that all children living below the poverty line don’t go hungry and in turn improve educational attainment.
Of course, there are many factors which influence educational attainment but one is hunger and it is one in which Government at all levels can address. The last Welsh Labour manifesto rightly said that “it is unacceptable in a modern society that children still go hungry”.
It is blatantly clear to me that if the eligibility criteria were extended to include all children from families in receipt of universal credit or equivalent and families with no recourse to public funds, this situation would be resolved.
Furthermore, I agree that a cost-benefit analysis should be conducted into the universal provision of free school meals. By doing this, the perception that there is a stigma to receiving free school meals could also be minimised.
We as a Council could start by doing a cost-benefit analysis of what it would cost us as a local authority to provide free school meals to all school-aged children in BCBC and then lobby the Welsh Government for further funding to provide this from central funding.
And also, I would suggest that more could be done by our local authority in identifying the families and show them that there is a way to get confidential support if they are reticent to apply for free school meals because of the perceived stigma attached to it. Perhaps it is time for a new campaign to get as many eligible people as possible to take up free school meals.
Finally, as Members will know, the Manchester United footballer, Marcus Rashford, has been a high profile advocate for the provision of free school meals and has urged the UK Government to keep the £20 Universal Credit uplift to prevent thousands of children from going hungry. Even some MPs on the Tory benches are pressing Boris Johnson to retain the Universal Credit uplift introduced during the pandemic, so I hope that Welsh Conservative Councillors in this local authority can also support this motion today.
It is time that we as community leaders in Bridgend took a more active stance to lobby senior politicians in both Cardiff Bay and Westminster to bring about national policy change and end the scandal of child food poverty so I urge all Members to support Councillor Penhale-Thomas’ motion.
The Cabinet Member – Education and Regeneration emphasised the value of school meals that dated back by statute to 1921. In 2001 he confirmed that the Labour Government put basic nutritional requirements back into school meals. During the pandemic BCBC valued school meals and during austerity free school meals were very important for those who were entitled to receive them. He added that currently Welsh Parliament and Welsh Government were reviewing the criteria for free school meals and later this evening, the UK Government would be voting on whether or not to make the £20 uplift to Universal Credit permanent. So with those things in mind, he felt the Notice of Motion was very important and one which he supported whole heartedly.
Further Members also gave their support to the Notice of Motion also.
Members agree to have a recorded vote on the Notice of Motion, the result of which was as follows:-
For:
Councillors A Aspey, T Beedle, JP Blundell, M Clarke, N Clarke, R Collins, HJ David, P Davies, DK Edwards, J Gebbie, CA Green, G Howells, D Lewis, JE Lewis, JR McCarthy, D Patel, B Sedgebeer, CE Smith, JC Spanswick, R Thomas, T Thomas, E Venables, KJ Watts, A Williams, AJ Williams, HM Williams, J Williams, RE Young = 28 Votes
Against:
Councillors T Giffard, A Pucella, K Rowlands, S Vidal = 4 Votes
Abstentions:
None.
RESOLVED: That it be noted that the above Notice of Motion was supported and carried by way of a clear majority vote.