Kids ‘going hungry’ during holidays | Luke James

POOR kids who get their only meal of the day at school are going hungry during holidays, Labour MP Ruth Smeeth warned yesterday.

The Stoke-on-Trent North MP raised the alarm over the “hidden horror of holiday hunger” at a debate in Parliament.

She told MPs of heartbreaking cases of hunger from schools in her constituency where over half of pupils receive free meals.

“Stories have reached me of children fainting in school on a Monday morning, because they haven’t eaten since the Friday before,” she said.

“Others are surviving on little more than a packet of crisps a day.

“For these children their school meal can often be the only hot meal they get.”

The child who fainted was a girl of primary school age.

When school staff gave her a sandwich and an apple, she went to put the apple in her bag because her brother hadn’t eaten and she wanted to share it with him, Ms Smeeth’s office told the Star.

A dinner lady at a separate secondary school told Ms Smeeth how she resorted to sneaking snacks out to visibly hungry children. Astonishingly, the MP said the situation got even worse during school holidays lasting up to six weeks.

The Trussell Trust, which runs many of Britain’s foodbanks, reported a 21 per cent rise in demand at the start of school holidays last year.

And a study by cereal giants Kellogg’s found a third of parents have skipped meals in order to feed their kids during school holidays.

Ms Smeeth said: “For these kids, the kids I see every week in my constituency, the summer holiday is not some childhood idyll of splash pools and camping trips.

“It’s not a chance to explore or create. It’s boredom, hunger and isolation.”

Education Minister Edward Timpson officially responded to the debate with a 15-minute filibuster that failed to directly reference holiday hunger.

He eventually said he would consider suggestions made by Ms Smeeth, including a holiday hunger task force, but claimed the government was already “tackling the root causes of poverty.”

He even suggested the hunger was down to the poor choices of some parents.

Ms Smeeth blasted back: “It is easy to pontificate, from a position of comfort and security, about the failings of those at the bottom.”

And she pointed out the Tories’ child tax credits will see a single parent with two kids £2,000-a-year worse off.

source