A plea to ministers to make sure the nation’s children are fed this summer

Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, said 10 days ago that “it breaks your heart” to hear of a mother skipping meals to feed her son, as he ruled out expanding free school meals during the summer holidays. If he wonders why the Conservative Party is increasingly being seen as heartless, he and Boris Johnson should pause to reflect.

There is something wrong with this country, and the government has a moral obligation to put it right. Food banks were not an accustomed feature of life in this rich nation until the coalition government. The question of whether children on free school meals would get enough to eat in the school holidays was not a live one until the campaign by Marcus Rashford, the footballer, drew attention to the issue two years ago.

Now, the cost of living crisis has raised the bar of misery, pushing more families into the degrading struggle to ensure that their children are adequately fed. The Food Foundation has estimated that 2.6 million children in the UK live in households that miss meals or find it difficult to provide food.

As we report today, the campaign to widen eligibility for free school meals to the children of all families on universal credit, and to extend the provision of holiday food schemes, is stepping up its efforts to persuade ministers. The Rt Revd Dr Alan Wilson, the bishop of Buckingham, told The Independent he thought the UK was “going backwards” on the issue, while Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the commons education committee, urged the government to make sure that children do not fall through the gaps in the system this summer.

The campaign is supported by the teaching unions, charities, former education secretaries Justine Greening and Alan Johnson, and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London.

The Independent understands, as all these campaigners do, that the public finances are not limitless. Contrary to some of the portrayals of the government as a bunch of ideological small-staters hell-bent on “austerity”, we recognise that the Johnson administration has learned from some of the errors of the coalition years.

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The support for energy bills announced by Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, last month, skewed towards those on lower incomes, was expensive. Yet it was the right thing to do – not just on grounds of social justice, but to head off the risks of a recession that would hurt people at all levels of income.

However, there are still gaps in state support that will adversely affect children. Helping those on low incomes to meet the average increase in energy bills still leaves too many families exposed to the high prices of food and other essentials. One way to ensure that this does not lead to child hunger is to broaden the provision of free school meals, both in term time and outside it. In comparison to the £15bn cost of the energy bill package, a “mind the gaps” extension of free school meals would require modest amounts of public money.

Unfortunately, it seems that the government has already failed to take one opportunity for action, by allowing Monday’s food strategy white paper to go ahead as a statement of its hands-off approach – not just towards healthy food for children, but towards the encouragement of healthy eating for everyone.

If ministers want to avoid being seen as heartless, they need to take action on child hunger that shows they have a heart.