Skip to main content

News

Holiday hunger ‘getting worse’, says MP

03 Sep 2019
This summer has been the ‘worst’ for holiday hunger, Independent MP for Birkenhead, Frank Field, who founded the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger and Food Poverty, has said.

The Metro reported that Field said the problem was widespread across the UK, where millions of children who are reliant on free school meals are going hungry during the school summer holidays.

Field said: "This is getting worse, the government has to now set up a national scheme. We seem to be finding money for all sorts of things now after Brexit, it’s about time the government established a national scheme for all children to make sure they don’t go hungry during the summer.”

A recent report from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger found that children were returning to school in a worse health condition than when they broke up and as many as three million children face food insecurity this summer.

The government announced a £9 million fund for summer holiday clubs but many parts of the country failed to receive any funding. The Royal Borough of Greenwich offered 4,080 meals served across 16 venues to combat holiday hunger.