Rashford and major food brands link up on child food poverty task force
In June the 22-year-old successfully campaigned to persuade the Government to extend free school meals over the summer holiday period.
Now he has joined forces with a group of supermarkets, businesses and charities - including Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Deliveroo, FareShare, Food Foundation, Iceland, Kellogg's, Lidl, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose - have formed a taskforce and backed proposals from the National Food Strategy, an independent review of UK food policy.
The taskforce is calling for three policy recommendations by the National Food Strategy to be funded by the government as soon as possible:
* Expanding free school meals to every child from a household on Universal Credit or equivalent, reaching an additional 1.5m children aged seven to 16
* Expanding holiday food and activities to support all children on free school meals, reaching an additional 1.1m children
* Increasing the value of the Healthy Start vouchers from £3.10 to £4.25 per week and expanding it to all those on Universal Credit or equivalent, reaching an additional 290,000 children under the age of four and pregnant women
The taskforce says implementing the three recommendations would mark a ‘unifying step to identifying a long-term solution to child poverty in the UK’.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast today (September 1st), Rashford said the move to extend free school meals over the summer had been a ‘short-term solution; to stopping children from going hungry, but it now needed a longer-term plan.
He told the BBC: "We had to think about the best way to do it, to think about how these families can eat long term and not have any issues."
He said he was hoping that, with a bigger team of experts around him, he might be able to help more children.
* In a statement on the taskforce, LACA said: “LACA welcomes the creation of the Child Food Poverty Task Force, led by Marcus Rashford, and wholeheartedly agree with their belief that the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review must allocate funds for the first three National Food Strategy recommendations, specifically expanding eligibility for free school meals to include every child from a household in receipt of Universal Credit or equivalent benefits. We have long campaigned for free school meals to be extended to ensure that as many children as possible receive hot, healthy and nutritious meals, and the economic and social impact of Covid-19 on children and families across the country means this is now imperative.”