Education secretary Ed Balls pledges £1.6m school dinner money
Published: 2 April 2010
by RÓISÍN GADELRAB
A CONTROVERSIAL plan to give free school meals to every primary school pupil in Islington has been backed by the government.
Education secretary Ed Balls yesterday gave Islington’s coffers an unexpected boost when he announced that the government will now pay half the cost of the free school meals. Islington will receive £1.6million and become one of eight councils taking part in a government pilot scheme. The money will be matched by the council.
Speaking to the Tribune at Thornhill School in Barnsbury yesterday (Thursday), Mr Balls hinted that he would like to see the free meals introduced nationwide but wanted to “wait and see what the evidence shows”.
He added: “I can’t announce now without approval of the Treasury the hundreds of millions of pounds to go national but I can say it’s working in Newham and County Durham.
“Thanks to local pressure, Islington is going to get the chance of free, healthy lunches in primary schools. If this shows, as I believe it does, that it’s not only popular with parents but raises standards and health among our children, I would love to see it extended as far as possible across the country.
“People will look back and say Islington led the way and that was thanks to the campaigning of Labour councillors and MPs Emily Thornberry and Jeremy Corbyn.”
But Mr Balls, who helped serve meals to Thornhill pupils, revealed his own meal choices as a schoolboy were not the healthiest, claiming his favourite school lunch was chicken curry followed by treacle pudding with custard. He added: “I really hated swede and I’ve never been able to eat swede since. I also liked mashed potato out of an ice-cream scoop. In the primary school I first went to the free-school-meal children queued at the back. You can’t imagine that.”
The free meals were pushed through by Labour, despite objections from the ruling Lib Dems, who want an alternative “fair school meals” scheme. Labour’s education spokesman Councillor Richard Watts said: “Islington’s being used as a model by public health academics, who are recommending applying this scheme to New York.”
The windfall has provoked a row over what should be done with council cash originally earmarked for the scheme which will now be freed up. The Lib Dems want to give it back to council tax payers next year. Lib Dem council leader Councillor Terry Stacy said: “I wanted to freeze council tax last year but Labour put it up. We’ll pay money back into the pockets of residents, where it should have been in the first place.”
But Labour group leader Councillor Catherine West said she would like to spend some of the freed-up cash on a Citizens Advice Bureau. She added: “It means we’ve got a little bit more wriggle room in terms of future budgets."