Sir Keir Starmer visited a primary school in Essex following an announcement that all pupils in England whose families claim universal credit will be eligible for free school meals. The prime minister was joined by the education secretary Bridget Phillipson who described the plans as "a game changer for families". Report by Kennedyl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00This is a statement of intent. It's something that we've been wanting to do for a long time.
00:07It's the first time it's ever been done. So free school meals for 500,000 extra children.
00:12That's fantastic in terms of them and their attainment. It's fantastic for their parents because it says about £500.
00:19I would see it as part of a wider package because we've already done work on childcare, on breakfast clubs, on school uniforms.
00:28So it's about attainment of children and giving them the best possible start in life.
00:33It's also centrally a cost of living issue for their parents.
00:37I would say this is a down payment on child poverty. We've got a task course. It'll come out with a strategy.
00:44I want to get to the root causes of child poverty. One of the greatest things the last Labour government did was to drive down child poverty.
00:51I'm determined we will do that. Today is a down payment on that.
00:55But it also goes, as I say, with breakfast clubs already being rolled out, with childcare provision, which we're rolling out,
01:02and of course school uniforms, which can be really expensive for parents.