00:00Hello and welcome to Manchester World. My name is Theo Houston-Beds and today we're talking about Labour's commitment to increasing the amount of free school meals offered to children by 500,000 across the country.
00:11Currently, families can claim free school meals for children if they're on universal credit and the household earns less than £7,400 per year.
00:19With the new rules, which will be implemented in September of next year, universal credit will be the only requirement.
00:24Now, Labour have received quite a lot of criticism recently for their failure to scrap the two-child benefit cap, which is found by many studies to have a directly negative impact on the amount of cases of child poverty in the country.
00:35But with this announcement, combined with the Education Secretary Bridget Philipson confirming that the government was exploring the possibility of removing the two-child benefit cap, it does appear as though progress is finally being made.
00:47Now, as things stand, over a quarter of children in the UK are registered for free school meals, which equates to over 2 million children.
00:55This number could jump up towards the 3 million mark by the end of next year and could lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, improving their health and well-being as well as increasing their focus in schools.
01:07Here in Manchester, this news could mean a lot to thousands of families across the region.
01:11In the Manchester central constituency alone, more than 17,000 households were claiming universal credit, which equates to around 34% of working-age households.
01:21Now, the government's maths show that £500 will be saved by parents each year by not having to worry about paying for school meals.
01:27And while this policy has been met with positivity across the region, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch did accuse Sir Keir Starmer of causing confusion with the policy.
01:35Now, let us know if this is something that you're in favour of. Thank you for watching and follow Manchester World for more.
