Assembly supports extending holiday clubs to beat hunger

More than a quarter of children in London live in poverty and face the risk of going without food during the school holidays.

In a motion agreed unanimously today, the London Assembly supported extending the pilot holiday clubs used by children across the capital before 2019/20 and calls on the Mayor to meet with Minister of State for Children and Families to secure provision to do this.

Fiona Twycross AM, who proposed the motion said:

“It is scandalous that more than one in four of our capital’s children, who are classed as living in poverty, might have gone hungry over the recent school holidays. This would put them at a huge disadvantage compared to their classmates at the start of the new term.

“It shouldn’t be left to charities and food banks to pick up the pieces of the Government’s austerity policies. Whilst the Mayor has intervened to address holiday hunger through his Kitchen Social Project, if we are going to comprehensively tackle this deep social injustice, the Government also needs to play its part.

“This is why I am urging the Mayor to meet the Minister of State for Children and Families to secure increased provision of vital holiday clubs across London as a matter of urgency”.

The full text of the motion is:

This Assembly notes that over a quarter of London's children are living in poverty and are at risk of going hungry during the school holidays.^[5] Holiday hunger leads to a loss in educational attainment of which many children never recover. Evidence from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger found that children were returning to school in a worse educational, health and developmental state than that in which they had left in the summer.

This Assembly recognises the work of the Mayor’s Fund for London’s Kitchen Social project but eradicating holiday hunger for all Londoners cannot be tackled by charities and community groups alone – it needs a concerted effort from national Government. This is particularly important as food banks report experience a shortage of food in the summer months as the number of children relying on them increases. This Assembly calls on the Mayor to meet with the Minister of State for Children and Families to lobby for the provision of holiday clubs throughout London and to extend the Government pilots before 2019/20.