Children's Commissioner: 'Decision not to extend free school meals shows a lack of compassion'

They came to my house as part of a CBBC Newsround film, and they told me that they didn’t know what would be in the cupboard during the school holidays when they weren’t receiving their school meal. It was heart-breaking to hear, yet sadly not a unique experience. ‘Holiday hunger’ was already a problem affecting thousands of children, and it is likely to become even more prevalent as the economic impact of Covid-19 becomes clearer.

Indeed, every day we are finding out more about how living standards have fallen during lockdown. Just last week, the IPPR estimated that the crisis has pushed 300,000 children into poverty since the start of the pandemic, and a real-time survey in April showed 88,000 children were in families where jobs had been lost, 1.2 million were in families where someone was furloughed and two million were in families where hours were reduced.