Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By Dave Reid
The rightward drift of Labour under Keir Starmer was confirmed by Welsh Labour’s scandalous voting down of a proposal in the Senedd/Welsh Parliament to introduce free school meals for all children in receipt of universal credit. Wales has the highest levels of child poverty in the UK but under Welsh Labour we also have the least provision of free school meals.
This disgraceful vote has brought home the need for a socialist challenge to Welsh Labour at the Senedd elections next year.
Plaid Cymru proposed a motion to allow all school pupils and students whose families received universal credit or had no recourse to public funds to receive free school meals as a step to universal free school meals. But all Labour members of the Senedd (MS) present shamefully voted against the motion.
Any socialist MS would be duty-bound to vote for this proposal. According to the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) children growing up in poverty in Wales are less likely to get a free school meal than children growing up in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland because Wales has a tighter means test and lower universal infant provision than the rest of the UK despite having the highest levels of child poverty.
£7400 threshold
Children of parents earning more than just £7,400 a year are not entitled to receive free school meals in Wales and this threshold is not adjusted to account for the number of children in the family, or to account for two-parent households.
200,000 children in Wales live in poverty, one in every three. 90,000 live in severe poverty. The Covid crisis has significantly worsened this situation with workers being laid off – many having no income at all while those on furlough have lost a minimum of 20% of their pay.
The number of families having ‘no recourse to public funds’ has risen. As well as some immigrant families, furloughed workers and families fleeing domestic abuse also receive no benefits and have no access to free school meals.
One parent forced to go to a food bank in Cardiff told Action for Caerau and Ely “I have been placed on furlough and despite a reduction of income we are still not eligible for free school meals and the children are eating more at home, mostly due to boredom. Previously they would attend the breakfast club and have a small, packed lunch. We are having to pay extra costs for gas and electricity as well as the extra food costs that seem to have shot up… I feel there should be more help available for parents who may be working but have had a loss of income through no fault of their own. I have lost 20% of my salary but the bills remain the same and still need to be paid.”
In England Marcus Rashford’s campaign against food poverty provided a more effective opposition to the Tories than Keir Starmer, with one millions signatories forcing the Tories to u-turn and provide free meals in the school holidays. In Wales although the government has committed to providing free school meals for 90,000 families during the Christmas holidays, around another 70,000 children, living below the poverty line won’t benefit from this.
Families on the breadline cannot afford Welsh Labour
Welsh Labour claims that the proposals would cost £90 million a year and cannot be afforded. But hundreds of thousands of families cannot afford to feed themselves or their children over Xmas. They will conclude that they cannot afford a Labour government!
Perhaps the most bizarre intervention in the debate were by ‘left’ Labour MSs, Mike Hedges, John Griffiths and Jenny Rathbone who made passionate speeches in favour of school meals – and then voted against them! They and the other lefts should have defied the whip to vote for these basic reforms. If they are being prevented by Senedd Labour group discipline from voting to alleviate child poverty they should break free and stand as anti-austerity socialist candidates as part of a wider coalition in the Senedd elections next year.
Predictably the Tories opposed on principle an extension of free school meals to hungry children. Suzy Davies speaking for them in the Senedd declared that it is the responsibility of parents to feed their children, not the state, a statement straight out of the mouth of Ebenezer Scrooge. But even the Tories were forced to concede that families with no recourse to public funds should have access to free school meals.
Universal Free School Meals
In fact all the evidence shows that universal free school meals is the most effective way of ensuring all children receive a healthy and nutritious diet that prevents malnutrition and ensures that they can learn in school. Studies have proved universal free school meals (FSM) mean that more children receive meals, it reduces children’s bodyweight in the first year of school, improves absence rates and reduces the attainment gap at age 5 between FSM-registered children and those not registered.
By providing all children with free school meals none would slip the net that always occurs with means testing. It would also remove the stigma of free school meals for those children eligible to receive them.
The Welsh government claims that it would cost £160m to provide universal free school meals – too expensive to be afforded. But any socialist government would find a way to ensure that child poverty was alleviated. Such a policy would be the top priority for any government even vaguely claiming to be socialist. It would come ahead of spending £44m on an inquiry on the M4 that it then ignored, or the millions on private consultants across public services, or on a £1600 pay rise for the MS’s themselves.
Welsh government must fight Tory austerity
Above all the Welsh government should not have consistently cut public spending in Wales by carrying out Tory austerity. Its not just child poverty that has arisen as a result. It means that in the Covid crisis ambulances are stacked outside hospitals because NHS hospital capacity has been cut so much.
The Welsh government should have put forward a budget that safeguarded health, education and all other public services including free school meals and then built a mass movement of working people in trade unions, community organisations and campaign groups to fight for the funding from the UK government. A skilful campaign exploiting divisions in the Tory party inspiring the energy and enthusiasm of working people in Wales could have ignited a mass movement across the UK.
But in this case the Welsh government could easily have raised the £160 million by raising the income tax of the wealthiest 10% in Welsh society by 1%. While thousands of families in Wales have been thrown into poverty the top earners in society have generally done very well. An extra 1% on income would not even trim the toe-nails of the richest, but would be of immense benefit to the those at the bottom.
Need for a New Worker’s Party
Plaid Cymru moved the motion in the Senedd with nothing to lose – they do not have to juggle the government’s budget. But if they are serious about their proposal and are not just posturing for political purposes then they should ensure that councils that Plaid control should implement free school meals in schools in their counties anyway and fight for the resources to fund them from the Welsh government. Plaid which controls Gwynedd, Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion councils and should put their money where their mouth is – feed the mouths of hungry children.
The vote showed that the Welsh working class needs real political representation. Socialist Party Wales is determined to work with all other socialist, trade union and anti-cuts campaigns to ensure that a real opposition to all the austerity parties is provided in the elections to the Senedd next May. We appeal to all interested anti-austerity activists to join with us in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition to fight for free school meals and against all cuts in those elections.
