In his latest column on Biddulph Nub News, Cllr Connor Brady has weighed in on the Government's recent vote on free school meals.

MPs voting not to extend free school meals through the holidays is absolutely despicable and shows the way that people in power would rather see kids potentially starve than say that a footballer is right and that children need to be fed over the holidays.

In the UK we have a serious problem with poverty, with people relying on foodbanks, working and still in poverty, and seeing support structures continuously eroded away.

My constituency of Biddulph East is the most deprived in Biddulph. In Biddulph East alone we have two foodbanks. Foodbanks are one of the biggest signifiers for poverty increasing as in 2010 the Trussell Trust, the largest foodbank network in the UK, handed out 41,000 food packs in 2009/10. Fast forward to 2016/17 and that had gone up to 1,200,000 food parcels delivered.

These are people and families who have no money and no food. There is often an assumption that people in poverty don't work but the most disgusting part of our society's poverty problem is that as of 2018 56% of people in poverty were in work. That means these people are earning their poverty, earning their hunger, earning their despair.

This is whilst 70% of children in poverty are in a working household. As of 2019, 4.2 million children were living in poverty, that has risen from 2.6 million children in 2010 and child poverty is projected to rise to 5.2million by 2022.

In the Staffordshire Moorlands we have 3,032 children living in poverty. Poverty and child poverty is not something created because of Covid. Our children have been going hungry for a very long time and austerity has exacerbated this over the last decade.

Marcus Rashford has been the biggest leader on this. A star English footballer for Manchester United, Marcus was recently given an MBE after ensuring a government U-turn to give children free school meals during the summer holidays.

Marcus grew up in Wythenshawe, Manchester as one of five children living with his single mother. Marcus remembers feeling hungry as a child but that he was never angry about it because he understood his mum was doing everything she could.

He said: "I also understood, maybe it was just part of me growing up. I just knew how hard my mum was working. I would never moan; I would never do anything. If there was food on the table, there was food on the table. If there's not, I had friends who understood my situation and maybe it was possible to go to their house to get some food. I remember we used to go to a shop called Poundworld, we would schedule out the week. We would get seven yoghurts and you can have one a day."

Tory MP's love to talk about how it is the parent's fault, how mothers don't care and have the money but don't feed their kids. This is the most disgusting and offensive part of these debates, the idea that parents in poverty don't care about their children. My mum was a single parent of me and my brother and thankfully the benefits were as such that I didn't have to go hungry.

When I see documentaries, it breaks my heart. When I hear a child say "we try not to eat a lot in one day even though most of us are really hungry", it makes me rage. How on earth in the 6th richest country in the world, do we allow children to go hungry? We allow children to suffer with no food.

Conservative MP's defended the vote. Steve Baker MP tweeted in reply to Marcus Rashford's plea to vote to extend school meals, "No one will be turning a blind eye and it is wrong to suggest anyone would. Not destroying the currency with excessive QE (quantitative easing) is also one of our duties".

Ben Bradley MP did the same tweeting "Extending FSM to schools passes responsibility for feeding kids away from parents, to the State. It increases dependency".

Paul Scully MP defended the vote by saying "Children have gone hungry for years". Eat out to help out cost £105.4m in its first week, extending free school meals costs £20m per week. Steve Baker knows they could extend it easily at a tiny cost, they don't want to.

Ben Bradley saying that he wants children to go hungry so that there is less dependency shows such a disturbed view of the world better suited to a Dickens novel. Paul Scully explaining that it's all okay as children have always been hungry sums up a disgustingly callous government unable to even care about starving children.

This is who they are though. These MP's, and that includes our MP Karen Bradley, could not care less about poverty. They could not care less about children suffering. They have no idea what it is like to face poverty, they have no idea what these parents go through, they will never have to skip meals to feed their children, they will never have to decide whether to heat the home or eat meals themselves.

They don't know what people go through and they don't care, as long as their careers are going well and their pockets are lined. Karen Bradley doesn't represent us, she's not interested if we think no child should go hungry, because she will follow exactly what her party tells her regardless of how callous, cruel, and disgusting that decision is.

Marcus Rashford said in his plea that he doesn't have the "education of an MP" but that is a good thing. Marcus, by sharing all the places who will take the governments place and feed children through the holidays, shows the best in all of us. He's just a regular guy who wants to feed children and will show solidarity with those who will do the same. He is exactly the kind of person who should be an MP. Not these wealthy individuals taking their constituents support for granted whilst they further their career by allowing children to go hungry.

I want to build a society where no child goes hungry. Where no child suffers. Where footballers don't have to embarrass a government into feeding children. Unfortunately, our society knows children are going hungry and still pushes them further into poverty.

Got an opinion or something to share - why not have your words published on Biddulph Nub News? Anyone is welcome, and you would be credited as the author of the article! Visit biddulph.nub.news and click the "Nub It" button to post, or email [email protected]