Chancellor Rachel Reeves (Image: Getty)
Parents could be landed with extra lunch costs for their children as Rachel Reeves reportedly plans to axe universal free school meals for infants. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is said to have suggested the change as part of a ￡500million cut to education to be included in the Chancellor's austerity plan on Wednesday, when she will deliver a spring spending statement designed to save billions of pounds.
However the reports, which feature prominently in Monday’s newspapers, were furiously denied by figures within the Department for Education, suggesting ongoing divisions and rows within Government with just days to go before the Chancellor’s announcement. The Treasury is aiming to impose cuts of up to 11% across Whitehall departments’ budgets.
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Currently, about 1.8m children in reception classes and Years 1 and 2 receive free school meals. These are available for all children to ensure every young child has a healthy start to the day.
The reported plan is to introduce means-testing for these age groups, as already exists for older children. For most children in these year groups, it would mean their parents now have to pay for their school lunch.
It has also been said that the Education Secretary offered to axe funding for free period products in schools, as well as dance, music and PE schemes.
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In addition, schools will be told to give teachers pay rises – but will not be given the funding to pay for them, according to reports. Instead, they will be expected to find the cash from by making “efficiencies”.
In practice, this could mean that some are forced to reduce staff numbers.
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The Chancellor is under pressure this week after she admitted accepting free tickets to see Sabrina Carpenter live.
She admitted she and a family member went to a concert “a couple of weeks ago” with tickets that “weren’t tickets that you were able to buy”.
Speaking over the weekend, she claimed that she had accepted the tickets for security reasons. Ms Reeves said: “I went with a member of my family to see a concert a couple of weeks ago.
“I do now have security, which means it’s not as easy as it would have been in the past to just sit in a concert, although that would probably be a lot easier for everyone concerned.
“So, look, I took those tickets to go with a member of my family. I thought that was the right thing to do from a security perspective.”
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The Chancellor later added: “These weren’t tickets that you could pay for, so there wasn’t a price for those tickets.
“Obviously, I’ll declare the value of them but they weren’t tickets that you were able to buy.”
Facing questions about clothing donations last year, Ms Reeves told the BBC that while she accepted the gifts in opposition, it was not something she “planned to do as a government minister”.