Sadiq Khan should remember there’s no such thing as a free lunch
Free school meals for the children on multi-millionaires is classic Khan – superficial, unevidenced and the wrong priority for London, says Alys Denby
Sadiq Khan has made the promise of permanent free school meals the centrepiece of his reelection campaign. It’s typical of the Mayor’s approach to governing, being utterly superficial, unevidenced and the wrong priority for London.
Apologies for diving straight in with the policy detail, but you won’t get it from a City Hall press release, so you may as well take it from me. Until last year all children from reception to year two were already entitled to a free lunch along with around 30 per cent of those in years three to six. In 2023, Khan decided to pilot extending this to all children for one year, funded out of a business rates windfall. A team at UCL was due to evaluate the scheme for its impact on pupil attainment, attendance, engagement, behaviour, well-being, body mass index and household finances and report back in 2025. Khan has now pledged to make the offer permanent without seeing this analysis or saying where the money will come from.
As recently as January the Mayor was saying he was unable to commit to the scheme beyond 2025. He has conveniently changed his tune just in time to run an election campaign framing his opponent as a nasty Tory milk-snatcher. Yet he has made clear himself that he does not believe City Hall should have to pay, saying “frankly speaking it shouldn’t be us having to pay for universal free school meals, it should be the government.” So he is clearly banking on a future Labour administration to bail him out through general taxation. But so far Keir Starmer has only committed to breakfast clubs in every primary school. In reality this will have to be paid for either with more unpopular revenue raisers like ULEZ or by diverting money away from areas like policing.
So be it, you may say. Who can really object to free food for kids? The real question though, is whose kids? The poorest children in London already get subsidised lunches. This policy will benefit around 270,000 children not currently eligible. There is evidence that school meals are good for academic attainment and Khan has spoken movingly about the stigma he personally felt when handing over his voucher for free food. But those are arguments for better delivery, not the blunt instrument of a taxpayer-funded universal offer. Because while there is real deprivation in the capital, it is also home to some of the wealthiest people not just in the UK but in the world. Meals for everyone, regardless of income, is therefore a hand-out to multi-millionaires.
Even if you accept that freebies for financiers who read City PM are a better use of public funds than – say – crime, housing or infrastructure, the policy offends against the principle of parental primacy. The welfare state should be a safety net for the most vulnerable, not a means of outsourcing functions as fundamental as feeding our own children. The more we abdicate our responsibilities to the state the more we undermine individual liberty and the integrity of the family.Take this too far and we really will discover that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Alys Denby is opinion and features editor of City PM