QUENTIN LETTS: So noble was the minister's school-meal pulpiteering, you'd think it was the abolition of slavery

Daily Mail​

20 hours ago

During elections it is illegal for politicians to buy votes by handing out free food. That is called 'treating' the electors. But there is nothing to stop MPs doing similar outside election periods.
Yesterday an education minister, Stephen Morgan, told the Commons that the Government would be giving away more school meals. This would 'break the unfair link between background and success'.
It would also, as Labour MPs keenly noted, mean thousands of constituents' children would be receiving free nosebag. 'Vote Labour because we gave your little Jimmy free bowls of mince in the school canteen and you could spend the savings instead on lottery tickets and cans of Carlsberg.' Mr Morgan became so gripped by the nobility of the moment, he could have been hailing the abolition of slavery or the relief of Mafeking. Oh, purplest of passages. 'This is a Government who put children first. What we do for our children, we do for our country.' Free school lunches would restore to youngsters their 'birthright' of 'a loving home where no child lacks food or warmth'. My family home was beautifully loving but I have to say that my bedroom was a little parky in winter. Maybe I am due some counselling.
Mr Morgan, who has the inky hairdo and lopsided insistence of an Epsom spiv, was soon pulpiteering against the Tories. They had not given away enough free food to the nation's Tiny Tims. He was disgusted by their wickedness.
'They robbed some 4.5million children of opportunity and hope, of life chances and of possibilities,' he cried. 'They failed to deliver for the next generation the ordinary hope that tomorrow will be better than today.'
St Luke himself could not have laid claim to such virtue.
On it went, great paragraphs about 'striving' and 'nourishment' and 'a moral mission with the child poverty strategy'. Achieving! Thriving! 'Today, we say enough is enough. Today, we begin to turn the tide.' Good grief, he was turning into Canute. 'Today, the fightback kicks up a gear!'
Labour backbenchers ululated like bare-breasted Masai goatherds. Many of them named the precise number of children in their seats who would be receiving this free food. The numbers were big: most more than 5,000.
Recently the Government provided free breakfasts to certain children in some schools. All we now need is for free suppers to be laid on, too, and canny parents will not have to spend a groat on feeding their offspring during term-time.
And maybe in the holidays, too. Claire Young (Lib Dem, Thornbury & Yate) wanted the Government to end 'holiday hunger'. Vegan snorkers for all.
Into every Eden a little rain must fall. Shockat Adam (Ind, Leicester S) was worried that these free lunches would consist of 'processed food like Turkey Twizzlers, which have been shown to reduce life expectancy'.
Sonia Kumar (Lab, Dudley) slightly let the side down by noting that, despite Mr Morgan's artful depiction of the Dickensian kingdom of waifs that was left by the last government, modern Britain in fact has a problem with children being too fat.
In some of the Labour contributions, delivered with simpering smiles and a la-di-dah manner, was there possibly a touch of the Lady Mucks? You could sense them patting their constituents on the backs and saying 'enjoy your gruel, rough mechanicals, you've deserved it'. The scented Lola McEvoy (Lab, Darlington), very much one of life's Club Class occupants, mentioned one of her constituents – 'a lovely mother who recently went back to work as a school dinner support worker'. Did she mean a dinner lady?
Neil O'Brien, for the Conservatives, argued that the voters who will be receiving this largesse were the very people who would be paying for it, having been hit hardest by Rachel Reeves' national insurance increase. Not that any future Tory government (if there ever is such a thing) could easily remove these free lunches. Imagine the screams of 'starvation' and 'fascist' if they tried it.