The National Education Union (NEU) is running a campaign to end child poverty, and introduce universal Free School Meals (FSM). However, it has taken on a controversial ambassador to promote this – Sharon Hodgson – a Labour Party MP who only in July voted to keep the two-child benefit cap.
Oxymoronically, the NEU’s campaign is titled ‘No Child Left Behind’. Yet Hodgson’s role as a political face of this sends quite the opposite message.
The NEU’s Free School Meals campaign
The NEU’s campaign website describes how it is:
fighting to break down the barriers poverty puts up around equal access to education.
Part of this, is it’s call for Free School Meals (FSM) for all children at primary schools across the UK. It has been sending out emails from Hodgson to promote and garner support for its campaign. In it, Hodgson says:
When I was a new MP, I went on a fact-finding mission to Sweden. I saw how a universal Free School Meals programme could change families’ lives:
Happy children, energised to learn. Parents and carers feeling supported. That experience was what drove me to lobby the Labour Government at the time for Free School Meals for All.
It’s also why I didn’t hesitate to sign the National Education Union’s open letter calling for hot, healthy dinners for every child in primary school.
We need to show that this policy is supported far and wide. Do you know five people who would sign the open letter today?
As a former Free School Meals kid, it brought me so much joy to see pupils eating and learning together at Lambton Primary School in Washington, Sunderland. Food is an undeniable and essential part of our lives.
It helps fuel our minds and bodies, giving us the vital nutrients we need to stay healthy – especially for children.
The health, wellbeing and educational benefits are clear. After years of campaigning hard, universal Free School Meals is now being implemented in Wales and London.
Together, we’ve shown that when we use our collective voice, we can create tangible change for children everywhere. There is so much support across England for this policy.[name], you are crucial to building that case:
I’ve been fighting for the roll out of Free School Meals for All across England for the last 18 years. I am excited that this new Labour Government gives us a renewed opportunity.
Together, let’s give our children the best start in life.
From a fellow campaigner,
Sharon
Of course, for one, it’s always ironic when a politician who has been among the party in power’s cabinet, brands themselves a ‘campaigner’. As an elected member of parliament in the Labour Party, Hodgson has access to many of the levers to change. Your typical campaigner has no such influence in the halls of Westminster.
That aside, there’s nothing inherently wrong or unusual in Hodgson throwing her weight behind the NEU’s campaign. MPs do this all the time over the issues they’re passionate about. However, there is something problematic about Hodgson doing it for THIS campaign – and the NEU plastering her name and face all over it.
In fact, there are a few things that make Hodgson’s ostensible ambassadorship for it, highly paradoxical.
Hodgson keeping kids in poverty
Let’s get this out of the way first. It’s obvious why the NEU has done it. Hodgson has indeed been a long-term voice for Free School Meals (FSM) in parliament.
Notably, this more recently included throwing her support behind the NEU and Reach corporate media outlet the Mirror’s campaign for this too, in 2023.
This was after her two-year stint as then Labour leader Keir Starmer’s parliamentary private secretary. Purportedly, she left that role so she could:
speak freely on issues she cares about.
Those “issues she cares about” included ambitions for the deputy speaker position. But since leaving the PPS role for Starmer, these have been more notable for what, and who they haven’t included.
In July, Hodgson voted against the SNP amendment to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Considering that the limit is keeping hundreds of thousands of children in poverty, you’d think Hodgson would have defied her party’s whip – after all, these are some of the same children she’s purportedly concerned won’t have a hot, nutritious meal come school lunch-time.
Since the vote, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has estimated that the limit on benefits has pushed a further 10,000 children into poverty. Hodgson might talk the talk about feeding children in poverty in principle, but in practice, she abets a government content with forcing families to make the stark choice between heating or eating.
Living it up on industry lobby hospitality
The two-child benefit cap isn’t the only issues either.
Gone are the days of the Labour MP on Free School Meals (FSM) – now, it’s all-expenses paid-for by industry body lobbyists.
In July 2023, Hodgson accepted meals and accommodation worth £1,074 to attend a school food sector lobbying association annual conference. This was from LACA – formerly the Local Authority and Caterers Association.
LACA doesn’t disclose its members directly, only stating on its website how it:
is the leading professional body representing over 1000 members drawn from across the school food sector representing public sector and private contract caterers and suppliers to schools, academies and MATs across the UK.
Additionally, it also boasts that:
With over 300 local authorities, county, district councils and London Boroughs represented in the membership, 80% of the catering service is provided by LACA members. And with around three million lunches being served every day in 27,000 schools, the LACA network is the country’s largest provider of school catering.
However, while it doesn’t publicise its members anywhere explicitly, it does promote companies via its news updates. The Canary has assumed that where it has done so, these firms are members of LACA.
With this in mind, it appears that the group represents a Who’s Who of corporations at the centre of various FSM scandals.
Association representing Free School Meals scandal firms
Compass group subsidiary Chartwells was at the centre of a major furore on Free School Meals (FSM). This was over its blatant profiteering with FSM parcels while schools stayed closed under pandemic regulations in 2021.
Some LACA members have their profiles in public on the website, although the vast majority do not. Of those that did, the Canary identified multiple Chartwells staff among its members. These included a regional manager and its head of nutrition and sustainability.
Most notable however was former business development manager for Chartwells Stephen Forster. He currently sits on the LACA board of directors. His LinkedIn suggests he’s still in his role with Chartwells, but he isn’t active on this account. The Times previously highlighted how Forster was on the LACA board and working for Chartwells while LACA helped draft the government guidelines on the school food parcels scheme. As well as this, Forster happened to be the LACA national chair at the time of the scandal.
Besides Forster, another former LACA chair, and current member on the organisation’s events committee, Lynda Mitchell, also worked for Chartwells. She was a business development employee in its school dining services for key stage 12 students, until November 2022.
Sodexo-owned Alliance in Partnership was another company that provided sub-par food parcels during the pandemic. There were no fewer than 29 articles on LACA’s website about the Sodexo subsidiary. These were mostly announcing various contracts it has won with schools, as well awards the company or its staff has won.
And speaking of awards, on numerous occasions, the association has honoured Caterlink catering teams and employees. Evidently, Caterlink is another LACA member. However, the firm was also among the providers who sent out shameful FSM food parcels to families.
Food boxes for the clinically vulnerable
Sodexo’s procurement subsidiary Entegra also co-hosted an event at LACA’s 2024 conference. This was to promote the ‘Buying Better Food framework’. This is a £100m contract the Cabinet Office’s executive agency the Crown Commercial Service awarded the Sodexo subsidiary in January.
Essentially, Entegra is hosting a buying platform. It’s purportedly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to supply food and ingredients to schools, hospital, and other public sector caterers. The Federation of Wholesale Distributors criticised the arrangement at the time, raising the concern that it could act as a monopoly on public food sector supply.
Then, there’s the fact the LACA partners with corporate suppliers too. Among these is both Bidford, and Brakes. Again, the two company’s reputation precedes them – but not in a good way.
Notably, these were the firms the Tory government awarded a £208m contract to – without tender – to provide food boxes for the clinically vulnerable in 2020, amidst the early waves of the Covid-19 pandemic. But notoriously, these were the food boxes the companies delivered at a 69% mark up on similar supermarket delivered box.
At £44, they were at least double the normal retail value, and what was inside the boxes made this all the more galling. They included inedible, rotten fruit and veg, food items inappropriate for different religious groups, such as pork and bacon sent to shielding Muslim families, and entirely insufficient and poor quality food that failed to meet people’s nutritional needs.
Yet, Bidford business development controller Gavin Squires also currently sits on the LACA board of directors. Additionally, Miguel Nunes – the national account manager for Bidfood – is on LACA’s event committee.
Free School Meals: dining without the wining
Of course, there’s hardly more obvious a sign of a trade association’s public relations remit than amplifying the company’s own weasel words to rehabilitate its image. Unsurprisingly, this is precisely what LACA did for Chartwells as the Free School Meals (FSM) scandal hit headline fever-pitch. In fact, Chartwells’ statement is the whole focus – letting the company put its own spin on the scandal.
It’s hardly the only time LACA has done this either. In March, a headteacher at a school in Southampton hit out at Chartwells for its FSM offerings. Headteacher Jason Ashley lambasted the food as “completely unacceptable”. He described how photographs the school had taken of the lunches showed that:
in recent times portions have gotten smaller, while prices have risen.
Yet, this wasn’t the picture LACA painted when the BBC reached out to it for comment. It framed the small portion sizes and abysmal food quality as a result of food inflation, and low funding from government, and said in some flagrantly dismissive statement that:
LACA and its members are committed to adhering to the school food standards ensuring that every meal served not only meets but exceeds the standards
Despite all this, Hodgson has been one of LACA’s biggest champions in parliament. Both in 2022, and April 2024, she arranged for the association to host a ‘School Lunch’ lobby event at the House of Commons. LACA served up meals to MPs. In other words, it was dining without the wining.
Of course, expanding FSMs would benefit many of LACA’s members. More meals to provide means more contracts and more money for private sector providers.
Hodgson leaving many children behind
Needless to say, the NEU has erred catastrophically in using Hodgson’s name and face to promote its campaign. However, when the Canary put these issues to the NEU, its spokesperson simply came back saying:
Sharon has been a long-standing supporter of free school meals and has chaired the all party parliamentary group on school food for years.
Sharon Hodgson MP is one of over 40 MPs and Peers that are supporting the No Child Left Behind campaign.
No Child Left Behind is a broad-based coalition, with many civil society, public figures and faith leaders backing the campaign. The full list can be found here – https://freeschoolmealsforall.org.uk/about/the-coalition
No Child Left Behind is campaigning for universal free school meals for all children in primary schools in England.
Hodgson may well be supporting the campaign and voice for Free School Meals (FSM) in parliament. Yet, she’s also one of the politicians in power who can actually do something about child poverty more broadly. But Hodgson has actively chosen not to. After voting to keep the two-child benefit cap, 10,000 more children are now in poverty in the UK, since only July.
Moreover, she has cosied up to a food sector association representing the interests of a who’s who of FSM scandal-plagued corporations.
How does any of this square with the ‘No Child Left Behind’ campaign? It doesn’t – and Hodgson is one the MPs the NEU should be holding to account for failing children. Instead, it’s positioning her as a champion of ending child poverty, when it’s clear she’s anything but.
Feature image via Youtube – Sky News/the Canary
