Farron: the Tories are turning up at the school gate and stealing children’s lunch money

The Mail reports today:

Ministers are poised to scrap Nick Clegg's controversial free school meals programme, it emerged last night.

The flagship Lib Dem policy was supposed to ensure all primary school children were given free lunches in their first three years of education.

Tim Farron has responded:

"If this goes ahead, the Tories will show they are willing to take an axe to the education budget at the expense of children's learning.

"By scrapping this policy they would take food off the plates of hundreds of thousands of school kids who now benefit from a free hot healthy meal at lunchtime.

"The Liberal Democrats fought tooth and nail to get this through in Coalition because we want every child to have the best possible start in life and be able to concentrate in class.

"We are really proud of the efforts schools have made to ensure children get the healthy meals they need. In many cases this has seen investment in new facilities and new staff.

"The Tories are now going to completely undermine all this progress and, as a result, demoralise school children, their parents and their teachers.

"Instead of further investing in our children, the Tories are turning up at the school gate and stealing their lunch money.

School meals photo by Coventry City Council Flickr CCL.

* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist in Newbury and West Berkshire. He is part of the Liberal Democrat Voice team and blogs at Liberal Burblings.