Marcus Rashford: Feeding Britain’s Children – inside his campaign to tackle child hunger

In September, Rashford formed a taskforce of major UK food brands and supermarkets.

Together, they called for three policy recommendations by the National Food Strategy to be funded by the government as soon as possible: expanding free school meals to reach more children, expanding existing school holiday food and activities programmes and increasing the value of the Healthy Start vouchers – which help pregnant women, and parents with children under the age of four – to reach an additional 290,000 people.

The government responded by saying it had already increased support to local authorities and Universal Credit.

“It was almost like there was no emotional connection,” Rashford says. “They were naming the things that they’ve been doing for the last six years, but if those things had worked then I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.”

A petition set up by Rashford, calling for the government to offer free school meals in England during school holidays, reached one million signatures in October. A Labour motion on free school meals over holidays in England was debated in the House of Commons but the motion was voted down.

“Have any of the people in government speaking about this had a life where they can literally afford to buy food and pay bills and that’s it?” Rashford asks.

“I doubt that they have. The way they speak about it is so insensitive. For me, it’s like they don’t have big enough understanding on the issue.”

In the aftermath of the vote, countless businesses, councils, charities and other organisations from around the country came out to show support and offered free meals to struggling families over the school holidays.