MPs have clashed over changes to free school meals, which a charity claims mean 38,000 children living in poverty in the North-East will miss out.
Following a House of Commons vote on Tuesday, in which the Government held sway, from April 1 families on universal credit will need to be earning less than £7,400 a year for children to be eligible for free school meals.
The Children’s Society has said 38,000 children in the North-East would be affected by the change and 14,200 in North Yorkshire.
Up to now, as universal credit has been rolling out, all families in receipt of the new benefits have been automatically entitled to free school meals.
Sharon Hodgson, Labour MP for Washington and Sunderland West, said free schools were an “absolute lifeline” to some families.
She said: “By introducing a £7,400 threshold for eligibility, the Government are forcibly creating a cliff edge that will be detrimental to families, especially children.”
Hartlepool MP Mike Hill said that his constituency, where universal credit is already operated, more than a thousand children would now be denied free school meals.
North-West Durham MP Laura Pidcock said: “There are 2,000 children in my constituency who rightly receive subsidised school meals.
“The reason that new claimants after 1 April will not be protected is not that they no longer need that protection or need those meals; it is due to arbitrary cuts.
“This change will ensure that more children are in poverty and that more people have to access food banks.”
But Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Simon Clarke said opposition Labour MPs were “playing games with the issue”
He said: “Let us be very clear – by 2022, 50,000 more children will have free school meals than is the case today.”
Mr Clarke said some figures which had been bandied about had created “needless anxiety in the communities we serve”.
The Department of Education has said no one who currently gets free school meals will lose their entitlement.
Currently children, regardless of their family’s income, receive free school meals until they reach year three at primary school.
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