Alex Sampson, Plymouth Socialist Party
In the same week that the Labour government announced that it has a “moral imperative” to reduce child poverty levels in this country, Plymouth City Council, led by Labour Party NEC member Tudor Evans, also announced the end of CaterEd, the award-winning cooperative between the council and 58 schools across the city.
CaterEd has provided healthy, hot meals to schools and vulnerable adults in Plymouth for over a decade, including throughout the Covid lockdowns. Due to the increasing costs of food and energy over the last two years, it has struggled to continue on the meagre £2.61 per child funding from central government. The result of this is that ‘meals on wheels’ will end in February, adding further pressure to the overstretched adult social care services in the city. The school meals will end in July, forcing schools to either sign contracts with private companies or bring catering in-house, which will squeeze already pressured school budgets further.
Plymouth Socialist Party members launched a Save Our School meals petition on 13 December as a result of this announcement and spoke to many people within the city who are angry with Sir Keir Starmer’s government, which always seems to have enough money for arms contracts, but not enough for vital services. Others pointed out the mess Plymouth council have made of the regeneration of the city centre, including the scandal of cutting down the Armada Way trees. They asked why they can waste money on things that residents don’t want but they won’t ensure that the poorest children in our city get at least one hot meal a day.
The loss of CaterEd would be a blow for Plymouth and it raises huge questions for staff, whose futures are now uncertain, as well as the many food producers that partnered with them. The only winners are private catering companies who will make profits while cutting staff and the quality of food provided.
The Socialist Party campaigns for Plymouth council to resist making further austerity cuts to our already decimated services, and set a needs-based budget for the city, including free school meals for all primary age children, as they have in Wales and Scotland. Furthermore, they should demand funding from the Labour government to ensure public services meet the needs of all our residents. In the sixth-richest nation in the world, millions of children are living in poverty. Thousands of those children are in Plymouth, and CaterEd has been a lifeline for them and their families. If Labour genuinely think that they have a moral obligation to cut child poverty, then they must put their money where their mouth is. Saving CaterEd would be a good start.
