In his latest Trusted Contributor article for Nub News, Cllr James Barber writes about his support of a campaign to get free school meals extended throughout the Christmas holidays.

Marcus Rashford MBE has, for the past few months, been leading a campaign to #EndChildFoodPoverty.

Just bear that in mind for a minute. It's taking a Manchester United and England footballer to stand up to the government and run a campaign to ensure no child goes hungry.

This isn't about party politics, but about human decency. Unfortunately, the Conservative government have decided to ignore Dr Rashford's campaign, playing party politics with it when criticised.

To give you some statistics, according to The Felix Project, it is believed that "one in three (4.1 million) children live in poverty in the UK, with an estimated 2.5 million living in food insecure households".

How can this be acceptable in the 6th richest country by GDP?

Whilst the government prioritises paying Track and Trace consultants £7000 a day, millions of children across the country aren't able to eat.

I find it interesting that, if you scroll through Marcus Rashford's Twitter account, a number of Conservative MPs have launched fierce defences of their government's decision not to extend free school meals over Christmas.

Ben Bradley, MP for Mansfield, 'quote-tweeted' Marcus Rashford by saying it isn't the government's job to feed children in poverty.

With 32% of families suffering a drop in income since March and nearly 1 million having fallen off the payroll, as Marcus points out, the government is failing families during these tough times.

Rashford also responded to the point by Ben Bradley by explaining how 1.5 million children have "little to no access to food resources due to the 2-child UC (Universal Credit) gap".

Universal Credit is a deeply flawed welfare system that has plunged more people into further poverty than pulled them out of it. It isn't down to families to sort out the welfare system; it's down to the government.

Our failing welfare system is arguably the main reason why so many low-income families cannot afford to get basic food resources.

Surely we all want to make sure young people aren't going hungry?

Granted, it's not a simple issue. Nobody is saying it is. But what Marcus Rashford is asking for is a temporary solution over Christmas while the government work to fix the issue permanently.

Forming a Task Force with numerous companies and high-profile individuals, he is fighting for our young people's human rights.

In Cheshire East, 34,893 children were living 'below the breadline' as of March 2019. There is no doubt that this will have risen over the past 19 months or so.

In my ward of Broken Cross and Upton, myself and fellow ward colleagues have been running a foodbank collection to ensure we are doing our bit to help families living in poverty. Having seen hundreds of donations since the beginning of lockdown, we have all been blown away by the generosity and support of our residents, and hope to continue making a positive difference.

Having said this, it demonstrates a real failure of the society we live in that foodbanks are so widely used and collections are extremely necessary. This links to the wider point about poverty throughout the country and the fact it only seems to be getting worse.

With Tory MPs lining up to defend their party's record on the issue, it is perhaps not surprising that on Wednesday 21 October, 322 Tory MPs voted against the motion to provide Free School Meals over Christmas, with only 5 rebellions.

It is perhaps interesting to point that Robert Halfon, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, was one of the rebels after Marcus Rashford addressed him and pleaded with him to support our young people. He and the four other rebels have shown that this isn't about tribal party politics. It's about human decency.

On a local level, as a Cheshire East Councillor and Champion for Young People, I think it is vital that there is a local campaign to End Child Food Poverty.

To this end, I would like to invite people who support the cause, no matter whether your Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem or anything else, to contact me to discuss setting up our own non-partisan Cheshire East Taskforce on the issue of tackling Child Food Poverty.

Children in Cheshire East need our support and I hope local people will join me in campaigning and advocating for them.

If interested, contact me at [email protected] (please note that if it goes ahead, this campaign is not related to Cheshire East Council).

The PM is right; it's not down to schools to feed children, instead, it's down to the government.