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Coronavirus: Court action threatened over school meal vouchers
Jun 5, 2020
Campaigners have threatened to bring legal action against the government for not providing free school meal vouchers during the summer.
Normally children only get free meals from school during term-time.
But eligible pupils received food vouchers over Easter as the country coped with the Covid crisis.
The Department for Education said the scheme will not continue in the summer holidays but campaigners say children in vulnerable families will go hungry.
They have written to the Department of Education threatening to bring a judicial review of the decision.
The letter was sent by the food charity Sustain and the Good Law Centre, led by the campaigning lawyer Jolyon Maugham.
Emergency food' for families with nothing to eat' 'Humiliation' as free school vouchers fail at till
Kath Dalmeny of Sustain said: "I have spent hours and hours and hours of my time on Zoom meetings, on phone calls trying to get this issue noticed by all other means. That has not worked and so we must make people take this seriously."
But no legal challenge has yet begun, they do not yet have a court date or the funds to complete a case, and many attempted judicial reviews fail.
The voucher scheme has cost more than £129m in England already and is worth £15 per week for each eligible child.
One woman, Daisy, who has two children, said the amount and standard of food they ate would have to be cut without the vouchers. "Having that fifteen pounds a week is a big deal," she told the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4.
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