Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Why I’m ducking the Rashford debate

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Moments arrive when it becomes clear you’re losing the zeitgeist. Whatever might be the spirit of the era, you don’t get it any more. For me such a moment occurred last week as I followed news and commentary about the footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign for meal vouchers for disadvantaged children during the school holidays. A Nottinghamshire Conservative MP, Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw), had spoken in the Commons debate. ‘Where is the slick PR campaign encouraging absent parents to take some responsibility for their children?’ he asked. ‘I do not believe in nationalising children.’

‘Brilliant!’ I thought. And well put. Of course I don’t believe that all children who go hungry do so because their parents can’t be bothered; there will be as many different circumstances as there are deprived families. But ever since I tried living on the dole as an MP in the early 1980s I’ve known that you can eat healthily very cheaply. What caused my downfall in that programme was paying (as my TV bosses demanded) to attend a football match. Help and advice with getting priorities right, budgeting and preparing inexpensive meals is tremendously important, especially for disorganised families; but, as Clarke-Smith suggested, such a campaign wouldn’t tug the heartstrings as easily as Rashford’s celebrity-led operation has done. A famous, public-spirited and very likeable footballer could do much for a healthy-living-on-a-tight-budget campaign. But it’s easier just to campaign for the government to give people more money.

As for the phrase ‘nationalising children’, I thought the MP was spot-on. Nearly four months ago, when Rashford’s proposals were first resisted then accepted by government, I wrote for the Times arguing that ministers had ‘lost their footing, and must finally slide all the way to the provision of meals or vouchers for poorer children all year, in or out of school’.

‘Why for summer but not Christmas?’ I asked.

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