00:00This is a statement of intent. It's something that we've been wanting to do for a long time.
00:07It's the first time it's ever been done. So free school meals for 500,000 extra children.
00:12That's fantastic in terms of them and their attainment. It's fantastic for their parents because it says about £500.
00:19I would see it as part of a wider package because we've already done work on childcare, on breakfast clubs, on school uniforms.
00:28So it's about attainment of children and giving them the best possible start in life.
00:33It's also centrally a cost of living issue for their parents.
00:37I would say this is a down payment on child poverty. We've got a task course. It'll come out with a strategy.
00:44I want to get to the root causes of child poverty. One of the greatest things the last Labour government did was to drive down child poverty.
00:51I'm determined we will do that. Today is a down payment on that.
00:55But it also goes, as I say, with breakfast clubs already being rolled out, with childcare provision, which we're rolling out,
01:02and of course school uniforms, which can be really expensive for parents.
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