Labour commits to free school meals for all primary school children

Today, Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, and Angela Rayner, Shadow Secretary of State for Education, committed the next Labour Government to providing free school meals for all primary school children.

Labour will fund the policy by introducing VAT on private school fees. Labour’s policy will benefit the educational attainment and health of all children while ending a subsidy to the privileged few.
Research confirmed by the National Centre for Social Research and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown offering universal access to free school meals improves educational attainment through improvements in pupils’ productivity, enabling primary school pupils to advance by around two months on average.


The provision of free school meals also has been proven to improve the health of pupils through better nutrition - with over 90 percent of pupils eating a school lunch consuming food or drink containing vegetables or fruit (including fruit juice) compared with only 58 percent of pupils who eat packed lunches.

At the launch event in Lancashire, Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, said:
“No child in the UK should go hungry at school. By charging VAT on private schools fees, Labour will make sure all primary school children, no matter what their background, get a healthy meal at school.


“The next Labour Government will provide all primary school children with a free school meal, invest in our schools, and make sure no child is held back because of their background.”

Angela Rayner, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said:
“The Government’s cuts to the school budget are making school meals worse and limiting the number of children that can be fed. This decision affects the educational attainment and health of pupils.

“While the Conservatives offer tax giveaways to their billionaire friends, they are cutting the schools budget and threatening the health and futures of all our children by denying children the basic right of a healthy lunch at school. By investing in our education system and providing free school meals for every primary school child, we will remove the stigma attached to free school meals, and improve health and attainment for all children.“

Peter Knight

Peter Knight, who died peacefully this week at the grand age of 88, was the face of the Labour Party in Lutterworth and South Leicestershire for fifty years. He served on the Town Council for nearly 40 years, the District Council, and was twice County Councillor. I was his agent for the County Election in 1989 when we lost by 6 or 8 votes. I still have nightmares about the count. Four years later we triumphed - an amazing, astounding victory. I have different dreams about that night.


Peter was chair of Lutterworth Branch on and off over the years. I tended to alternate with him for a decade or so. I could do the business well enough, and I had electoral successes of my own, but Pete was the one person everybody around here knew as LABOUR. And it wasn't just in Lutterworth. Pete was born in Leire and always maintained strong links with the rural community. He was big in Gilmorton. No offence to North Kilworth but PETE WAS BIG IN NORTH KILWORTH! You turned up with Pete in some of the villages and you didn't have to knock on doors. People came out to talk to you.


We fell out, quite badly, in the late nineties, but we made up eventually and I am proud that we did. It would be wrong to say that Pete taught me all I know about politics. In politics, as in most other things, I tend to be an autodidact. But Pete taught me everything I didn't know, and that was exactly what I needed.


The other thing we had in common was the magistracy. I don't know how long Pete served on the Bench but it must have been thirty years. I am now in my third decade as a magistrate. I probably wouldn't have put myself forward had it not been for long chats in hazy pubs with Pete Knight. Sitting in court is probably the only public service thing I do nowadays and I wouldn't miss it for the world. So that's something else I have to thank Pete for. Well... that and the housing research trip to Denmark, but let's not go into that...


I wish I had a photo to go with this post. I will find one.


Pete will be hugely missed, by his family of course, but by all those who knew and worked with him. And that's a hell of a lot of people.


Roger Wood

South Leicestershire CLP Annual Dinner

David F's photos of the Annual Dinner, held in Lutterworth this year.

Our vision of an equal world for women

Ralph Innes RIP

Our good friend Ralph Innes died recently. For many years he was the Constituency Political Education Officer - and what a job he did! I remember one Saturday seminar here in Lutterworth where we had Chris Mullins (then best known for his campaign to free the Birmingham Six) and Roy Hattersley. Ralph knew absolutely everybody in the Labour movement.


This beautiful tribute by his wife sums him up perfectly. He was a great man and will be hugely missed.

Ralph Innes obituary

Pat Parkin-Moore

Tuesday 17 January 2017 

My husband, Ralph Innes, who has died aged 97, was one of the influx of refugees from Nazi oppression who have enriched the life of Britain so much.

He was born Rolf Einzig, and brought up in Berlin in a secular Jewish family, the son of Bernhard Einzig, the managing director of an overcoat manufacturer, and his wife, Eugenia. When it became obvious that there was no future for young Jews in Nazi Germany, he came to Britain in early 1939 with the intention of completing his training in knitting technology.

Ralph worked on the night shift in a knitting factory in Manchester but then moved to Leicestershire, where he worked in a factory and continued his textile education at a college in Hinckley. When France was invaded during the second world war, there were scare stories about German paratroopers being dropped into the British countryside and many newspapers campaigned to intern German refugees. Ralph was taken to the Isle of Man, where hotels in Douglas, the capital, had been taken over as internment camps. Later the younger men were allowed to volunteer for war work in Australia or Canada and Ralph was sent to a hutted camp in Canada.

When Winston Churchill became the prime minister it was decided that refugees who wished could join the army. Ralph returned to Britain to sign up with theRoyal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. He went with his unit to France after D-day (when he was advised to change his name) and, at the end of the war, was promoted to a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps because he spoke German and he interrogated some suspected Nazis.

After the war he worked in a knitting factory and then was employed as a lecturer in knitting technology at Derby Technical College. During this period he married, and had two daughters, Charlotte and Jennifer, but his wife, Bettie, died of pneumonia when the children were four and two and he brought them up on his own.

He became a senior lecturer at Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University) and was a director of the Institute of Linguists, and the International Federation of Knitting Technologists. All his life he was a socialist, inspired by the poverty he saw in Berlin when he was a boy, and was a long-standing member of the Labour party. He and I married in 1989 and lived happily in the Leicestershire village of Croft.

Ralph is survived by me, his daughters, my four children, and his niece, Hetty. Ralph’s sister was the painter and illustrator Susan Einzig, who died in 2009.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/17/ralph-innes-obituary

Speeding crackdown in Lutterworth and Broughton

Great news. Leicestershire Police are taking action against drivers who insist on speeding through our town and villages.

The speed enforcement dates are as follows: February 3 and 8; March 10 and 28; April 6 and 24; May 12 and 21; June 8 and 27.


Police have given fair warning. If you tend to be a tad heavy on the accelerator do yourself and us a favour - slow down! Don't forget that speeding fines and points have recently gone up. The penalty for using your mobile whilst driving will double in March.


This information came from Leicestershire Police's Neighbourhood Link. Why not Google them and sign up for alerts? Or you can click on the link on the right of this page. Under the nice photo of Willy Bach.

Brexit Lies - a farmer's story

Brexit is already having an effect on farmers here in South Leicestershire, one local dairy farmer told us earlier this month.

"Mine is a small business with a moderate turnover and currently no profits. I pay little tax but I do provide two and half jobs. I also pay several thousand pounds a month to other businesses for goods and services. My business therefore has a value to the wider community. But its future in threatened by Brexit. 

"I have come to rely on labour from Eastern Europe because British people prepared to milk cows are an increasingly rare commodity. My experience is repeated across the industry. Over 60% of staff on dairy forms in the UK are Eastern European. My Romanian employee has already left because the fall in the value of the pound has effectively lowered his wages.

 "The likely effects of Brexit are being downplayed to the public. Agricultural commodities are priced in US dollars. My costs have therefore risen by 15%. Dairy farming is not profitable enough to absorb the extra cost and the consumer will inevitably suffer. If we get to the stage of actually leaving the EU I believe the inflationary effect on food prices will increase dramatically.

"The referendum campaign was scandalous. Those who voted Leave were sold a lie."