Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has called for the state to utilise the UK’s soft drinks tax to fund an extra 800,000 free school meals in England, as inflation drives food poverty higher.
Oliver, who was guest editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, said he was “prioritising the gap between the free school lunch kids and the working poor . . . That’s 800,000 kids that we believe are vulnerable”.
Oliver has previously campaigned on obesity and the quality of children’s food, backing a levy introduced in 2018 on soft drinks with sugar content above a specified threshold. The levy raised £334mn in the financial year 2021-22.
He has now backed the Feed the Future campaign led by the Food Foundation charity, which is seeking the extension to free school meals to aid families in poverty as the cost of living rises.
“If you look at the money raised from the soft drinks tax, it’s not far off what’s needed,” Oliver told the BBC. He said that “chaos…