Ken McMeikan

Ken McMeikan

Businesses are scared by the daunting task of helping the three million British children that are going hungry during the school holidays, according to departing Brakes CEO Ken McMeikan.

McMeikan made the claim in a report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger, where MPs warned of the “major social evil” of children living off packets of crisps when school kitchens closed.

Some children who had not eaten a proper meal in days vomited or had to drop out of football tournaments because “their bodies gave up on them”, the report found.

It said parents on low incomes with starving families were providing dinners of flavoured water or cereal in a “last ditch attempt” to feed their children.

The one million children growing up in poverty who receive free school meals, and the two million who do not qualify for them whose parents are on low wages, are most at risk of hunger, according to the group of MPs.

The report concluded that children who subsisted on an “impoverished diet” in the holidays returned to school malnourished and sluggish, with some having lost “significant” amounts of weight.

McMeikan told the inquiry the government and businesses were unaware of the problem of child hunger.

“Yet when you think about it, it’s obvious,” he said.

“There is no infrastructure, there’s no strategy, there’s no easy way” for businesses to get involved. Therefore, it’s not clear how you can actively support the problem.

“The scale of it is quite daunting for people. For most businesses it’s scary and out of reach for them to do something to tackle it.”

Brakes launched its Meals & More project in 2014 to alleviate child poverty in the UK.

Though it provides surplus food for meals and support to 500 clubs across the country, McMeikan said it was only able to reach 1.3% of children who receive free school meals.

“This is about much more than just providing food,” he said. “But food is the essential basic need that children have. What we’re trying to provide is about creating the future generation - it’s hard as parents to sit by and watch children who for 13 weeks of the year starve, but from a practical business point of view this is a future workforce that, if we can get them a better education, they will come out better colleagues in the workforce. At the heart of this is developing a better society.”

Businesses wanted “to feel that sense of ownership, and that they are contributing to it” in order to get involved, he added.

The report urged the government to combat the problem by using 10% of the tax on sugary drinks in order to allocate £100,000 to every council in the country to fund schemes and “abolish school holiday hunger”.

In the foreword of the report, the committee’s chairman Frank Field MP said in “the fifth richest country in the world, too many children are stalked by hunger”.