Marcus Rashford launches Child Poverty taskforce

Making sure that the poorest children in society are fed – and fed well – has been pushed to the top of the political agenda in the past few months thanks to the efforts of footballer Marcus Rashford.

In June, a campaign by the Manchester United and England striker prompted the government to U-turn, agreeing to offer free school meal vouchers to more than a million children during the summer holidays.

Now he’s formed a Child Food Poverty task group along with major supermarket chains and food producers to call for more government funding. The football star said failing to tackle the issue would have a “devastating effect on the stability of the country”.

We’ve been speaking to two of those involved in coming up with the three policy recommendations that Marcus Rashford has thrown his weight behind to tackle the issue of food poverty: Henry Dimbleby, the co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain, who led the government-ordered National Food Strategy review, and Anna Taylor, who runs the charity the Food Foundation.

We began by asking what the government should be doing to tackle the problem.