Is Labour’s breakfast club rollout a poorly disguised bribe?

At first glance, it appears to be a much-needed step towards universal social provision, writes John Rentoul. In reality, it is a way of currying favour among voters – using taxpayers’ money

After nine months, the government finally claims to have started to deliver practical help to families. On Monday morning, 750 primary schools across England opened their doors half an hour early to the children of parents who want to take advantage of breakfast clubs.

Breakfast clubs feel like the sort of retail politics that actually matters to people, akin to the free school lunches for under-sevens introduced by Nick Clegg in the coalition government in 2014, and the recent extensions of taxpayer-funded childcare. Indeed, one of the features of breakfast clubs is that they provide another half-hour-a-day of childcare.

The breakfast club pilot scheme is a remarkably modest first step. Local councils complain that the plan, being introduced in just one in 20 primary schools in England, is underfunded. But it seems sensible to work gradually towards Labour’s manifesto promise of a breakfast club in every primary school.

The bigger question is whether it is the right priority, given that every pound spent on a breakfast club is a pound that cannot be spent on something else. It could be argued that charities, including The Felix Project, which saves surplus supermarket food from going to waste and sends it to schools and clubs, already do a good job.

Equally, it could be argued that taxpayers’ money would be more effective in tackling child poverty if it went towards raising the two-child limit on benefits.

By coincidence, the breakfast clubs were rolled out on the same day as a group of charities issued a warning that record numbers of children could be pushed into poverty by the two-child limit.

The brutal political reality, though, is that breakfast clubs are popular, whereas paying welfare benefits to families with three or more children is not. Partly, this is because universal provision tends to be more popular than targeted help for the poor. This remains true, despite the Daily Mail’s complaint that the free school lunches for infants “mean the children of millionaires are now being fed at taxpayers’ expense, alongside the impoverished children who really need help”.

Labour tends to favour universal provision, on the grounds that it helps to bind in the support of the middle classes and avoid the stigma of means-testing, but the problem is that it is much more expensive – which is why Rachel Reeves as shadow chancellor would allow Bridget Phillipson, as shadow education secretary, only to make the (modest) promise of breakfast clubs rather than the (expensive) promise to extend free school lunches.

In such matters, “popular” is a relative term, however. There was not much evidence of a huge wave of grateful support for the government in September last year, when 15 hours a week of free childcare was extended to the “eligible working parents” (those earning up to £100,000 a year) of children aged between nine months and two.

Perhaps that was because it was a bipartisan policy, following a timetable announced by the Conservative government, even if Labour insisted that the previous government had not set aside the funding needed for it. Or perhaps it was because taxpayers have some understanding that they are being bribed with their own money.

Still, if the government is going to bribe people with their own money, it might as well let them know by how much they are benefiting. Hence Labour’s campaign on social media to promote the policy, and the government’s information materials, which put a price on the policy: “It means those parents can drop their children off half an hour earlier – helping parents get into work, giving them up to 95 additional hours back to juggle busy mornings, and saving working families up to £450 a year.”

Currently, that saving is available only to one family of primary-school children in 20, in England, but Labour must hope that the offer of “up to” £450 for all parents of young children will be part of its promise of help with the cost of living at the next election.