The Labour Party has voted against the provision of universal free school meals for young children (in the US they'd be 1st/2nd graders). This is despite the sympathies of their underlings in the local regional councils who generally supported this plan. Their reasoning is as follows:
“Politics is about choices, and these are competing good things. Within Scottish Labour, we don’t disagree with the free school meals policy, but believe the money could be better spent by providing childcare for the poorest 50% of two year olds."
It's similar to their attitude towards free education. They would prefer that Scottish students had to pay tuition fees so that more money could be spent on colleges.
But the real source of this is Labour latching onto one of the SNP's proposals in the White Paper on Scottish Independence that they would introduce "universal free childcare" from about the age of 1 to 12 or something, provided that they had the levers to deliver something like that in a way that was actually viable. As soon as the SNP said that, Labour began saying that it was actually within the SNP's power to introduce something like that and to some extent they are correct but it would cost around £70,000,000 out of our budget, something we don't really have right now.
Labour, of course, when asked "where will the 70 million come from" never reply. The SNP's answer for why independence is necessary for this to happen is that the idea is if we provide universal free childcare for children of all ages, parents will be able to work more without having to worry about stuff like that, perhaps allowing them to earn more money and allowing them to buy stuff, taxation from which will go to the Scottish Government, meaning that the service will pay itself over time. Currently those taxes go straight to the treasury in London and we see none of it. Where the 70 million will come from to start off with I'm not sure, but perhaps it may have something to do with cuts in the military/nuclear budgets.
Regardless... as part of Labour's attack plan for the year ahead, which consists of shouting "BUT WHY AREN'T YOU DELIVERING THE CHILDCARE
NOOOOOOW" over and over and over again until people start believing it, they have cynically voted against something like this, something that is just "primal" for Labour. Universal free school meals. Labour in the mid-20th century were defined by their belief in universal services/benefits, look at them now. They support means testing of benefits. Their leader referred to Scots as living in a "something for nothing society". It's just terrible.
If we make free school dinners universal that removes the stigma kids currently have to go through. The only reason why you'd be eating a free dinner is because you're poor, or indeed, very very poor. This way kids from families who may not be in the bottom 20% but are still finding things difficult don't have to worry about paying for healthy food for their kids, something that is quite expensive in this country. School dinners are being used right now by the various public health boards as a way for getting kids to eat more healthily across the board, something that will be improved upon as time goes on.
Anyway the vote passed 67-46.
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