New free breakfast clubs from April mean parents will be handed free £400

The new Labour Party government Chancellor said the move would ease child poverty, and said not every choice she took in government would be popular with her party and beyond.

Rachel Reeves has announced hundreds of schools will host free breakfast clubs from April. The new Labour Party government Chancellor said the move would ease child poverty, and said not every choice she took in government would be popular with her party and beyond.

But she pledged: “I will not duck those decisions, not for political expediency, not for personal advantage.” She added: “I will judge my time in office a success if I know that at the end of it, there are working-class kids from ordinary backgrounds who lead richer lives, their horizons expanded, and able to achieve and thrive in Britain today.”

By next April, thousands of children will have access to a free breakfast club at school in up to 750 schools in England, ahead of a wider national rollout potentially by September. Ms Reeves said the move would be “an investment in our young people, an investment in reducing child poverty, an investment in our economy”.

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The plan was previously estimated to cost around £365million per year but is expected to save “hard-working parents” more than £400 every year. Becca Lyon, from Save the Children, said: “If the chancellor is serious about helping working-class kids from ordinary backgrounds lead richer lives, then they need to remove barriers like scrapping the two-child limit to universal credit.”

Child Poverty Action chief executive Alison Garnham said the breakfast clubs were a “welcome start but meeting Labour’s ambition to end child poverty will need much more from this government. And even with a pledge of no return to the past, austerity is the reality for more and more children as they’re hit by the two-child limit. The policy must be scrapped – and soon – if the government is to deliver on its mission to reduce child poverty.”

A spokesman for Rachel Reeves said: "The idea being that the summer term is the pilot before the full rollout as soon as possible, which we hope to be the beginning of the new school year in September."