Budget 2024: Tripling of free breakfast investment to save Newcastle mum £200 a month

Watch Kris Jepson's report on how the uplift for free breakfast clubs benefits some parents in the North East, but how charities say the chancellor could have done more to ease poverty.

A Newcastle mother has told ITV News Tyne Tees that she will now be able to send two of her children to breakfast clubs at school, thanks to a tripling of investment in the scheme, announced during the budget on Wednesday.

Aimee Tweedy, who works at the Vinnie's Support Centre in Newcastle after the charity supported her, said only one of her three children currently receives the breakfasts.

She also welcomed a £1 billion boost in special educational and disabilities (SEND) funding, as all three of her children will benefit from the SEND investment.

She told ITV Tyne Tees that the breakfast clubs will really help her children feel "regulated for the school day".

She said: "Instead of having to go in at normal time, and then settle, to then get into lessons, because they’re actually missing some learning time by doing that.

"So for me, financially and for their own wellbeing it would help massively. Otherwise it would cost me about £200 a month and I’m not in a financial position to pay that at the moment."

Another mother, Sophie Marshall, said she will save around £25 a week on the breakfasts, which she and her partner rely on "massively".

Ms Marshall said: "We can’t actually leave children in the house on their own so for us to got to work, we use breakfast club, but at the minute we pay for the breakfast club, so it’s trying to get a space, but also making sure we’ve budgeted money for them to use it."

Dr Lindsey MacDonald, from the Breakfast Breakfast, Children's Charity, said offering free breakfasts across the board not only helps parents financially, but also enhances education of young people.

She said: "So what we’ve found is that breakfasts in schools has what we call a rippled effect, so it helps the children at risk of hunger, who otherwise might not get breakfast, at the start of the day, but it also improves the entire learning environment for the whole school, so it has a real impact on that whole community.

"That’s going to make better experiences for teachers, so that they can really focus on teaching not necessarily managing behaviour."

Hundreds of families use Vinnie’s Community Market, buying everything from clothing, toiletries and even children’s toys, but those who provide this service say the budget could’ve given more help to families.

Jan Cruickshanks, who works at St Vincent's Newcastle, told ITV News: "We’re in the North East and we have the highest rate of child poverty. We see it everyday in our working day, supporting families with food parcels, free meals, clothes parcels. If they’d have lifted the two child cap, it would have actually boosted it for a lot of families."

The former chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, argued that the budget's tax rises, introduced yesterday, will override any benefits, adding: "She’s [Rachel Reeves] broken her word and when people experiences lower living standard, lower wages as a result, they’re going to feel very angry indeed."

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