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Andrew Feinberg
White House Correspondent
Rachel Reeves has announced hundreds of schools will host free breakfast clubs from April as she doubled down on her controversial decision to abolish winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners.
The chancellor said the move would ease child poverty, after accusations she would force some less well-off pensioners to choose between heating and eating.
Ms Reeves has warned of more difficult choices ahead before next month’s Budget, but it is understood ministers will not scrap the council tax discount claimed by single people.
In her speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool, Ms Reeves 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”.
There was a dramatic moment as two men were ejected for disrupting her speech with a protest about pollution and arms exports to Israel.
During this week’s conference, Labour has been accused of silencing the voices of pensioners by blocking a vote on the government’s decision to scrap winter fuel payments for millions.
The Unite and CWU unions, which have tabled motions calling for the policy to be ditched, are furious that a debate on their demands was not scheduled for Monday alongside the chancellor’s speech.
Sharon Graham, Unite’s general secretary, said: “Right now, it is fair to say that the Labour leaders have tried to silence the voice of pensioners, workers and communities at party conference, in this blatant manoeuvre to block debate on winter fuel cuts and the departure towards austerity mark two.”
Dave Ward, general secretary of the CWU, said he was “really disappointed” that the debate on the winter fuel allowance had been put back to Wednesday.
After the breakfast club announcement, campaigners warned that the move alone would not address child poverty.
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.”
Shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt said: “The last few months – and today’s speech – were a big opportunity to set out plans to grow the economy. The chancellor once again wasted it with discredited attacks on the opposition.
“That is not governing – and business confidence is now vanishing as a result.”