THIS week brought welcome news for parents in Truro and Falmouth and across Cornwall.

This government has made good on our manifesto promise and announced that St Francis Church of England School, Tregony Community Primary School and the Community & Hospital Education Service in Truro and Falmouth will be among the first 750 schools to offer free, daily breakfast clubs from April that will ensure children are school-ready and parents are better off with an optional extra half hour of childcare every morning. In all, there are 15 schools across Cornwall that will be part of the pilot and as it is a universal offer, all families who choose to will be able to benefit.

Labour’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which I voted for last month, legislated to create these clubs as well as put a cap on the number of branded uniform items schools can require which will also save parents money as they will be able to buy cheaper alternatives.

That comes alongside this government’s childcare expansion, providing 30 free hours of early years education from September.

Evidence shows that breakfast clubs can boost children’s academic attainment levels, while at the same time providing a valuable source of childcare for working parents at the beginning of the day with breakfast included.

When my son started school in Falmouth this kind of breakfast club wasn’t an option for me. Under the Conservatives they were available in just one in ten primary schools. Getting him to school and me to work at the same time was a challenge. So I am really pleased that Labour’s rollout of free breakfast clubs will help working parents as well as benefiting children.

There’s another important element to this: it will help bear down on the levels of child poverty that were left far too high by the Conservatives. In Cornwall more than 20,400 children under 16 (nearly 22%) were living below the breadline in 2022/23. That number has been steadily rising.

We are determined to change that, with the breakfast club rollout being driven alongside the wider work of the Child Poverty Taskforce, which is set to deliver an ambitious strategy to increase household income, bring down essential costs, and tackle the challenges felt by families living in poverty.

I believe that children growing up in Truro and Falmouth deserve the best start in life every morning. That’s why I’m backing this measure. This government will waste no time in rolling out free breakfast clubs in primary schools and I look forward to visiting the clubs in my constituency in April.

Jayne Kirkham, Labour MP for Truro and Falmouth