When you think that school meals are routinely eaten from a jewel encrusted golden platter supported by a fag on all fours the concerns of parents earning less than £16,190 don’t amount to much.

One of the nastiest things Old Etonian David Cameron’s government has done is to penalise low income families who struggle to feed their children and rely on free school meals. It hasn’t received the publicity it deserves but illustrates on a micro level how the Tories’ spending decisions are going to disproportionately hit working class communities.

Labour had planned to roll out scheme to extend free school meals to families who were not on benefits but earning less than £16 190. This was hardly very generous. The poverty line for a couple with two children is £374 a week, or £19,500 a year

Imran Hussain, Head of Policy, Rights and Advocacy at Child Poverty Action Group, said:

“The support of free school meals would have lifted 50,000 children out of poverty, according to the Treasury. Suspending this support is the same as an income tax hike of £600 a year for a working poor family with two children. This is the equivalent of at least a 1% income tax hike per child for the families it was meant to help.”

The catch for low income families is that they can lose their free meal entitlement when they come off benefits. Children whose parents are on income support or jobseekers’ allowance will continue to be eligible for the free meals. In practice this means that a minimum wage job often leaves parents worse off, especially when they have to shell out £1.66 for each child’s lunch. Even Ofsted, an organisation not known for compassion or empathy, has highlighted cases of families only being able to afford a lunch on alternate days for children

The Con Dems claim to be committed to ending child poverty by 2020. They’ve got their work cut out. Three million children in England live in poverty. Of these only 656,500 children in nursery and primary education qualified for free meals. The additional cost of feeding the others would be an infinitesimal fraction of the money spent in Afghanistan.

There will be lots more horror stories like this emerging in the coming months. By refusing to feed some of the poorest children in the country the Con Dems have made it very clear what their priorities are.