Hundreds of thousands of health care professionals have written to the Chancellor and health secretary urging them to offer free school meals to thousands more children to help fight malnutrition.

The Food Foundation has revealed that four million children now live in households affected by food poverty. The charity has also found that 800,000 children in families on Universal Credit (UC) are still not getting access to free school meals.

In a letter sent today to the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and the health secretary Gillian Keegan, leaders representing more than 150,000 doctors and medical students, and over half a million nurses, midwives, dieticians and support staff called for the expansion of free school meals.

The letter stated that healthcare professionals, charities and organisations ‘strongly support’ the Feed the Future campaign, which has called on the Government to extend the eligibility of free school meals to all children in households on UC as a first step towards universal provision.

‘Every day, healthcare professionals see the impact of hunger and malnutrition in their work. We believe all children in England should be guaranteed access to the food they need to live healthy lives,’ reads the letter.

‘We urge the UK Government to act now to protect the health of the nation’s children by expanding the Free School Meals scheme to all children in desperate need to guarantee them a hot, nutritious meal at school, for their health, the economy and the NHS.’

The group responsible for the letter, which includes the British Medical Association and leaders of the medical and nursing Royal Colleges, also highlighted a recent report commissioned by Impact on Urban Health from the analysts PWC, which estimated that expanding free school meals to primary school children would benefit Britain’s economy with an £8.9m annual boost in improved productivity and health.