I grew up in grinding poverty. My parents were both disabled and my earliest years were spent living in the North during the Thatcher years. My dad wasn’t an amputee when I was born, and my mum’s condition became disabling after my birth, after a 3 year wait for an operation.

I learnt not to ask for things, because we didn’t have money. We lived with my nan, then in a council house. We were loved, and we were fed. Sometimes we were fed on food parcels from the Church. Sometimes dad, a diabetic, deliberately under ate so we had enough.

Poverty lingers. I am terrified of ever being that poor again. It haunts me. I work in a school where the majority of children are brought up in poverty. Those children matter every bit as much as those who attend the private school across town.

Quibbling over whether children deserve to go hungry because you think their parents are feckless and should have budgeted before having kids really does make you morally bankrupt. The end result of your politics is a child not eating to teach an adult a lesson. Really?

Some children will go hungry because of bad decisions by those supposed to care for them. Some parents will find themselves in circumstances beyond their control. If you think that means it’s okay to classify children as deserving or undeserving poor, you have no compassion.

Stop telling children that they aren’t worth feeding. Please. Many of these children already have cripplingly low self-esteem because of their circumstances. Don’t tell them that to society they aren’t even worth the cost of a meal.