//I'm sure you're aware the deserving poor(workers in poverty) are struggling with all the price rises they've encountered in recent times.//
Yes and so has everybody else. But free school meals have been provided for far longer than "recent times". Like many other things that were originally provided for a very few, they have become an entitlement for far too many. When I was at school just one of my classmates received free school meals and that was because his mother had recently been widowed, his father dying in a car crash in which she had been seriously injured. She was a deserving cause. Parents already getting £20/£14 a week to help them raise their children are not. My parents had very little spare cash but they still managed to pay for my food.