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School meals - live: 700,000 sign petition against MPs’ subsidised food as Leeds United pledges £25,000 for Rashford campaign

England football star Marcus Rashford visiting FareShare Greater Manchester at New Smithfield Market with his mother (left) (Fareshare/Mark Waugh/PA Wire)
England football star Marcus Rashford visiting FareShare Greater Manchester at New Smithfield Market with his mother (left) (Fareshare/Mark Waugh/PA Wire)

Hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for a subsidy on MPs’ food in Parliament to be scrapped, as a Premier League club backed Marcus Rashford’s free school meals campaign.

It comes as a second Tory MP was dragged into an escalating row over the provision of food for disadvantaged pupils, after the government refused to extend the programme for those at risk of going hungry over the half-term break.

Conservative Selaine Saxby was forced to clarify her comments on the issue while Ben Bradley was called on to apologise after he was accused of the "stigmatisation of working class families" in a tweet.