A teaching union has been accused of breaking the Government's rules after it used children in its campaign outside of the Labour conference today, despite it being during school hours. The National Education Union (NEU) had children hand out leaflets for its No Child Left Behind initiative.

Children wearing high-vis jackets were seen outside the Liverpool conference handing out stickers and holding signs with the message, "Free School Meals For All". The NEU's drive is to combat child poverty by advocating for policies like universal free school meals. Shadow education secretary Laura Trott called the children's involvement a "clear breach" of rules prohibiting teachers and student to miss school to attend protests.

She told the Daily Mail: "It's completely unacceptable to take children out of school to campaign on behalf of the unions.

"Unions can't condemn the impact of school absence on education, at the same time as enabling it all to engage in political protests. It is deeply inappropriate.

"Children are not tools for political activism, and unions should know better than to exploit them in this way. This is a clear breach of Government guidance that forbids leave of absence for political protests during school hours."

The Department of Education's guidelines state that "leave of absence should not be granted for a pupil to take part in protest activity during school hours".

An NEU spokesperson said: "The leafleting session at Labour Party Conference was to highlight the campaign for free school meals for all primary school children.

"The leafleting happened at this conference because Labour are the current government and this is teaching students how to raise their ideas and voices to elected politicians.

"Giving students an opportunity to come and engage with elected politicians exposes them to positive role models, raises aspirations and teaches them about rights in a democracy.

"The political impartiality requirements on schools prohibits the promotion of partisan political rules but this campaign is not aimed at any one party and in fact MPs in all parties have been lobbied."