With echoes of the words “Thatcher milk snatcher” bouncing off the walls in Downing Street, the Government’s swift U-turn over proposals to scrap free milk for under-fives hardly came as a surprise.

Put forward by health minister Ann Milton, who said the cost of the milk scheme had doubled over the past two years, the proposal was dropped by David Cameron so quickly his education minister was informed about it while defending the plan on live television.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that this was a decision made amid fears of knee-jerk antagonism from parents, nurseries and the media.

God forbid that a Prime Minister with young children, whose wife is expecting another baby, could be seen to act in the vein of Margaret Thatcher’s controversial 1971 move to scrap free school milk for over-sevens.

But given the state of the country’s finances and the need for cuts, surely it makes sense to scrap such a costly scheme.

With the cost of running the free milk programme at nearly £50 million this year, and set to rise to £59m in 2011-12, it’s a huge expense we could do without. And, as Ann Milton said, there is no evidence that it benefits children.

The notion of free milk, which started in 1940, is an outdated one. The days of wartime and post-war food shortages are long gone.

They were long gone by the time I started school, yet the provision of school milk continued for young children. From what I remember, it wasn’t particularly welcomed. Crates of little milk bottles used to be left outside school so that in summer the milk turned yellow and sour, and in winter it turned to ice.

I hated it so much, it put me off milk for life. I used to either give mine to other children, or tip it away. I couldn’t stomach it and even ended up with a ‘milk note’ excusing me from compulsory consumption of it. I wasn’t the only one who hated school milk, and I remember a lot of it was thrown away.

To this day the thought of drinking a glass of milk makes me feel queasy, and I blame that awful warm yellow stuff we were forced to guzzle at school. A colleague, who also remembers throwing away school milk, says she too has never been able to drink it ‘neat’ since.

I already contribute towards funding the schooling of other people’s children, not to mention tax credits and child benefits. In an age of alarming levels of child obesity, I don’t see the point of spending millions boosting children’s intake of full-fat milk.