Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to publish the data, routinely collected since February 2022, on care leavers claiming Universal Credit.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We have no plans to publish data on care leavers claiming Universal Credit.
DWP started routinely collecting data on care leavers claiming UC in February 2022. All new claimants are now given the option of reporting their care leaver status, and work coaches can record existing claimants’ care leaver status if they are they are told about this.
This data is being monitored for data quality and does not meet the quality assurance standards for official statistics: the data coverage is still very limited and the claimants we have data on are not representative of the UC caseload. Therefore, no figures are available for publication.
The Department will continue to carefully review the data in the usual way.