Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many care leavers in England claimed Universal Credit between 1 April 2023 and 1 April 2024.

The information requested is not available.

DWP stated 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 told about this.

This data is being monitored for data quality and does not meet the quality assurance standards for officials statistics: the data coverage is still very limited and the claimants we have data on are not representative of the UC caseload. It is hoped that information will be available for publication in 2027. I have asked officials to explore the potential for answering this question from other data sources.