Universal Credit

(asked on 26th June 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will estimate the cost to the public purse of extending entitlement to Healthy Start vouchers and vitamins to all claimants of universal credit once universal credit has been fully rolled out.


Answered by
Dan Poulter Portrait
Dan Poulter
This question was answered on 2nd July 2014

We plan to provide access to Healthy Start for pregnant women, new mothers, and children under four in the lowest earning families receiving Universal Credit. Our intention is to ensure that a broadly similar number, and range, of Universal Credit families will qualify as currently do so through income based benefits and tax credits.

The current annual delivery cost of Healthy Start throughout the United Kingdom (vouchers, vitamins and administration) is approximately £100 million. We estimate that if eligibility were extended to pregnant women, new mothers, and children under four in all families claiming Universal Credit it would increase the total spent annually to around £290 million.

Reticulating Splines