Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the rollout of Healthy Start vouchers (a) in general and (b) for people without citizenship or indefinite leave to remain.
The Healthy Start vouchers scheme helped hundreds of thousands of nutritionally vulnerable families since its introduction in 2005. The NHS Business Service Authority are now digitising the scheme, on behalf of the Department, introducing an online application to replace the paper form and a pre-paid card to replace paper vouchers.
Those who are eligible for the temporary extension, which includes parents or guardians who are excluded from claiming public funds as a consequence of their immigration status, have been paid in vouchers and will have paper vouchers replaced with direct payments.