Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the number of families who may be eligible for backdated payments due to delays in digitisation of the Healthy Start scheme; and whether his Department is taking steps to provide interim support to those families.

The NHS Business Services Authority operate the Healthy Start scheme on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care. They identified an issue with the application process following the digitisation of the scheme and worked with Department for Work and Pensions to resolve the issue quickly. All those who may be eligible for a backdated payment have received or are due to receive payments.