Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the potential effect on voucher uptake of introducing a digital card scheme to replace the existing paper Healthy Start Vouchers.

The NHS Business Services Authority are leading work to digitise the Healthy Start scheme.

There will be several benefits achieved with the move to a fully digitised system which include greater flexibility to individual families by removing the requirement for the full value to be spent in a single transaction, which is currently the case with paper vouchers and a reduction in the stigma associated with paper vouchers.