Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will introduce a box on the universal credit application form through which claimants may give permissions for their data to be used to register their children for free school meals and other income-related educational benefits.

The Department for Education (DfE) provides an Electronic Eligibility Checking Service (ECS) to all local authorities in England, which is used to confirm eligibility for free school meals.

To support this, there are already data sharing agreements in place between DfE and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and other government departments who administer benefits which qualify families for free school meals. This enables local authorities and schools to quickly verify eligibility for free school meals, including where parent(s) have been awarded Universal Credit and have earnings below the prescribed threshold for free school meal eligibility.

DWP therefore has no plans to ask claimants to give permission for their Universal Credit data to be used to provide an automatic entitlement to other benefits.