Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the process is for (a) Skills Development Scotland and (b) other employment support agencies to be provided with access to data on claimants aged (i) 18 and (ii) 19 years that come off universal credit at the same level as they were prior to the roll-out.

The Department has been sharing data with Skills Development Scotland’s (SDS) since 2012 to support the Scottish Government’s commitments to 16-19 year olds and its Opportunities for All programme.

We have continued to work collaboratively with SDS to extend this data share to meet SDS needs – initially this was to extend to 18-24 year olds and then to include destination data. This is due to the Scottish Government’s commitment to ensure that the majority of places on the National Training Programmes, such as Modern Apprenticeships, are aimed at 16-24 year olds; and to maintaining priority in university and college places for young people.