Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of using the Universal Credit system to automatically register eligible households for (a) free school meals and (b) the NHS Healthy Start scheme.

No such assessment has been made. The Universal Credit system permits Department of Health and Social Care to check a citizen’s entitlement to Healthy Start vouchers, and Department for Education to check eligibility for Free School Meals.