Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what data his Department holds on the number of care leavers aged between 17 and 21 who received Universal Credit in each of the last five years in (a) Knowsley and (b) England.

The information requested is not available.

DWP started routinely collecting data on care leavers claiming UC in February 2022. All new claimants are now given the option of reporting their care leaver status, and Work Coaches can record existing claimants’ care leaver status if they are they are told about this.

This data is being monitored for data quality and does not yet meet the quality assurance standards for official statistics: the data coverage is still very limited and the claimants we have data on are not representative of the UC caseload. Therefore, no figures are available.