David Walker has been the Bishop of Manchester since 2013 and involved in the House of Lords since September 2020. He spoke recently in response to the speech by King Charles III on the 24th July. That can be seen here. He also spoke on the same day in the House of Lords regarding “Household Support Fund” which can be seen below. Response to his comment came from the Labour member of the House of Lords Maeve Sherlock. More recently David submitted his “Universal Credit: Care Leavers” question on the 6th August and again Maeve Sherlock responded. That question and response is shown below.

Household Support Fund

Bishop of Manchester: Something like seven out of every eight local authorities now use this money to alleviate holiday hunger among our children. Can we have any hope that the Government will look at a more strategic way of helping children cope with hunger during the school holidays? Many of the churches in my diocese, and those of my right reverend friends here, are having to put on voluntary projects to support children during those periods. What can we hope for?

Maeve Sherlock: I pay tribute to the Church and other faith organisations, which do such important work with children, families and their communities. I commend them for that. The question of holiday hunger, and indeed of children and food, will clearly be considered by the child poverty strategy and the task force when it gets together. We will set up a child poverty unit in the Cabinet Office that will work with the task force. We have already begun talking to stakeholders of different kinds, asking for experiences and getting expertise from inside and outside government to look at the best ways we can make this better. But we are also making some specific starts. For example, we are committed to making sure we have breakfast clubs in every single primary school. That is a simple measure that helps with the cost of living for families and helps children to start the school day able to concentrate because they have had something to eat. So I fully accept the importance of ensuring children have food and of being consistent; that will be part of what we look at.

Universal Credit: Care Leavers

Bishop of Manchester: To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to publish the data, routinely collected since February 2022, on care leavers claiming Universal Credit.

Maeve Sherlock: We have no plans to publish data on care leavers claiming Universal Credit.

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 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 for publication.

The Department will continue to carefully review the data in the usual way.