If you're pregnant or have children under age four, you may be eligible for NHS Healthy Start vouchers to buy fresh fruit, vegetables and milk at your local supermarket.

NHS Healthy Start is a vital scheme, but thousands of families who are entitled to receive support from this scheme don't even know it exists. At one point, £1.3 million worth of food and formula vouchers were going unclaimed each month.

Worst of all, uptake of the scheme varies massively across the country – creating a postcode lottery for support for low-income families.

No pregnant person, baby or child should go hungry because of where they live – but after years of mismanagement under the previous government, crucial data which could help end the postcode lottery has gone missing.

Data on uptake of the Healthy Start scheme used to be published online to help councils and healthcare professionals understand how many people in their area were missing out on support, and plan advertising to ensure the vouchers reach those who need them most.

But after identifying an "error" with the data, 19 months worth of data on local uptake data has been removed from the NHS website – with no timeline for a fix.

Getting this data corrected and published is a crucial first step to making sure every eligible family in every area of the country knows about this vital scheme. That's why we're calling on the body which oversees the scheme to urgently fix this issue and publish the data on how many families are missing out.

Will you join us, and add your name to our petition?