Rural Postal Services: Sustainability

Debate between Jamie Stone and Marion Fellows

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jamie Stone]

Perhaps I asked for that one.

As I said, there are ways of keeping the post offices open. Getting rid of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency services is absolutely not one of them.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

On that note, the withdrawal of DVLA services, due to take place in March next year, is abominable, and will further cut the amount that sub-postmasters can earn. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should invest in the future of the rural network, pay sub-postmasters enough to allow them to continue providing their vital services to local communities, and get more business into these vital outlets for rural communities?

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Lady makes an extremely good intervention.

Child Maintenance Services

Debate between Jamie Stone and Marion Fellows

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on securing the debate, and I thank him for chairing the APPG on child maintenance services this morning. As the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) alluded to, I have done this before. In fact, I have lost track of the number of times I have taken part in or led debates on the Child Maintenance Service. It is quite difficult to stand here and recall that nothing appears to have changed in the seven and a half years I have been pursuing this important topic. I will try to remain calm and measured and not get upset, as I sometimes do when thinking of the cases that have gone through my constituency office.

I want to make it clear that I am not here raging against paying parents alone. I am not here raging against receiving parents alone. I am here, as I have always been in these debates, to help the children involved. It is important that we all remember that, at the end of these esoteric debates, with everything we talk about, there are children who—through no fault of their own—are being pushed into poverty and who are part of the emotional abuse that sometimes takes place when parents separate.

I will do the formal bit—the bit with figures. DWP figures show that since 2012, when the CMS began, £512.6 million in unpaid maintenance has accumulated. That does not take into account the maintenance arrears that the CSA accrued over time. The CMS was supposed to be an improvement on the CSA system, but I cannot see—nor have I ever been able to see—that that is the case. The SNP—in the whole—and I have repeatedly called for effective enforcement action to be taken in the collection of maintenance arrears. Gingerbread ran a huge campaign on the issue as well. Some children go right through the system without getting what they should and then pass out of the system. They have been brought up in poverty as a result of parents not paying what they should.

There need to be much stronger systems and more resource dedicated to tackling parents who attempt to avoid or minimise child support payments and who do not pay what has been agreed. The withholding or restricting of child maintenance payments can be used as a tool for economic abuse. According to DWP data, in the quarter ending September 2022, 53% of new applicants on CMS were recognised as survivors of domestic abuse. It is not just physical abuse we are talking about here, but economic abuse. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West talked about the nasty remarks made on bank statements as part of the reference for money paid by paying parents. I want to thank the person who came to speak to the APPG this morning about the economic abuse side of this issue. You will forgive me, Mr Twigg—I have covered this table in papers and I cannot find the name I am looking for—but we heard from a member of Surviving Economic Abuse, which has been working on this issue for a number of years.

Some paying parents continue the economic abuse of their previous partners to the detriment of their children. It is utterly shameful. Little is done when a paying parent pays a token amount; it seems to halt processes at CMS, meaning that those children do not get what they are entitled to and—especially nowadays, in a cost of living crisis—what they absolutely need to keep themselves out of poverty. Children in poverty do not thrive and, at the end of the day, are not able to contribute to society in the way that they might otherwise have done.

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Lady is speaking with extraordinary power on this issue. Does she agree that even if a child is fortunate enough to get through this, it can still leave a mark on them for the rest of their lives?

[Marion Fellows]

I have papers in front of me from a case in my constituency. The parents have separated, and the father was going through court to try to get residency for his daughter. His daughter has now left school, and his ex-partner is still claiming child benefit, which is an abuse of the social security system. His daughter has now left home, is impoverished and has no contact with her father. He sees this as a failure of the state to help bring up his daughter properly. He has been paying, but he has now tried to walk away from the court case because he cannot afford to continue. It also would have meant that his ex-partner ended up in prison. It is a terrible case. I did say I would not get involved and get too emotional, but it is difficult to listen to what happens to children because of failures in the CMS.

A Joseph Rowntree Foundation report from 2020 found that nearly half of children in lone-parent families are in poverty. This has to stop. Satwat Rehman, the chief executive of One Parent Families Scotland, said:

“parents are facing huge delays in hearing back, poor customer service, and ultimately a failure to collect payments”

at

“a time when the cost of living is rising to impossible levels”.

Victoria Benson, chief executive of Gingerbread, said:

“Child maintenance is not a ‘nice to have’ luxury, in many cases it makes the difference between a family keeping their heads above water or plunging into poverty.”

Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts said:

“Providing for your children is a fundamental responsibility, and it’s genuinely surprising that the Child Maintenance Service allows so many adults to evade it. Children from these families deserve better than to be treated as collateral damage when relationships break down.”

The Scottish Government do all they can to mitigate child poverty. The child payment fund in Scotland, which has been quadrupled recently, is a good start, but it is still not enough. The real issue is that the CMS isnae working. That is it in a nutshell. Parents spend hours on the phone—either the paying parent or the parent with care—and they do not get the same person on every call. They get conflicting advice, they end up in tears and they end up wasting their entire weekend with worry, as Members have said. It is not good enough.