Covid-19: Child Maintenance Service

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP) [V]]

I must first pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), not just for securing this debate, but for the tenacity she has shown in sticking with this issue for many years. I hope, however, that the strength of the arguments we have heard from colleagues across the House today will inspire the Government to take action. As the Minister has heard today, the SNP is calling for a minimum maintenance payment and a root-and-branch review of the Child Maintenance Service. I will not repeat the detail of the arguments, but I support them wholeheartedly and I hope he will listen.

One of my biggest concerns is that abusive ex-partners have effectively been given an even greater helping hand during the pandemic—inadvertently, of course, but when organisations such as Scottish Women’s Aid, Gingerbread and Mumsnet, to name just a few, tell the Government this is happening, and they do nothing when they could do something, at some stage it stops being inadvertent.

A survey by Gingerbread and Mumsnet in August found that 86% of lone parents say the Child Maintenance Service has allowed their ex-partner to financially control or abuse them, post separation. Abusive partners are using the CMS as a weapon. Survivors and charities say that that has intensified during lockdown. This is deliberate domestic abuse. Given that the Government have been warned for months about that intensification, they and the CMS are responsible for its failure on enforcement. It is deliberate domestic abuse, and what is the Child Maintenance Service doing? Nothing—nothing but assisting the abuse.

Someone recently told me that her ex-partner takes his kids to all the burger, chicken and pizza places that most kids love. He also buys them all the sweets and fizzy drinks they want, and they come home saying, “Daddy said you should take us to nice places. Why don’t you, mum?” This is a mother who barely eats at times because he withholds the money—a mother who then has to cope with the impact of the sugar rush on her kids while trying to home-educate them during lockdown, with the guilt she feels for apparently not making her children happy, and with the misery of knowing that, despite finally managing to get away from him, he still has a hold on her. It has become so much worse during the pandemic because, as we have heard, the CMS is operating on a skeleton crew. It is despicable behaviour. I have no doubt that we all agree on that, but the Minister and the Government can do something about it.

The Scottish Parliament’s Equalities and Human Rights Committee recently held an inquiry on the pandemic. Scottish Women’s Aid reported that abusers are using the pandemic to increase their control of women’s movements; they are keeping them isolated, threatening to expose them to the virus, or discouraging them from seeking help by telling them that CMS services are not operating. We are supposed to be helping people in those circumstances. People need to know that the services are operating—that they and their children are a priority.

The Government must make that point loud and clear, but they cannot do that until they are sure that what they are saying is correct. The Department for Work and Pensions website talks of the need to focus on essential services and says that will impact services such as the CMS. I do not disagree with focusing, but is the CMS really classed as a non-essential service? We only have to ask the parents who use the CMS whether the Government have got it right to know the answer.

Gingerbread and Mumsnet did that in their survey of August last year. Just 11% of parents described their experience of using the CMS as positive, and a shocking 72% said that using the service had made their mental health and wellbeing worse. That is because the CMS, when it is working properly, is an essential service. Levels of dissatisfaction are so high that four parents, backed by Gingerbread, Mumsnet and the Good Law Project, have been forced to seek a judicial review of the service’s persistent failure to collect payments from absent parents. There is so much wrong with the CMS—not the staff, but the system—with or without a pandemic. We need that full review.

We know that the impact of covid-19 has been greatest on particular groups of people, single parents among them. Single parents are more likely to be women, working in a low-wage sector, working part time and facing huge restrictions because of transport and childcare. It was a choice to run the Child Maintenance Service on a skeleton staff last year, and there are still full-time employees of the service redeployed by the DWP. Why choose to make things more difficult for a group of people already facing more difficulties than most?

Another choice is to put the CMS right. Let us not forget that it was not right before the pandemic, which is why we are calling for a full review. During the pandemic, any measures that the Government take around covid restrictions or changes of service are supposed not to discriminate against any particular group, but in this case, as domestic abuse is gender-based and financial abuse is part of that, they are discriminatory. The Government have put money and extra staffing into other services, but why take money and staff away from this one?

I am hoping from some humility from the Government today. I welcome what the Minister said about the relevant Minister meeting us to look at individual cases, but the problems are systemic. If a politician holds their hands up and says, “We got it wrong, but we are ready to put it right,” nobody can argue with that. I can say on behalf of the SNP that if the Government are willing to put it right and have a root-and-branch review, we will support them.