Reforming the Child Maintenance Service (Public Services Committee Report)

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, it is a heartrending statistic that 4 million of the UK’s 14 million children live in separated families. That is a higher proportion than in many European countries. The drawbacks of that situation are well known. Children from one-parent families show lower average educational attainment, reduced social mobility and a higher likelihood of becoming young parents themselves. Almost all these patterns are driven by poverty—44% are living in poverty and instability, with reduced social capital—rather than by single parenthood as such. I add in parentheses that I hope this Government do not plan on any legislation that will cause more cohabiting parents to split, for that is what is likely if financial claims by one cohabitant against the other are enabled after three years, as has been suggested, because the parents will separate before those three years are up.

It behoves us to do all we can to make sure that absent parents, usually fathers, pay their fair share of support for the children they have left behind. The figures in the Public Services Committee report show otherwise. Some 31% of liable parents in the collect and pay scheme paid nothing. Some £28.1 million was due in one quarter. Enforcement is slow. The process and the calculations breed distrust between parents, and many of the families involved have suffered domestic abuse.

It is a matter of regret that the Government have rejected some of the committee’s recommendations, especially those at the heart of the system relating to the retention of direct pay and the treatment of victims of domestic abuse. The CMS is a vast service, employing over 5,000 people, and it suffers from what we are used to with national government services: lengthy waits on the phone and poor communication. That is why it seems to me that we have a troubling dissonance between the principle of child maintenance and the reality.

In family law, the interests of children are paramount. This principle permeates our legislation, court determinations and public debate. But, when we look at the practicalities of our system for securing support for those children left behind by one parent, there is little reflection of that principle in reality. The report of the Public Services Committee on reforming the CMS exposes that breach. It describes a system where, despite the paramountcy of the child’s interest, the delivery of support is complex, enforcement is weak and too many children are not getting what they need and deserve.

Child maintenance is not discretionary. It is a moral and legal obligation. Parents are under a continuing legal duty to maintain their children. Under the CMS, maintenance is due to children usually only until they are 16, or 20 if they are still in certain types of education, oddly excluding university education. Again, I add in parentheses that the Financial Provision Bill I have introduced in this House on several occasions would make maintenance mandatory to age 21 as the default position. The duty of parents to support is regardless of whether they were married, and the CMS is the infrastructure for where court or family payments are not working.

There is a striking contrast between the flimsy support for child maintenance and the vast legal structure of payments to divorced spouses, something lawyers are heavily focused on. Payments to divorced wives occupy large amounts of court time and chalk up disproportionately expensive costs going to the lawyers who represent them. Spousal maintenance is based on need, compensation and the ending of a partnership. It involves significant calculation and disclosure of all assets and income. Amazingly, however, assets and property, unearned income and overseas income are not taken into account in calculating child maintenance. On paper, children’s claims are paramount, while spouses’ claims are contingent. But children’s maintenance is compulsory and spousal maintenance is conditional in law. The way the system works shows something very different in the order of priorities.

The Public Services Committee’s report shows that non-payment of child maintenance is widespread. Much has been said about that by speakers already. If custody is shared, there is a reduction in the amount paid to the person who, in common sense, is the caring parent. Claims for more custody may serve to reduce the amount that the largely absent father pays. Even when attempts are made to enforce the payment, compliance is only partial. Too many children are left in poverty, which this Government want to end. So often we have heard that this Government are lifting children out of poverty. Are they? I would go so far as to call the system a national disgrace, in part because taxpayers are left to fill the gap that absent fathers have left.

This has come about because child maintenance is often, unusually, not a matter for the courts. Even in divorce cases, the amount paid to children is often an afterthought, tacked on to the end of a judgment which is all about the needs of the ex-wife and the ex-husband’s ability to pay. For others not in the court system, as we know, the CMS operates. But the courts focus on individual cases, while the CMS has to deal with hundreds of thousands of cases, so the CMS relies on formulaic processes and standard arrangements. One can see that AI will take over this process one day, and it might well be a much better outcome.

In the direct pay system, the payer and payee are left to deal with each other once a calculation has been made, so there is little evidence as to whether it is really working. Enforcement is slow and reportedly not vigorous enough. This is such a contrast to the way divorced wives are treated. For them, there is individual scrutiny. The entirety of the couple’s finances is set out. If payment is not made, one can go back to court. There is professional representation on both sides. I am not saying that all children’s support orders can be handled like that, because there are, sadly, so many. But it is a bad contrast of the two systems. Divorce maintenance can be an expensive protracted struggle, and it too is having to face up to new emphasis on domestic abuse. But divorce gets the level of judicial scrutiny, comprehensive treatment and enforceability that children do not get. A single parent might be better advised to claim maintenance through Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989, which applies to them in court.

The committee’s report would improve matters for children. It is a matter of regret that the Government have disagreed with some of its central proposals, and I hope we will hear why. The Government have agreed to stronger enforcement tools and faster appeals. They have agreed to improved staff training, especially relating to domestic abuse cases, and to improve communications. The Government have accepted that the calculation of maintenance should be reviewed, but there is no detail. This needs improved income assessment and stronger investigation of the ability to pay. In contrast to the committee’s report, the Government want to move to a single system of collect and pay, replacing direct pay. This may protect payees whose relationship is troubled, but it may at the same time increase hostility and disturb arrangements that were working.

Before 1991, child maintenance was largely a matter for the magistrates’ courts. After all these years of a state child maintenance service in different guises, one wonders whether it was right to remove it from the supervision of the courts. Has the pendulum swung too far to an administrative, impersonal system at the expense of trust, openness and enforceability? Perhaps more oversight by magistrates would help. In the meantime, we are letting down children, and the consequences of this will carry on down the generations. Studies have shown that the effects of poverty on a child continue through their life and pass on, in turn, to their own children.

I ask the Minister: will the Government get on and reform those limited parts of the system that they have agreed to reform? They have said that they want to end child poverty. Here is an opportunity for them which they must seize immediately; there can be no reason why they should not. I conclude by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for the wonderful work that she and the rest of the committee have done on this neglected, complicated but vital system.