Child Maintenance Service

Catherine Fookes Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Kirith Entwistle]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. I will come on to that issue shortly.

Surely we must ask whether this is really the standard we are willing to accept. Another fundamental weakness lies in how the CMS deals with shared care, in that it absolutely fails to do so. In theory, maintenance calculations are meant to reflect the number of nights a child spends with each parent; in reality, the system largely relies on what parents report themselves. Rather than establishing the reality of shared care, the number of nights is effectively averaged out based on those reports, with no evidence required. When parents try to push back and provide evidence, that is often disregarded unless a court order is in place.

[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. As a child of divorced parents way before the CMS came into existence, I know that the whole issue of how much the paying parent should pay and getting them to pay on time is extremely stressful—for the children as well.

My hon. Friend raised good points about child maintenance being routinely weaponised. Collect and pay may help lots of families by making it harder for abusers to withhold payment, but I know from my caseload that many parents say that income is being hidden and that the CMS is allowing that income to be hidden—if a parent is self-employed or becomes a “director”, for example. Does she agree that the CMS must be equipped to find that hidden income?

[Kirith Entwistle]

My hon. Friend raises a particularly important point. I will come on to the collect and pay service and how that is also broken.

The result of how the CMS deals with shared care is a system that accepts unverified claims, but refuses genuine evidence. It is confusing, adversarial and often deeply unfair. The structure of the CMS also creates the wrong incentives. When maintenance calculations change depending on the number of nights a child spends with each parent, disputes over care arrangements quickly become disputes over money. Fortalice, a leading domestic abuse charity in my town of Bolton, is all too aware of that problem. It tells me of cases where a parent seeks increased overnight contact—not because that is in the child’s best interests, but to reduce their CMS payments or claim additional financial support. Children should never become bargaining chips in financial disputes.