Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will take steps to abolish all Child Maintenance Service for parents with care who are victim-survivors of domestic abuse.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department has recently concluded a public consultation on policy changes. This included proposals to remove the Direct Pay service (where parents pay each other directly) and managing all CMS cases in one service to allow the CMS to tackle non-compliance faster.
The consultation also sought views on how victims and survivors of domestic abuse can be better supported to use CMS and whether removing Direct Pay completely would benefit victims and survivors of domestic abuse. This follows the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act receiving Royal Assent in June 2023, which recognised that Direct Pay may not always be appropriate for victims and survivors of domestic.
Removing Direct Pay would mean all maintenance payments would be monitored and transferred within the scheme. As all payments would flow via CMS, the CMS would be able to automatically identify any that were missed, late or partial and immediately take action to re-establish compliance. This would also reduce the ability for perpetrators of domestic abuse to exploit the communication channel needed for direct pay to function for the purposes of abuse; and prevent abusers from inflicting economic control and coercion through withholding CM payments.
Feedback from the consultation is being considered and a Government response will be published in due course.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many applicants have received the Bereavement Support Payment since April 2017.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Statistics for Bereavement Support Payment, including claims allowed each month from April 2017 to March 2024, are published on Stat-Xplore in the Bereavement Support Payment (BSP) Claims Received dataset.
Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest and, if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the total amount payable was to people in receipt of the Bereavement Support Payment.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The total expenditure of Bereavement Support Payment from April 2017 to March 2023 was £1.2 billion. Figures for the 2023/24 financial year are still being finalised so are not included in this expenditure total.
Note: figures are rounded to the nearest £100,000 and are taken from the Department for Work and Pensions Benefit expenditure and caseload tables 2024.
Benefit expenditure and caseload tables 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)