Covid-19: Child Maintenance Service

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see the Minister back at the Dispatch Box.

I begin with some good news. As an MP of nearly 20 years’ service, I well remember the old unlamented Child Support Agency, which was cumbersome, bureau-cratic and highly formulaic. I remember receiving an absolute plethora of complaints from both mothers and fathers—I had people in my constituency in tears from both sides of the fence, if I can put it like that—because of the way the CSA worked, or rather, in many cases, the way it didn’t. If I speak as I find, I now receive far fewer complaints since the changeover from the Child Support Agency to the Child Maintenance Service. By and large, the CMS works far better than the CSA, not least because there is a different philosophy at work. Whereas the Child Support Agency compelled people to pay via a very strict and rigid formula, the philosophy with the Child Maintenance Service is, wherever possible, to encourage the people concerned to make arrangements between themselves for the benefit of their children. Most parents, even if their relationship has broken down, want to do their best for their children. The CMS encourages them to do exactly that, and in most cases it works well.

However, now for the less good news: where it goes wrong with the CMS, it goes horribly wrong. The CMS is particularly poor at pursuing parents—often, unfortunately, fathers—who wilfully refuse to pay. In many cases, they are not on a regular income under pay-as-you-earn, but adopt tactics such as becoming self-employed or registering as company directors in order deliberately to make their income as opaque as possible, not just to the taxman but to the Child Maintenance Service, so as to reduce their liability. I completely agree with the excellent Chairman of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who said, in effect, that that is utterly unacceptable.

I have a constituent, Miss Laura Panza, who has permitted me to raise her case in Parliament this afternoon, and with whom, I have to tell the Minister, I have been corresponding—having checked this morning—for almost six years. She is still owed arrears that total five figures. She has been fighting very hard for that money on behalf of her daughter to provide as best she can for her future, including her future education. I cannot possibly summarise such a complex case—the file is literally several inches thick—in four minutes; I probably could not do it in four hours. However, I can ask the Minister, on her behalf, if I could have a meeting with Baroness Stedman-Scott, the Minister in the other place, in order to raise Miss Panza’s case directly.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

As my right hon. Friend knows, I am not the Minister directly responsible for this matter—that is the noble Baroness Stedman-Scott—but I speak on behalf of the DWP today, and I want to respond to his point and to colleagues who are going to make further such points. I can assure him and other colleagues that the Minister concerned will, within 28 days, meet all colleagues who are raising specific cases brought to her by individual MPs.

[Mr Francois]

The Minister has a deserved reputation in this place for being a thoroughly good chap. I am very grateful for that unequivocal answer. I shall certainly, on behalf of my constituent, take him up on his very kind offer, and then hopefully we can get justice for Miss Panza and her daughter.

Now that I have unmasked the problems of the CMS, I want to commend Gingerbread for all the very good work that it has done in campaigning to raise the profile of this issue for parents around the country who, for many years, have done nothing wrong—all they have done is to campaign to try to get the best for their children. In most cases, parents can sort these things out between themselves perfectly rationally, but where they cannot, and people wilfully refuse to pay, they need a more proactive and muscular CMS to hold those people to account. I hope that Gingerbread, by campaigning, can eventually bring that about. I am sure that the Minister will do whatever he can to facilitate it too.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) on securing this important Backbench Business Committee debate and thank all colleagues who have participated. I repeat the point I made earlier that the Minister concerned, Baroness Stedman-Scott, will meet colleagues and raise individual cases, and I assure the hon. Lady that there will be a written response to all matters that I am unable to deal with in the limited time available for my responses today.

We know that the vast majority of separated parents, whether receiving parents or paying parents, take their responsibilities extremely seriously. Our aim is to help parents, and we are sensitive to the needs of both parties: the CMS is designed for the needs of both parties and designed to promote collaboration between parents, and it offers a statutory scheme where that is not possible. We do this fundamentally because the innocent parties in all of this are the children.

I do not have children myself, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I suffered the loss of my children last year, and I know that any issue involving our children is an emotional and distressing and personal process, and I promise this House that the Government and all DWP staff are absolutely trying to handle this very, very difficult process in the most sensitive way possible.

We believe the CMS made a dramatic improvement in the immediate pre-covid period and the statistics support that. Last year, in 2019-20, over £1 billion was arranged through the direct pay and the collect and pay services. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) highlighted, in the last seven years the percentage of CMS cases where no maintenance is being paid has halved. CMS investigators have the power to deduct directly from earnings and to seize funds owed in child maintenance payments where requests for payments are consistently refused, and between 2018 and 2020 the compliance rate of parents on the CMS collect and pay service has increased by 8%.

But of course covid has had a significant impact. In March last year, the Department, along with much of Government, had to respond to an unprecedented situation; that meant working quickly to prioritise services and support for those who would be impacted by the particulars of the pandemic. As a result, we mobilised our frontline welfare system like never before with an injection of more than £7 billion into our welfare safety net and over 3 million more people claiming support through universal credit. To assist that, 1,500 CMS staff were redeployed to support the increase in the universal credit workload. I wish to put on record my thanks and the thanks of the Secretary of State to all the staff in the CMS and across the DWP who have worked so hard and so flexibly during the pandemic itself.

Despite our focus on protecting those most in need and on tackling the huge challenges over the past year, the principle that parents should be responsible for their children remains. Nobody should have exploited this crisis as a way not to fulfil their obligations to their children. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, that there is a special place for those who game the system and put their children’s welfare at risk.

On the issue of avoidance, I want to address the particular point that, as with all calculation decisions, clients can request a mandatory reconsideration, or appeal the decision. In the CMS, we have opened up our definition of income to deal with almost all additional sources of gross income captured by self-assessment. They include income from property, savings, investments and, indeed, dividends and other miscellaneous income. Where a person’s income appears suspicious in any way, the case can be referred to the financial investigations unit. I should add that, in respect of enforcement, like other Government services, the CMS introduced temporary changes at the start of the pandemic—for example, directing customers to use its online services in the first instance, which was available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Understandably, application processing times were impacted, and because the courts were closed, that meant that liability orders and sanctions work had to pause. Nevertheless, in the quarter to June 2020, compliance on the collect and pay service was at 74%, with £41.7 million paid. Throughout this pandemic, as colleagues have maintained very fairly, the Minister responsible for the CMS, Baroness Stedman-Scott, and her officials have regularly met not only parliamentary colleagues, but key stakeholders such as Gingerbread and Families Need Fathers, to understand both the ongoing problems and also the needs of the separated families.

The issue of domestic abuse was raised. In the circumstances that prevailed during the periods of lockdown it was, and it remains, vital to ensure that the CMS supports victims of domestic abuse in whatever way that manifests itself.

I want to turn now to the recovery of the CMS post July 2020. As the Government’s response to the pandemic adapted, so has the CMS been able to reinstate its core services.

For example, by the end of September, nearly 1,150 CMS staff had returned from the redeployment across the Department. The CMS has also stepped up efforts to pursue dedications and on the recovery and enforcement of outstanding arrears by reviewing all non-paying cases to make sure that each one is up to date, with outstanding changes, actions and arrears and balances being corrected.

On enforcement, the CMS has continued to enforce payments where possible throughout the pandemic in order to support children and is working to increase enforcement activity back to pre-crisis levels where possible. At the end of September last year, 43,000 paying parents on the collect and pay service had a deduction from earnings order in force, with £25.7 million being collected from those paying parents during the period 1 July to 30 September 2020. In the quarter to September 2020, the compliance rate on collect and pay was 72%, and £41.1 million was paid. In addition, £201.8 million was due to be paid through direct pay.

It is right to say that liability orders require the most court participation and remain the most difficult measure to restart while social distancing requirements remain in place. However, we are working with Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and the Ministry of Justice with regard to court hearings, and that work continues apace. As of 2021, the CMS has pretty much restored its full service and remains committed to making sure that everyone pays or receives the right amount of child maintenance. We continue to focus efforts on tackling non-payment of child maintenance and backdated income changes. New digital services have been introduced, and these are available 24/7 and allow greater flexibility for parents to contact the CMS. Ensuring that those payments are made to those who are owed them is the binding principle that drives forward the Child Maintenance Service. The difference it can make to a child’s life chances demonstrates the critical importance of paying child maintenance, and the Child Maintenance Service will not hesitate to use robust enforcement measures where someone consistently refuses to meet their obligations.

I thank all colleagues for their participation in this important debate. As usual, the praise of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is something that is rarely obtained, but always enjoyed. I assure the House that DWP Ministers and the Secretary of State, who is in the Chamber today, look forward to us continuing to work together to address the needs of separated parents and to produce better outcomes for children, because, after all, the children are what this is all about.