Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the total amount is of arrears owed to the parent with care that has been written-off by the Child Support Agency since March 2012.
Answered by Will Quince
The information is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost. Information on cases written off since 13th December 2018, when the write off process began, will be published in June 2019 (number of cases) and September 2019 (amounts). Information on the planned changes to the Child Support Agency Quarterly Statistical Summary to incorporate this information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-support-agency-statistics-publication-strategy
Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many of the 1,193,200 cases with no current liability from the 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes that there were at March 2012 have been written-off by the Child Support Agency.
Answered by Will Quince
The information is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost. Information on cases written off since 13th December 2018, when the write off process began, will be published in June 2019 (number of cases) and September 2019 (amounts). Information on the planned changes to the Child Support Agency Quarterly Statistical Summary to incorporate this information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-support-agency-statistics-publication-strategy
Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many cases with no current liability where no money has flowed in the last quarter have been transferred from the Child Support Agency to the Child Maintenance Service since March 2012.
Answered by Will Quince
Since June 2014, when the Case Closure process began, there have been 222,300 cases transition from the Child Support Agency to the Child Maintenance Service. This information can be found on table 8 of the Child Support Agency Case Closure Statistics. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-support-agency-case-closure-statistics-june-2014-to-december-2018
Information on whether money has flowed on these cases in the last quarter is not readily available.
Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the amount of historical arrears-only cases from the 1993 to 2003 Child Maintenance Scheme that have been written-off by the Child Support Agency since 14 December 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The information is not readily available and has not previously been published as official statistics, however we expect these new statistics to be published in June 2019. Information on the planned changes to the Child Support Agency Quarterly Statistical Summary to incorporate this information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-support-agency-statistics-publication-strategy
Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many historical arrears-only cases from the 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes have been closed by the Child Support Agency since the Child Maintenance (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 came into force on 14 December 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The information is not readily available and has not previously been published as official statistics, however we expect these new statistics to be published in June 2019. Information on the planned changes to the Child Support Agency Quarterly Statistical Summary to incorporate this information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-support-agency-statistics-publication-strategy
Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many historical arrears-only cases from the 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes, were on the Child Support Agency's computer systems when the Child Maintenance (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 came into force on l4 December, 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The number of historical arrears-only cases from the 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes which were on the Child Support Agency’s computer systems when the Child Maintenance (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 came into force on 14 December, 2018 is not available.
The number of historical arrears-only cases on the computer systems at 31st December 2018 was 496,400. This figure was published in the Child Support Agency Quarterly Statistical Summary (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-support-agency-quarterly-summary-of-statistics-december-2018).
Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether any records pertaining to the historical arrears-only cases from the 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes been destroyed, deleted or removed from the Child Maintenance Service since the Child Maintenance (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 came into force on 14 December 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
There have been no records destroyed, deleted or removed from the Child Maintenance Service since the Child Maintenance (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 came into force on 14 December 2018.
Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much in arrears accrued under the historical arrears-only cases from the 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes has been written-off since the Child Maintenance (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 came into force on 14 December 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The Department routinely publishes information on the 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance schemes in the CSA Quarterly Summary of Statistics, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/child-support-agency-quarterly-summary-statistics--2.
The next CSA Quarterly Summary of Statistics is due to be released in May. This will include statistics on the amount of historical arrears written off and the number of cases closed since the Child Maintenance (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 came into force.
Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many historical arrears-only cases from the 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes have been closed since the Child Maintenance (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 came into force on 14 December 2018.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
The Department routinely publishes information on the 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance schemes in the CSA Quarterly Summary of Statistics, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/child-support-agency-quarterly-summary-statistics--2.
The next CSA Quarterly Summary of Statistics is due to be released in May. This will include statistics on the amount of historical arrears written off and the number of cases closed since the Child Maintenance (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 came into force.
Asked by: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many arrears-only cases are registered with the Child Maintenance Service.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
Data is available on the number of arrears only cases registered with the Child Support Agency (CSA). This is available in Table 2 of the Child Support Agency Case Closure Statistics: June 2014 - September 2018 (below).
Statistics on the total number of Child Support Agency arrears only cases that have been transferred to the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), and the number of CSA arrears only cases on the CMS caseload are published in Table 8 of the same publication (Child Support Agency Case Closure Statistics).
This publication shows that as of September 2018 there were 171,700 CSA arrears only cases on the Child Maintenance Service Caseload.
Data on the number of cases with arrears accrued within the Child Maintenance Service is available from Child Maintenance Service Administrative Data. This shows that, as of September 2018, there were 6,700 cases where arrears have been accumulated solely within CMS and liability has ended. There are a further 2,700 cases with both CMS and CSA arrears where liability has ended.*
Case closure is part of the government’s 2012 vision for child maintenance reforms designed to encourage parents to consider making collaborative family based arrangements.
Since 2014, cases with the Child Support Agency have been closed in a phased manner as part of the transition to the Child Maintenance Service.
To provide CSA clients with an opportunity to consider their choice of future maintenance arrangement – including whether they could make a family based arrangement – they are signposted to the Child Maintenance Options service as part of the closure process.
Following Parliamentary approval of new regulations in December 2018, the Department is now implementing its Child Maintenance Compliance and Arrears Strategy which includes finally dealing with the remaining arrears only CSA cases. Where there is a prospect that it may be cost effective to do so, we are offering parents a chance to ask the department to attempt to collect the outstanding arrears. Arrears that are not cost effective to attempt to collect and those which parents do not want us to pursue, will be written off.
*Please note that the data supplied on arrears accrued within the Child Maintenance Service are derived from unpublished management information which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.