Child Maintenance Service

Josh Fenton-Glynn Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ian Sollom]

I will come to the national statistics later in my speech, but those mentioned by the hon. Gentleman absolutely speak to the need for reform.

The constituent I mentioned is far from alone, and it is not all one way, with paying parents often finding themselves let down by the CMS too. Another constituent has spent months battling the service after experiencing a genuine drop in income. Despite providing every piece of documentation that he has been asked for, he has been left waiting and waiting for an adjustment to his payment schedule. He said:

“I received a letter that said my request was not valid. No explanation was given. The letter said I would be referred to an unnamed team that could help me. Almost two months later, I have received no contact.”

That is just another story that embodies the failures at the CMS.

I recently attended the parliamentary event hosted by Gingerbread, the charity for single-parent families, and the all-party parliamentary group on single-parent families. The testimony shared that day echoed many of the fundamental problems: enforcement failures, dehumanising customer service, the resulting financial hardship and, in too many cases, continued abuse.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. I note that I am an officer of the APPG on single-parent families. The recent excellent report from Gingerbread on fixing the CMS noted that where child maintenance is paid, child poverty is 25% lower in those families. Does he agree that Gingerbread’s work is absolutely vital, but that it is also vital, as an important step towards solving the problem of child poverty, that we fix the Child Maintenance Service?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Western]

The hon. Member will have heard me say that we are looking at all available levers across those four areas. We rule nothing in and nothing out, but I understand his point.

We are aware of the challenges that the CMS faces and recognise that there is scope for improvement. The ministerial team as a whole is committed to making those improvements. On what we are doing about those issues, I will turn to the recent direct pay consultation, which the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire referred to, and offer some background to the proposed reforms. My party has long called for reforms to the direct pay service, stating that it does not work for all parents. For that reason, this Government extended the direct pay consultation launched by the previous Government, with the express purpose of gathering as much feedback from stakeholders as possible. We are looking closely at the feedback received and will publish the Government response in due course. I appreciate that the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire would ask for a more specific timeline, but I hope he will appreciate that in what is an incredibly delicate area—dealing with vulnerable children, vulnerable families and strained relationships—we want to take our time and ensure that we get the changes right.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

My hon. Friend will know that getting it right for the most vulnerable children is important, but we are increasingly seeing post-separation abuse and post-separation financial abuse coming to light. Indeed, the report from Gingerbread that I cited earlier said that 45% of people who report post-separation financial abuse say that it gets worse when the CMS is involved. I hope that any report into the work of the CMS and supporting vulnerable families will look at that question and help us get some answers on that issue.

[Andrew Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He has a long history of working not just on CMS issues but on child poverty more broadly, and his expertise is of great value to the House. I will say a little more about domestic abuse and financial abuse later in my contribution, but I reassure him that the focus we had in the consultation on the proposed abolition of direct pay was intended as a specific response to that issue. I have seen appalling examples in cases that have crossed my desk as a Minister of people who can message their former partner in the form of a comment on a bank transaction. They will transfer a penny—they have a direct payment in place—along with an abusive term or some form of triggering harassment of a former victim of theirs. That shows that while a parent may have moved away from that unsafe and dangerous environment, they are never fully away when direct pay is engaged.