Covid-19: Child Maintenance Service

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) on securing this very important debate. 

Given the immense pressure our welfare system has been under as a result of coronavirus, it is understandable that thousands of Child Maintenance Service staff were redeployed to help the team at the DWP to process universal credit applications and payments to meet the unprecedented demand during the pandemic. I thank them for all their hard work during this very difficult period. However, the Government neglected to consider the difficulties it would cause to single parent households. In reducing the CMS to skeleton staff, children and single parents, 90% of whom are women, were left without protection. Hundreds of thousands of receiving parents are being left to struggle with missed payments that are not being chased up. Missed payments are spiralling into hundreds of millions and many families are now struggling to cope. Can the Minister tell us what plans the Government have to make up the backlog of receiving parents who have arrears owed to them, especially with the added financial difficulties due to the pandemic?

Last year, a survey of single parents conducted by leading charity Gingerbread uncovered that three quarters of single parents have had—[Inaudible.] to food banks or charities to survive. Only 16% had received the full amount of maintenance they were due each month. On average, single parents are owed more than £9,000 in back payments. The Government need to get a grip on this situation urgently and ensure that parents who owe child maintenance pay their fair share.

We must remember that these families are already among some of the worst off. They are now forced to deal with cuts to this vital lifeline, often alongside further loss of income due to the coronavirus. In my own constituency of Liverpool Riverside, a massive 40% of CMS cases in the collect and pay service are not currently in payment. This is broadly in proportion to the rest of the country, demonstrating a staggering shortfall in payments to single parents.

The situation has been worsened by coronavirus, but these issues run far deeper. In June last year, we saw four single mothers launch court action against the DWP to challenge the persistent failure of the Child Maintenance Service. At that time, £354 million was owed to single parents and only 10% had been recouped by the CMS through enforcement actions. It is a child’s legal right to be supported by both parents, but we have seen the service, designed to uphold that right, failing children and leaving many in poverty. Given that almost half of children living in single parent households already live in poverty, this triple whammy—of lost income due to covid, extra costs associated with looking after children not attending school and now losing out on vital child maintenance income—is leading to unimaginable hardship.

With the economic situation worsening every day, the Government need to take bold action now to avoid families being impoverished further by UK Government failure. Can the Minister tell us how the Department is working to reconcile staff shortages with a reduced assessment period of 12 weeks to two weeks for parents with a change in their earnings, particularly given the rise in unemployment? Will the Government consider offering direct payments to single parents not receiving maintenance without it having an impact on any of their other benefits?

These payments make the difference between a family keeping their heads above water and plunging into poverty. We need to see the Government commit serious funding to our welfare system, including CMS, to ensure that single parents and their children are protected at this time of crisis and into the future.