Child Support (Enforcement) Bill

Margaret Ferrier Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 17th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on her hard work in seeing the Bill through to its final stages. I was honoured to be on the Bill Committee a couple of weeks ago, and she already knows that it has my full support. The hon. Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) has been a very able proxy for her today.

In my office we are no stranger to cases related to the Child Maintenance Service. They are some of the most frustrating cases, because they often come down to exactly the same problem, which drags on for years and is nigh-on impossible to resolve: non-custodial parents who are not keeping up with their financial responsibilities to their child and are intentionally avoiding making payment to the receiving parent.

The CMS technically already has the power to take further action where non-compliance has become a persistent issue. However, I know from my casework that it is not that straightforward. It will often require a court order. Waiting for the case to make its way through the already overburdened legal system can feel endless—and that is when the CMS actually investigates the more serious cases. I have seen far too many that have not reached the enforcement stage that they should have reached months or even years before.

I have a case open in which a non-compliant parent was investigated and a court date was set, but they never showed up. The sheriff issued a warrant for their apprehension in September last year, but the letter I received from the CMS just last week mentions that only in passing; it does not seem to have been followed up since then. For someone like my constituent, the Bill could really make a difference. I have seen CMS statements showing the child support that my constituents are owed. Sometimes the arrears have crept up into the thousands: one constituent was owed £10,000, but no enforcement action had been taken despite her pleas.

Another serious issue that is allowed to continue while payments are not enforced is the re-victimisation of survivors of coercive control, domestic violence and economic abuse. Too many women have reported how their ex-partner has been allowed to continue to exert their control and abuse them by exploiting the system. That cannot be allowed to happen: there must be consequences for it.

I do not want to derail the debate by going into all the systemic issues with the CMS and the real need for its reform, but it is so important that we all remember who loses out when support is not paid. Too many people look just at the often fraught relationship between two ex-partners, but it is the children who are losing out. It is the children who are living in financial difficulties when they might not need to—innocent children who have absolutely nothing to do with their parents’ quarrels.

That is particularly true in the current economic climate, with all the difficulties that the cost of living crisis and rising inflation are presenting to households across the United Kingdom. The number of children living in poverty in this country is already unacceptably high, yet research shows that if maintenance were being paid in full just in cases in which the custodial parent is currently receiving no financial support from the non-resident parent, it would lift 60% of those children out of poverty.

The Bill will not fix all the problems at the CMS. It is the job of the Government to understand the root cause of the problems and legislate to fix them, but the Bill will make a real, tangible change for a lot of single-parent families. I am delighted to be here today to watch the Bill tabled by the hon. Member for Stroud get ever closer to making that difference.