Child Maintenance Services

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on securing the debate, and I thank him for chairing the APPG on child maintenance services this morning. As the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) alluded to, I have done this before. In fact, I have lost track of the number of times I have taken part in or led debates on the Child Maintenance Service. It is quite difficult to stand here and recall that nothing appears to have changed in the seven and a half years I have been pursuing this important topic. I will try to remain calm and measured and not get upset, as I sometimes do when thinking of the cases that have gone through my constituency office.

I want to make it clear that I am not here raging against paying parents alone. I am not here raging against receiving parents alone. I am here, as I have always been in these debates, to help the children involved. It is important that we all remember that, at the end of these esoteric debates, with everything we talk about, there are children who—through no fault of their own—are being pushed into poverty and who are part of the emotional abuse that sometimes takes place when parents separate.

I will do the formal bit—the bit with figures. DWP figures show that since 2012, when the CMS began, £512.6 million in unpaid maintenance has accumulated. That does not take into account the maintenance arrears that the CSA accrued over time. The CMS was supposed to be an improvement on the CSA system, but I cannot see—nor have I ever been able to see—that that is the case. The SNP—in the whole—and I have repeatedly called for effective enforcement action to be taken in the collection of maintenance arrears. Gingerbread ran a huge campaign on the issue as well. Some children go right through the system without getting what they should and then pass out of the system. They have been brought up in poverty as a result of parents not paying what they should.

There need to be much stronger systems and more resource dedicated to tackling parents who attempt to avoid or minimise child support payments and who do not pay what has been agreed. The withholding or restricting of child maintenance payments can be used as a tool for economic abuse. According to DWP data, in the quarter ending September 2022, 53% of new applicants on CMS were recognised as survivors of domestic abuse. It is not just physical abuse we are talking about here, but economic abuse. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West talked about the nasty remarks made on bank statements as part of the reference for money paid by paying parents. I want to thank the person who came to speak to the APPG this morning about the economic abuse side of this issue. You will forgive me, Mr Twigg—I have covered this table in papers and I cannot find the name I am looking for—but we heard from a member of Surviving Economic Abuse, which has been working on this issue for a number of years.

Some paying parents continue the economic abuse of their previous partners to the detriment of their children. It is utterly shameful. Little is done when a paying parent pays a token amount; it seems to halt processes at CMS, meaning that those children do not get what they are entitled to and—especially nowadays, in a cost of living crisis—what they absolutely need to keep themselves out of poverty. Children in poverty do not thrive and, at the end of the day, are not able to contribute to society in the way that they might otherwise have done.

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Lady is speaking with extraordinary power on this issue. Does she agree that even if a child is fortunate enough to get through this, it can still leave a mark on them for the rest of their lives?

[Marion Fellows]

I have papers in front of me from a case in my constituency. The parents have separated, and the father was going through court to try to get residency for his daughter. His daughter has now left school, and his ex-partner is still claiming child benefit, which is an abuse of the social security system. His daughter has now left home, is impoverished and has no contact with her father. He sees this as a failure of the state to help bring up his daughter properly. He has been paying, but he has now tried to walk away from the court case because he cannot afford to continue. It also would have meant that his ex-partner ended up in prison. It is a terrible case. I did say I would not get involved and get too emotional, but it is difficult to listen to what happens to children because of failures in the CMS.

A Joseph Rowntree Foundation report from 2020 found that nearly half of children in lone-parent families are in poverty. This has to stop. Satwat Rehman, the chief executive of One Parent Families Scotland, said:

“parents are facing huge delays in hearing back, poor customer service, and ultimately a failure to collect payments”

at

“a time when the cost of living is rising to impossible levels”.

Victoria Benson, chief executive of Gingerbread, said:

“Child maintenance is not a ‘nice to have’ luxury, in many cases it makes the difference between a family keeping their heads above water or plunging into poverty.”

Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts said:

“Providing for your children is a fundamental responsibility, and it’s genuinely surprising that the Child Maintenance Service allows so many adults to evade it. Children from these families deserve better than to be treated as collateral damage when relationships break down.”

The Scottish Government do all they can to mitigate child poverty. The child payment fund in Scotland, which has been quadrupled recently, is a good start, but it is still not enough. The real issue is that the CMS isnae working. That is it in a nutshell. Parents spend hours on the phone—either the paying parent or the parent with care—and they do not get the same person on every call. They get conflicting advice, they end up in tears and they end up wasting their entire weekend with worry, as Members have said. It is not good enough.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Looking back to the contribution from one of my constituents at the APPG this morning, the problem is not just the communication between the CMS and the constituent, but the fact that constituents are told they will get a call back. On several occasions that has not happened. Does the hon. Member agree that that adds to the poor mental wellbeing of those parents?

--- Later in debate ---

[Marion Fellows]

I could not agree more. I have numerous cases like that, and I have had them over the piece.

I want to commend Cyrene Siriwardhana, who was the person from Surviving Economic Abuse who spoke this morning. She raised the issue of how, when the paying parent is charged an additional 20% in collect and pay because they do not have a voluntary arrangement, that leads to even more economic abuse of parents. They game the system; they pay a little, and everything stops. Then, eventually, they pay a little more. That just is not right.

One difficulty in all this is the lack of communication between the DWP and HMRC. Many parents have provided the CMS with evidence about what their ex-partner is earning and doing, only to be told, “We cannot help.” HMRC is also involved and does nothing either. It is imperative that we get the system to work properly for the children involved and that we stop parents gaming the system.

I was encouraged by the issuing of today’s report and the Government’s response to Dr Callan’s independent review of the Child Maintenance Service response to domestic abuse. I was glad to see that the Government have accepted almost all the recommendations. However, I am concerned that the last one—recommendation 10—has been declined. They should all be accepted.

The last one recommended that the DWP produce an implementation plan with a specifically tasked team within the civil service to take forward the recommendations, with a remit to report directly to the independent reviewer. I try not to be a cynic. I try very hard to see the best in everyone and to believe that the Government really want to help the children who are suffering because they are not getting their maintenance payments. Recommendation 10 would be a good way to keep all the review recommendations that have been accepted firmly on track.

I find it difficult to trust a Government whom I have been calling on for seven and a half years to make changes to help parents who have to go to the collect and pay system and in many cases have no choice. The Government have made various concessions over the years—they said they would take away people’s passports, for instance, but they have not really done that or taken other measures to try to enforce payment. The issue is really important. Can the Minister tell me why the Government declined that last recommendation?

I have spoken briefly to the Minister before. One of the other issues that we have as parliamentarians, and especially as Back Benchers, is that the Minister responsible for the CMS—I am not entirely certain how long this has been the case, but I think it matches my tenure in this place—has always been based in the House of Lords. That means that every time we have a debate in the Chamber or Westminster Hall, we do not get to look into the eyes of the Minister responsible for the Child Maintenance Service. I have had many meetings with Baroness Stedman-Scott over the years and I look forward to having many meetings with Viscount Younger of Leckie. However, I would be much happier if I could have a debate with the Minister directly responsible for the Child Maintenance Service so I could take forward some of the worst cases that I have and have had in my caseload over the past seven and a half years.

In conclusion, we have to stop having these debates about the Child Maintenance Service, how it is failing and what needs to be done to improve it. We just need the Government to get on with it. We need them to do the right thing and make sure that children do not live in poverty because two or three Government Departments cannot get their act together and chase down people who are abusing either the DWP benefits system or the HMRC system for paying tax because they are working in the black economy and their earnings cannot be shown and used in calculations for what is due to the children.

I will sit down now because I do not want to get started on how the CMS calculates payments. I could be here for another hour. Will the Minister please look at the issue and give us a good reason why the Government have not accepted recommendation 10? We need to know that the Government will do what they say they will do, and that will go back to Dr Callan, as the independent reviewer.