Child Maintenance Services

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, just as it is a pleasure to serve alongside you as a neighbouring MP. I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for leading the debate. His speech was eloquent and powerful, and contained some useful pointers for the Minister. As my good friend and colleague stated in his opening remarks, this is a cross-party issue. We have constituency offices and teams that are inundated by the consequences of a system that is not fit for purpose. I welcome this opportunity to speak about the ways in which we can improve the Child Maintenance Service. Other MPs will highlight specific cases to inform the debate, and undoubtedly the Minister will have a number of takeaways.

The parents of hundreds of thousands of children are in receipt of child maintenance at any one time. When issues occur, they can blight family relationships. Many have already broken down, and some are quite toxic, in terms of domestic violence and so forth. Ultimately, the real harm and hardship are focused on the children. They are who the system is about: the system is there to protect children and help with their life chances. It is vital that it functions well.

We all agree that the CMS has many problems—not least the fact that so much maintenance goes unpaid. Only one third of families with maintenance arrangements have working agreements that see the money paid in full. That is not good enough. Almost half of children in single parent families live in poverty, and in-work poverty has hit record levels. It is no surprise that, as the evidence clearly shows, receiving child maintenance on time and in full lifts children and their families out of poverty.

I want to raise a particular case that my staff and I have been dealing with. We have been dealing with many cases, but this one highlights a number of the problems that constituents face. My constituent is called Danielle. She was forced to contact the Child Maintenance Service after a former partner refused to pay the amount calculated by the CMS to support their two children. A deduction of earnings order was implemented. When, in November, Danielle did not receive the payment, she was told that, although the employer had taken the money from the father that month, it had not forwarded that payment to the CMS.

My constituent works full time, but without that money, she was forced to go into her overdraft to pay for the basics in life. The cost of living challenges at the moment are well documented. Although Danielle has now received that money, the next payment did not arrive either. She was advised by the CMS that the employer stated that it would not transfer anything further until February. She was also told that she was not the only parent waiting for maintenance payments to be sent from that employer. It is clear that that employer is causing a multitude of problems not only for Danielle but for a number of constituents in my patch and in other constituencies in the area. The CMS may be forced to take the company to court to obtain the money, but the decision will be balanced against the cost to taxpayers of taking such action. That may result in my constituent waiting even longer for the money that she and, very importantly, the two children desperately need.

In the meantime, Danielle has been forced to incur additional costs by using an extended overdraft and borrowing hundreds of pounds from her pensioner parents, who do not have much money themselves. That could go on for a considerable time. She is talking about actually finishing work, coming out of the labour market and looking at other options, such as benefits. Surely the system is shooting not only Danielle in the foot, but her children and the taxpayer itself. The enforcement system is simply not working to protect children. There has been mention of the report that has finally been published today. I need time to digest that, as I am sure other hon. Members do. I hope that it addresses some of these issues and some of the issues already highlighted in the Chamber today.

Finally, and more specifically in relation to the case that I have raised here, will the Minister comment on how we can improve the deduction from earnings system, so that employers do not force families into debt or overdrafts or even on to benefits, and we ensure that children have the best start in life with a system that works effectively?