Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department is taking to improve access to legal aid.

Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

This Government is delivering significant fee uplifts to legal aid, with the first civil fee increases in almost 30 years and up to £92 million extra each year for criminal legal aid. This will support a more stable and sustainable legal aid sector, helping to ensure effective access to justice for some of the most vulnerable in our society.

In December 2024, we announced that criminal legal aid solicitors will receive up to £92 million more a year, to help support the sustainability of the criminal legal aid sector including prison law. Prior to that, in November 2024, we announced our response to the Crime Lower consultation, confirming an uplift to the lowest police station fees, introducing a new Youth Court fee scheme, and paying for travel in certain circumstances. Together, these changes amounted to a £24 million investment for criminal legal aid providers.

In civil legal aid, we recently published ‘Civil Legal Aid: Towards a sustainable future’ confirming that we will increasing fees for all housing & debt, and immigration & asylum legal aid work. This is a significant investment of £20 million a year. Providers will see significant increases in all fees, with the overall spending in these categories increasing by 24% for housing work and 30% for immigration work.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to improve Child Maintenance Service response times.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

Through the Service Modernisation and Digital Transformation Programmes, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) has made significant improvements to our service to improve response times.

The introduction of online services including ‘Child Maintenance Calculator’, ‘Get Help Arranging Child Maintenance’, ‘Apply for Child Maintenance, ‘Respond to Child Maintenance Application’ and ‘My Child Maintenance Case’ has significantly increased functionality and efficiency for our customers who have access to our online services 24/7 to:

• Receive information on what type of child maintenance arrangement would work best for them.

• manage their child maintenance arrangements through MCMC.

• receive progress updates.

• make card payments.

• report twenty-eight different types of changes and actions.

Through My Child Maintenance Case’ the customer now has the ability to process simple changes without the need for caseworker intervention, automatically speeding up the time taken to complete a change which has improved customer outcomes. These changes are a fundamental step towards the CMS modernisation goal of evolving our service to be online and quicker.

Although online communication is the preferred option, the CMS fully recognises digital is not suitable for all customers. We have freed up resources to deliver a more responsive service which allows caseworkers more time to better assist customers who need to reach out to us via telephone. We have taken steps to make call routing more efficient, resulting in a higher volume of calls being allocated to case-owning teams, supporting customers to receive a more responsive service.

Furthermore, we have taken timely action to review, evaluate, and enhance tools and training material to support staff. We have improved training for new entrant colleagues and caseworkers and upgraded our Operational Instructions with around 90% transformed into Smart Instructions, making them easier and quicker for caseworkers to understand and use.

Through greater use of SMS text and email and an extensive review of letters, making them easier for customers to understand, we can contact customers quicker.

As a result, the use of online services by customers has significantly increased, with more changes being processed quicker, call volumes have reduced and calls received are routed efficiently to caseworker teams who have access to enhanced Operational Instructions, SMS text and email, improving the CMS response times and delivering a quality service to our customers.

CMS is committed to continuous improvement. In July 2025, the CMS launched Customer Connect for income related changes: this new service enables caseworkers to instigate online conversations with customers to proactively gather information and administer their child maintenance case more efficiently. Customer Connect will be expanded to include other types of changes through a phased process. Customers who cannot digitally self-serve will continue to be contacted by phone or letter.

Additionally, as the demand for the service is increasing CMS continuously review our resources to get the greatest value for money and deliver the best service to our customers. We review our overall resource supply twice yearly and take appropriate steps to ensure that staffing levels meet demands and maintain our expected service levels. We have an ongoing recruitment campaign for 2025; this will ensure CMS is resourced to meet current and future forecasted service demand.

The CMS are committed to modernising and improving our service. We will continue to review, evaluate, and enhance our service to meet demand and deliver an efficient customer service. We regularly gather feedback from customers and stakeholders through the Customer Experience Survey; this insight is used to inform ways to improve our service.

Commencement of any additional activity as part of the Service Modernisation Programme will be informed by the value to our customers and the cost to the Department.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the performance of the Child Maintenance Service.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The CMS has four official Key Performance Indicators (KPI). These are: Application clearances, change of circumstances clearances, Collect and Pay compliance and assessment accuracy. Each KPI has its own standard measure.

Every quarter, the CMS publishes their data on Application clearances, change of circumstances clearances and Collect and Pay compliance.

This information can be found in the latest CMS statistics with the latest data available to March 2025. CMS statistics for June 2025 are due to be released on Tuesday 30th September 2025 at 09:30am.

Information on the accuracy of CMS assessments, which has a standard level of >99%, is published in the annual CMS Client Funds Account, Child maintenance: client funds accounts - GOV.UK.

Since 2020 CMS has shown a consistent level of 99.4% accuracy increasing for the latest year available (2023/24) to 99.5%.

The CMS continues to monitor and review their KPIs to ensure they are the most appropriate measure to drive performance and improve the customer experience.

Found: 31,680 2,000 18,000 10,560 31,680 3,000 14,000 Nusrat Ghani M P - - - - 31,680 - 9,000 40,000 Nigel Huddleston

Found: 31,680 2,000 18,000 10,560 31,680 3,000 14,000 Nusrat Ghani M P - - - - 31,680 - 9,000 40,000 Nigel Huddleston

Found: 31,680 2,000 18,000 10,560 31,680 3,000 14,000 Nusrat Ghani MP - - - - 31,680 - 9,000 40,000 Nigel Huddleston