Child Support (Enforcement) Bill

Simon Baynes Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 17th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

It gives me great pleasure to speak in this morning’s debate, and I am very grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) and for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) for bringing this Bill before the House. I will first look for a moment at the Government’s record on improving child maintenance services, which I will comment on briefly before coming back to the Bill, because that will perhaps set it in more context.

Some 64% of paying parents using the collect and pay service paid some of their scheduled child maintenance in the quarter ending September 2022, an increase from 60% in the quarter ending March 2018, so there has been an improvement. Over the past 12 months, the Child Maintenance Service has arranged over £1 billion in child maintenance payments. The majority of applications are now made digitally, making it even easier for parents to access support for their children. The upgraded online account, “My Child Maintenance Case”, allows customers to access and maintain data for themselves. An increasing number of changes of circumstance can also be reported, and the 24/7 digital service “Get help arranging child maintenance” makes the CMS more accessible for customers deciding what type of arrangement is most suitable for them.

I am pleased that the CMS has brought forward the point at which deductions from bank accounts can be made. It is now making better use of deductions from earnings orders so that they can be set up much more quickly, reducing the time required to process those payments. In 2021-22, the Government made more referrals to enforcement agents than in any other year, and the number of liability orders applied for each year is now back to pre-pandemic levels. My final point in this section is that the CMS works with other Government Departments to improve the use of enforcement powers and explore the possibility of introducing new powers for cases in which people are wanton. That is the context in which I would now like to comment on my support for the Bill that is before the House.

The key points of the Bill are that where the DWP agrees that a person has failed to pay an amount of child support maintenance, and a deduction from earnings has not been possible or is not appropriate, the Bill will enable the DWP to make a liability order in respect of that amount against the person, rather than going first to the courts. The person against whom the liability order is made has the right to appeal to a court against the making of that order, but the amount of child support maintenance cited in the order cannot be challenged. Currently, the Child Maintenance Service aims to recover arrears from the non-resident parent—alternatively, the paying parent—within two years, and expects them to pay up to 40% of their income to clear their arrears.

As my hon. Friends, and indeed the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), have commented this morning, the delays that currently exist cause huge problems for families. I have seen that very much from the emails and pleas for help that I have received from my constituents in Clwyd South, many of whom are involved in the receipt of child maintenance services. Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to support this Bill, which will be of considerable help to not only my constituents but many other people across the UK. Like many of the Bills that we discuss on sitting Fridays, it seems to me that this one will make a really important change to legislation that will be of huge benefit to many people across the country.