Child Support (Enforcement) Bill

Siobhan Baillie Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 9th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

It should not be controversial across the House that parents should be responsible for their children unless they really cannot do that and need help. That parental responsibility is in all of us and the state welfare benefits and state systems in many other ways will step in to support families when it is absolutely necessary to do so. However, parents are too often let down by ex-partners for a range of reasons and they do not receive the support that they are due financially or otherwise.

In the case of child maintenance issues, parents who are receiving that money and, in many cases, relying on it to live on should be able to trust the child maintenance system to move as swiftly as possible to help them to recover maintenance arrears when it becomes necessary to do so. I am interested in that area through my experience as a family law solicitor, for my constituents who regularly bring incredibly complex child maintenance matters to me, and because this is an area of Government business—in a fantastic Department that works incredibly hard to help people who come to it with their issues—that can actually lift children out of poverty. I want to give the Child Maintenance Service, my constituents and everyone involved as much support as possible to do their job, which is where the Bill comes in.

This is an important measure to improve the recovery of arrears from parents who fail to meet their financial obligations to pay child maintenance. Before going into more detail about what this Bill aims to achieve, it may be helpful if I explain the purpose of the Child Maintenance Service for anybody who is not aware. The CMS is to facilitate the payment of child maintenance between separated parents who are unable to reach their own agreement following separation. That is an incredibly challenging job done in very difficult circumstances. Many Members will have experience of the CMS through their constituents. Some of that will be positive and some will be negative, but those Members who remember the Child Support Agency will I am sure acknowledge that the CMS, which was launched in 2012 to replace the Child Support Agency, is performing relatively well and is much better than previous systems. My parents are separated. My dad has some war stories about the Child Support Agency. We must not forget that that thing was on the front of newspapers, and that is not something that we see with this system, even though I am here in the Chamber saying that we can make improvements.

To emphasise the importance of the service, I should say that, in the past 12 months, more than £1 billion of payments were arranged or collected through the Child Maintenance Service. Under the Child Maintenance Service Act 2012, payments are calculated so that they are fair and affordable for both parents. That is key for these things to be successful.

The CMS uses gross income for calculation, whereas the old system was based on net income. To keep the impact of the calculation broadly the same, the 2012 scheme introduced modifications to the percentages with the banding system. In family law, it should be known that we would do the calculations for child maintenance for the parent client before us in our office before we turned to the other parent for other maintenance payments, so these calculations and the formula are important and it does work in many cases.

The statutory scheme is designed to limit the number of changes throughout the year. That is why the threshold for in-year changes to income is set at 25%, so that the liability remains consistent and parents can factor this into their own financial planning. Children are expensive. We need to be able to plan.

The CMS manages cases through one of two services. The first is direct pay and the second is collect and pay. Direct pay does what it says on the tin. The CMS provides a calculation and a payment schedule, but, effectively, the parents arrange the payments between them. For collect and pay, the CMS calculates how much maintenance should be paid, collects the money from the paying parent and pays it to the receiving parent, so it is a much more interventionist activity. Cases in collect and pay tend to include parents where a collaborative arrangement has either failed or has not been possible to achieve. Paying parents on collect and pay are therefore considered to be less likely to meet their payment responsibilities.

The difference that child maintenance payments make to children’s lives is critical, and the CMS takes action to tackle payment breakdowns at the earliest opportunity, to re-establish compliance and to collect unpaid amounts that have accrued. I give credit to groups such as Gingerbread, which often raise with MPs and Select Committees the impact on single parents; often, we are trying to help single parents through the CMS support schemes.

Where compliance is not achieved and the parent is employed, the CMS will attempt to deduct their maintenance, including any arrears where appropriate, directly from their earnings. Employers are obliged by law to co-operate with that action. Enforcement powers also allow for deductions to be taken directly from bank accounts, including joint accounts and business accounts, either as a lump sum or regular amounts—so far, so good. That is the run of the mill enforcement stuff. Members needed to understand that to understand the more severe enforcement measures used to collect child maintenance, which is what the main part of the Bill deals with.

The CMS is committed to modernising and improving and, as part of that commitment, it is reviewing the enforcement powers to make them as effective as possible in recovering arrears from parents who are failing to meet their financial obligations to their children. Under current legislation, the CMS must apply to the magistrates or the sheriff courts to obtain a liability order before the use of enforcement powers such as instructing enforcement agents or sheriff offices, or the use of more stringent court-based enforcement actions. So there is an extra step to go to court to get that stage of enforcement. Enforcements can include disqualification from driving or from holding a UK passport, or committing a non-compliant parent to prison. So it is serious stuff.

Obtaining a liability order through the courts is time-consuming. At the moment, the Government website tells parents that it can take anything from a few weeks to a few months. We know that there are now also an awful lot of delays in the courts—there was a pause during the pandemic, when the courts were closed—so I imagine it has been even more difficult recently to obtain these things.

That delay in receiving child maintenance has a consequence for the receiving parent and the children. Delay is bad for children, and we know that that principle underpins much family law. Furthermore, this additional step in enforcing debt is no longer required by other Departments, such as His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Other Departments are doing what my Bill is trying to achieve, so give me those powers so that the CMS can do the same.

We are also trying to introduce a lot of speed. The Bill will repeal the sections of the Child Support Act 1991 requiring the CMS to apply to the courts to obtain the liability order. It will stop applications to the courts by making amendments to uncommenced powers in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008. Those powers, once enacted, will allow enforcement measures to be used more quickly against parents who have failed to meet their obligation.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes the good point that the procedural step in the current system of requiring the CMS to apply to the courts for a liability order creates delay. Can she give the House an indication, based on her experience, of the sort of delay we are talking about?

[Siobhan Baillie]

I have been looking through my casework, and the delay has been months in some cases. What is worse is that, even though the system we have is well-meaning, few parents have trust that anything will ever happen. Even where there have been successful liability orders—they are in the hundreds, and I have figures here—any delay becomes the chat in the communities and there is no trust. Any delay or confusion about what can and cannot be achieved is damaging to these families. I thank my hon. Friend for his important intervention.

To preserve the safeguards for paying parents, the Bill makes provisions for secondary legislation to allow the paying parent a right of appeal to a court against an administrative liability order—so there will be appeal rights. The first regulations relating to appeals against liability orders will be subject to the affirmative procedure.

The Bill will operate across England, Wales and Scotland, as they are all part of the same child maintenance regime. The court system governing the enforced collection of child maintenance is governed by broadly the same statutory provisions in England and Wales. In Scotland, however, the judicial system is devolved, so provisions in the Bill allow for a later commencement date, by which time changes to the appropriate court processes can be made. For that reason, the Child Maintenance Service will work with legal colleagues in the Scottish Government to ensure that the policy is effectively delivered in Scotland. I would also say, to those colleagues who always are interested in devolution issues, that Northern Ireland has its own arrangements.

To conclude, this is quite a techie thing—it is nerdy, which is why I like it. However, it introduces a genuine change for families on the ground by avoiding delay, which is harmful for children.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech and bringing forward a great piece of legislation. I was in the House only a few weeks ago supporting my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), who was making changes to the CMS for those suffering domestic abuse who are trying to get payments. Has my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud had a conversation with her about how this Bill can dovetail with her Bill? Perhaps the Government can take both Bills forward to provide extra protections for those who are struggling to get payments for their children.

[Siobhan Baillie]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I actually read all of that debate in Hansard, including his many interventions on my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye, so I think he just wanted to show you that he really knows his stuff, Mr Deputy Speaker. He is absolutely right that my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye is taking a Bill through the House that will protect people who have experienced domestic abuse, because so often, where there has been domestic abuse and a breakdown of a relationship, there is then no payment between the parents. It is probably very unusual for the Department to have to deal with two Bills, but we have very enthusiastic Members of Parliament who want to help families caught up in this system. I have real confidence in the Government teams and the Ministers to use the corporate knowledge for both these Bills and get this done.

This Bill will introduce a quicker and cheaper process to pursue enforcement, not just for the taxpayer but for the people who are waiting for their money, and it will ensure that more money is collected for more children. These are often children of single parents and children who desperately need £5, £10, £15, £20 or £100 a month—whatever the amount is, it will make a difference. I thank all Members in the Chamber for being here to debate the Bill and the Department for helping me with the drafting, and I very much hope it will receive support today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhan Baillie]

With the leave of the House, I would like to thank all the hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, and particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Bracknell (James Sunderland), for Newbury (Laura Farris), for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), for Darlington (Peter Gibson), for Devizes (Danny Kruger) and for Bosworth (Dr Evans). I have notes of all their key points, and I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell who said that the Bill is a no-brainer.

The thing we have to be clear about is that family breakdown is absolutely devastating and often incredibly fraught. If the basics are wrong—if money is not flowing between the parents and payments are not being made—the fracture is compounded, and that is very damaging for children. The CMS plays a role not just as a calculator or a money box for people to get cash out of; it is actually fundamental. That is why I have been quite narrow in my scope today, although, unfortunately for the Minister and the Department, I am interested in many other areas of the Child Maintenance Service and universal credit and in the issues that the National Audit Office has raised.

The Bill will achieve administrative efficiencies for the Child Maintenance Service. That is better for the taxpayer, and it will get money into the pockets of the parents looking after the children, which is where it should be. I really hope the Bill makes progress in the House, and I thank everyone.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).

Child Support (Enforcement) Bill

Siobhan Baillie Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to consider clauses 2 to 6 stand part.

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I am grateful to you and to all the Committee members for joining me to look at the Bill in more detail.

This Bill is dry and technical, but it is important to say that child maintenance has a massive impact on the families who are reliant on it. All of us as constituency MPs will have cases coming across our desks and, as a family law solicitor, I know that the issues go far beyond ensuring that child maintenance gets to children and helping in situations of poverty. They can also sometimes affect whether children see their parents, because issues with child maintenance can have an impact on prolonging the conflict between parents and on other difficulties.

I am thankful to the Department, which is working so hard on child maintenance and on the Child Maintenance Service, and to my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) who sponsored the Bill before she was made up to be a Minister. It is incumbent on all of us in this place to fix any problems that we see.

The Bill will enable a more efficient process to enforce unpaid child maintenance. It has only six clauses, but I am sure all hon. Members will recognise the Bill’s importance, as it will help to get much-needed money to children more quickly. Before going into more detail, however, I will recap briefly how the CMS works, just in case any hon. Members present whom I have pulled in to help in Committee are unaware.

The purpose of the CMS is to facilitate the payment of child maintenance between separated parents who are unable to reach their own agreement following a separation. That is an incredibly challenging job, done in difficult circumstances. Once parents are in the CMS system, it manages child maintenance cases through one of two service types: direct pay or collect and pay.

For direct pay, the CMS provides a calculation and a payment schedule, but payments are arranged privately between the two parents. That is by far the most favourable way to proceed. Where necessary, for collect and pay, the CMS calculates how much child maintenance should be paid, collects the money from the paying parent, and pays it to the receiving parent. Cases in collect and pay tend to involve parents where a more collaborative arrangement has either failed or not been possible to achieve, or there are high levels of conflict. Paying parents on collect and pay are therefore considered to be less likely to meet their payment responsibilities.

The difference child maintenance payments make to children’s lives is critical. I defer to charities such as Gingerbread, which does so much for single parents, mothers in particular. The Child Maintenance Service takes action to tackle payment breakdowns at the earliest opportunity, to re-establish compliance and to collect unpaid amounts that have accrued. Where compliance is not achieved and the parent is employed, the CMS will attempt to deduct the maintenance, including any arrears where appropriate, directly from their earnings. Employers are obliged by law to co-operate with such action.

Enforcement powers also allow for deductions to be taken directly from bank accounts, including joint and business accounts, either as a lump sum or a regular amount. That is a useful power where the parent is self-employed and deducting from their earnings is not possible. All the time, we still meet parents who do not know that the system is available or do not know its reach—that when their ex is self-employed, they can still have help.

Where such powers prove to be inappropriate or ineffective, under current legislation the Child Maintenance Service must apply to the magistrates or sheriff courts to obtain a liability order before the use of other enforcement powers, such as instructing enforcement agents or sheriff officers, or even more stringent court-based enforcement actions such as forcing the sale of a property, disqualification from driving or holding a UK passport, or commitment to prison. The Bill will amend uncommenced primary legislation to enable the DWP to take further enforcement action without the need to apply to the magistrates or sheriff courts, instead allowing the Secretary of State to make an administrative liability order.

This power, once enacted, will allow enforcement measures to be used more quickly against parents who have failed to meet their obligation. At the moment, to even get a liability order is taking about 20 weeks, and we all know that the courts are under increasing pressure, particularly post covid, so we will try to remove that step.

Let me turn to the specifics of the Bill. Clause 1 gives an interpretation of the primary legislation being amended by the Bill and defines the Child Support Act 1991 as “the 1991 Act” and the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 as “the 2008 Act”. Clause 2 makes provision for the Secretary of State to make a liability order where the paying parent has failed to pay an amount of child maintenance and a deduction from earnings order is either inappropriate or has been ineffective. The clause provides an assurance that administrative enforcement measures will be appropriately considered before more stringent measures are taken.

Clause 3 expands the power to make administrative liability orders by setting out in regulations provision for the variation of a liability order—for example, where the amount of arrears upon which the liability order is based is subsequently amended as more information about the paying parent’s income is obtained. That works both ways. Sometimes the responding and paying parent needs to say, “I’m not earning as much as you think I am. I need to make a change.” Equally, the other parent may say, “Actually, he or she has more cash than they’re claiming”, so the clause is important.

Clause 4 gives the Secretary of State the power to set out in regulations provisions that relate to a parent’s right of appeal against a liability order. Those provisions will include the paying parent’s right of appeal to a court, the period within which the right of appeal may be exercised, the powers of the court in respect of those appeals, and for a liability order not to come into force in specified circumstances.

As with liability orders issued under current legislative provisions, in the event that a paying parent does appeal, the court will not be able to question the child maintenance calculation itself. Appeals about the maintenance calculation are dealt with via the appeals tribunal. A paying parent can ask the CMS to reconsider any calculation within 30 days of the calculation decision being made, through the mandatory reconsideration process. They can also report a change of circumstances that could lead to their calculation being amended at any time. It is therefore right for the role of the court when considering a liability order to be, as now, to satisfy itself that the debt is properly owed, and owed by the individual named in the order.

The provisions in clause 4 will prevent court time from being used to consider day-to-day CMS business that can be completed operationally—again, speeding things up—and it aims to strike a balance between giving a paying parent a reasonable window to appeal and the CMS moving swiftly to enforcement measures. The provisions will therefore not place any additional or unreasonable constraints on a parent’s ability to seek an appeal. I have acted for a number of fathers who came to me in a complete pickle, particularly in the old Child Support Agency days, because the calculations were wrong or allegations were made about their income. It is very important that a paying parent has the right to appeal. My dad had quite a lot to say about his own child maintenance payments when we were growing up—don’t get him started on that!

Clause 5 sets out minor and consequential amendments. Finally, clause 6 sets out standard but crucial information covering the extent, commencement and short title of the Bill, which will bring it into force.

I want to say a few words about the devolved Administrations, as it is important that we think through these issues. Primary child maintenance legislation is a reserved matter in Great Britain, but it is devolved in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland has traditionally maintained parity with Great Britain by mirroring our child maintenance legislation. In respect of administrative liability orders, Northern Ireland has similar uncommenced provisions to those in Great Britain that it plans to commence, thereby enabling it to use and enforce administrative liability orders, so we are expecting Northern Ireland to get there. However, with the Northern Ireland Assembly suspended, it is not possible for Northern Ireland to match the changes that we are making through the Bill today, but it intends to do so as soon as it is able.

In Scotland, child maintenance is reserved but the judicial system is devolved. As such, the Scottish Government are engaged on the impact of the Bill in Scotland and exactly how its provisions will work in the Scottish court system.

The Bill is of great importance to ensuring that the Child Maintenance Service can make the necessary improvements to enforcement processes and get money to children more quickly. We are fortunate to have cross-party support, and I am grateful to the Government for backing the Bill and seeing the value in making these changes. We must ensure that when someone asks for help through CMS, they get help quickly and in a way that makes them feel supported. We must also ensure that parents who are messing about know that there will be sanctions and action against them, thereby providing a deterrent to other parents. I am grateful to the Minister and will be happy to hear from her today.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. Let me start by congratulating the hon. Member for Stroud on securing cross-party support for this important Bill. Members may want to know that this is not the first time that she has campaigned on this topic; she campaigned on related issues even when she was a local councillor in my patch. I did not vote for her, but I recognise that she was a very good councillor and she has a long history of campaigning on issues relating to support for children.

Last year’s report by the Public Accounts Committee concluded that in the 10 years since the Child Support Agency was replaced by the Child Maintenance Service, there had been no improvement in the system for parents, children and families. The Committee’s shocking report found that around half of children in separated families—1.8 million children—receive no support at all from their non-resident parent, and that enforcement is just too slow to be effective, as the hon. Member outlined. That is a serious failing in the child support system, and we all know that it is often mothers who pay the price.

A mother in my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn wrote to me to explain that her child’s father had not paid child support for three years. She had contacted the Child Maintenance Service on numerous occasions, but for three years there was simply no progression in her case at all. Eventually, she came to see me. Members across the Committee will know that our constituents come to see us in our surgeries as the last resort, having gone through everything else. I applied significant pressure as her MP and, in the end, the Child Maintenance Service launched an investigation. But it should not have come to that; it should not have been so difficult for my constituent in the first place.

Sadly, as I am sure Members across the Committee will know, that experience is far from uncommon. It has probably happened to everyone’s constituents at some point. Mothers and children across the country are missing out on the payments that they so desperately need to get by.

The implications for child poverty are particularly concerning. The Nuffield Foundation—a social mobility charity—estimates that as many as one in five single parents on benefits are lifted out of poverty by receiving child maintenance payments. That is to say nothing about the severe impact that non-payment of child maintenance can have on the mental health of children and families. That is why the Bill is so important to me and people across this country. It is completely right that absent parents honour their full child maintenance payments. When they fail to do so, there must be adequate enforcement to force them to pay, so that people’s lives are made easier.

Before I conclude, I have one question for the Minister. Enforcement action was significantly affected by the national lockdowns. Child Maintenance Service staff were redeployed to manage the surge in universal credit claims, and the courts were closed. But the number of enforcement agency referrals now in process is still less than half the figure before the pandemic. Can the Minister give me some information about what the Government are doing to address the backlog?

I fully support the Bill. I hope that it is successful and that it forms part of a wider strategy to ensure that the child maintenance system is fit for the 21st century.

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[Siobhan Baillie]

I thank the Minister for her remarks and support, and I thank all Members present, particularly those I grabbed in various different places in the Palace to ask to serve on the Committee. I also thank the DWP officials and parliamentary officials for their guidance and support, and I thank you, Ms Bardell, for your excellent chairmanship.

The hon. Members for Hampstead and Kilburn and for Bootle were right to express concerns about the record and arrears, as highlighted in the National Audit Office report and by the Public Accounts Committee. I serve on the Work and Pensions Committee and we are investigating child maintenance. The Department and the Minister know that I am incredibly concerned about that because of the impact on families and children but, having met the officials, I know that a lot of work is going on. The DWP is given a hard time, but it is one Department—one arm of the state—that has such a direct impact on children and families.

I thank the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West and the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, who does an incredible job with the APPG.

Yesterday, I was talking to an academic—an incredibly eloquent young woman—about family breakdown and the impact on women, and the impact of family breakdown as a feminist issue, which we do not often hear about. She said there has never been such a good time in history to be a deadbeat dad. I winced at that, because I know hundreds of fantastic dads and that there are millions of fantastic dads all over the country. But unfortunately, we discover in this work that the paying parents and the non-paying parents are invariably fathers, and if we scratch off a lot of that, a lot of absentee parents are fathers. We should not be shy about having these conversations and recognising what the Child Maintenance Service can do and the effect of improvements such as those in the Bill on family stability and children, and on their own relationships when they grow up, and on and on. We should not be shy about accepting that there is a wider benefit to change of this type.

I thank everybody who has been involved and all Committee members for coming in and sitting through our proceedings; I know how busy they are.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 2 to 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill to be reported, without amendment.