Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in what circumstances the Child Maintenance Service ceases to pursue historic child maintenance arrears.

The Child Maintenance’s priority is to collect money owed to children who will benefit today, thereby preventing the build-up of arrears on the CMS.

The Child Maintenance Service has powers to write off historic Child Support Agency (CSA) and Child Maintenance Service debt in specific scenarios where it would be unfair or inappropriate to enforce liability, such as if the receiving parent tells us they no longer want us to collect the arrears or the paying parent is deceased and no further action can be taken to recover the arrears from the paying parent’s estate.

Powers introduced in 2018 allowed remaining Agency cases to be closed following the collection or write-off of historic arrears, as part of the closure of the scheme. All CSA arrears were at least five years old, with some CSA debt dating back much further. This was a one-off exercise, applying only to Agency debt.