Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to his Departments response to the consultation entitled Child Maintenance: modernising and improving our service, published 18 June 2021, when he plans to implement the changes to secondary legislation set out in that response.

In May 2022 the government made changes to the Child Support Information Regulations 2008 to expand information regulations to include private pension providers, academy proprietors, the Motor Insurers’ Bureau and all types of companies that offer, promote or sell investment management services or facilitate share trading. The government also updated all the Child Maintenance regulations that deal with communications, to enable the Secretary of State to serve notice or notifications to customers and third parties, such as employers, in writing by post or by electronic means.

We are planning to make changes in secondary legislation as parliamentary time allows, to bring into force changes to:

• Automatically take into account unearned income in the child maintenance calculation
• Extinguish low level debt and maintenance not collected when an employer becomes insolvent