Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much child maintenance has (a) been recovered and paid to the receiving parent and (b) not been paid in each of the last three years.

The Department publishes quarterly statistics for the Child Maintenance Service and the latest statistics are available up to September 2023, with statistics for the amount of maintenance due and the amount paid published in Table 5 of the National tables.

The relevant information is included in the table below.

CMS does not measure the compliance of Paying Parents on the Direct Pay service. Unpaid Maintenance is the value of maintenance scheduled to be paid, but not received from a Paying Parent through the Collect and Pay service, including any transferred from Direct Pay.

CMS Money Due and Paid each Quarter, Great Britain, January 2021 to September 2023

Source: Child Maintenance Service Management Information

Notes:

1. The figures provided are for child maintenance only and do not include fees for the use of the service. Figures are rounded to the nearest £100,000.
2. This table provides information on the amount of child maintenance owed by Paying Parents that was due to be paid in each quarter. It counts money due and paid for Paying Parents with an ongoing maintenance liability i.e., those for whom new child maintenance was arranged during the quarter.
3. Movement between service types - If a case moves from the Direct Pay service to the Collect and Pay service due to build-up of arrears, the unpaid maintenance is transferred from the Direct Pay service to the Collect and Pay service. This will be corrected for with regard to the quarter in which the transition occurs, but previous quarters’ figures are not retrospectively adjusted.
4. Payments outside of the statutory arrangement - This table does not include adjustments to the amount of child maintenance that should have been paid where parents have informed the Child Maintenance Service that they have made payments between themselves.
5. In a very small number of cases a child maintenance payment may be refunded to the Paying Parent. These Paying Parents are currently still counted as compliant, and the money is counted as paid.
6. In a very small number of cases a child maintenance payment may be incorrectly assigned to the wrong parent. If the money is then assigned to the correct parent, then the money paid will be counted twice.