Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the value is of child maintenance debts her Department (a) has written off and (b) estimates will be written off in (i) Scotland and (ii) the UK during the transition from the Child Support Agency to the Child Maintenance Service.

(a) The total amount written off for cases on Child Support Agency systems, as of September 2019, is published in Table 9.2 of the CSA QSS and is £1,480.7m. The statistics in Table 9.2 do not include CSA cases on the CMS system because representation activity on these cases started later than on the CSA system and the data we need to report on them requires more quality assurance. We aim to publish this information in the December 2019 release which is due to be published in Spring 2020.

(b) Table 9.2 provides statistics at a GB level, and the regional split of child maintenance debt that is written off isn’t published. To provide this information for Scotland would require us to link together several complex datasets and it would incur disproportionate cost. The estimate of what will be written off was included in The CSA Historic Arrears business case. Page 25 refers and the figure included was £3.2bn

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/667033/child-maintenance-compliance-arrears-consultation.pdf