Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of making the Child Maintenance Service more accessible to parents.

The aim of the Child Maintenance Service is to create a modern accessible service through our digital transformation and Service Modernisation programmes, to allow our customers to have greater choice of how and when they contact us.

Through our digital transformation programme, almost all applications are now made online, and we have more than doubled My Child Maintenance Case (MCMC) registrations. 1.46 million customers now have access to our service 24/7 through their online accounts, with over 1.12 million logins in September 2024.

Every change and improvement made to our processes, systems, and service are all part of modernising our service. This will be an ongoing process of continuous improvement to make Child Maintenance Service more accessible to all parents.

As part of the Government’s reforms to the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act receiving Royal Assent on 29 June 2023, the Child Maintenance Service removed the £20 application to ensure families on the lowest incomes do not face a barrier to accessing the service. The Government consultation on remaining reforms has concluded. We are in the process of finalising the details of the consultation and aim to publish it as soon as possible on gov.uk.