Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the running costs of the Child Maintenance Service and Child Support Agency were last year; and how much those parents who are the subject of cases administered by both organisations paid in maintenance in the same period.

The cost of running the Child Maintenance Service and Child Support Agency for 2017/18 was £221.73m (excluding income) or £199.67m (net of income.) This is an Operational delivery cost only, and does not include any apportionment of DWP overheads.

Please note:

1. This is an unpublished figure, CMG costs are reported as part of the DWP Annual Report and Accounts and individual Operational/business areas are not separately identifiable in the DWP accounts.
2. The 2017/18 cost figures have not yet been audited.

The amounts of maintenance paid by parents in relation to cases administered by the CSA are published in table 4 of Child Support Agency quarterly summary of statistics: December 2017 available on line at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-support-agency-quarterly-summary-of-statistics-december-2017. Similarly the amounts of maintenance paid by parents in relation to cases administered by the CMS are published in table 8 of Child Maintenance Service: Aug 2013 to Dec 2017 (experimental) available on line at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-aug-2013-to-dec-2017-experimental