Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to (a) improve the compliance rate of child maintenance payments and (b) ensure receiving parents do not fall into poverty due to missed or uncollected child maintenance payments.

The Child Maintenance Service remains committed to ensuring that receiving parents get the money they are owed in maintenance payments, and this has been the case throughout the pandemic. The most recent quarterly statistics show that, in the quarter ending September 2020, 72 per cent of all paying parents paid some of their child maintenance through the Collect & Pay service.

Where compliance is not achieved we may deduct maintenance (and/or any arrears) direct from a paying parent’s. This is one of the Service’s most effective enforcement powers accounting for over half of the maintenance collected under Collect and Pay.

The Service also has tough enforcement powers including deducting as a regular or lump sum deduction from bank accounts, whether they are solely or jointly held as part of a business. Alongside these powers are a range of civil enforcement actions that can be taken through the courts once a liability order has been obtained. These actions include referral to an enforcement agency, committal to prison, and/or disqualification of holding or obtaining a passport or driving licence.

Child maintenance is not taken into account if a parent is also receiving income-related benefits, so can make a real difference to receiving parents and their children. We estimate that there are 120,000 fewer children in low-income households (measured on absolute low income after housing costs) as a result of child maintenance payments.