Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what performance measures have been established for the Child Maintenance Service for the clearing of arrears in maintenance cases.

CMS publishes updates with regards to the value of unpaid maintenance in the Child Maintenance Service Statistics:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/717223/child-maintenance-service-august-2013-to-march-2018.pdf

In March 2018 there was a total of £197.8m unpaid Child Maintenance which should have been paid through the Collect and Pay service. This equated to 12.1% of the total liability (child maintenance) raised to date since the service began, £1,637.6m, and includes unpaid Child Maintenance under Direct Pay cases which have been transferred to Collect and Pay.

Unpaid Maintenance will continue to accrue as it is impossible to achieve total compliance due to circumstances on individual cases and customer behaviours. CMS sets stretching performance measures to support restricting and reducing the growth of Unpaid Maintenance. The performance measures relate to expectations of compliance through proactive treatment of non-paying cases. The effect of these performance measures is to drive down the predicted growth so total Unpaid Maintenance does not exceed ~£300m reducing to 11.8% of the total liability raised.