Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent progress he has made in reforming the Child Maintenance Service.

This Government has committed to a series of reforms to the Child Maintenance Service (CMS).

These include the intention to remove Direct Pay and move to a single, enhanced Collect and Pay system. This will enable the CMS to monitor all payments, identify non-compliance more quickly and take faster enforcement action. It is estimated that these changes could lift around 20,000 children out of poverty on the relative low-income after housing costs measure. This requires legislation; we will pass such legislation and implement this reform when Parliamentary time allows.

To improve arrears collection, the Government will introduce administrative liability orders to replace the current court-based process, streamlining enforcement and reducing delays. The new process is expected to reduce the time taken to secure a liability order in most cases and allow the CMS to take enforcement action more quickly against parents who do not meet their responsibilities. Work with His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service and the Scottish Government is ongoing, and the necessary regulations will be brought forward as soon as possible.

The Department has also recently completed a review of the child maintenance calculation. Following the review, we plan to reduce the income tolerance from 25 per cent to 15 per cent, so that changes in income are reflected more quickly in maintenance calculations. We also plan to include unearned income within the standard calculation, helping to ensure liabilities more accurately reflect a parent’s financial circumstances and that more money reaches children. Similarly, these changes are dependent upon legislation and we are exploring different options in order to pass these reforms in Parliament and implement when possible.

These legislative changes are running alongside ongoing CMS modernisation which are enhancing online services, delivering improved case handling and customer communications across multiple channels.