Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in how many cases the Child Support Agency has started committal proceedings in each of the last five years.

Pursuant to my Written Answer on Monday 20 January 2014, Official Report, columns 42 - 43W, information on the number of cases in which the Child Support Agency has started committal proceedings is only readily available from 2010. The table below shows the number of cases where committal proceedings were started for each of the last three complete financial years and the current year to date:

Notes:

1) Following a Court Of Appeal decision in October 2012, a review of the Commitment to Prison process was carried out to ensure it complied with the terms of the judgement given in that case. Whilst doing so, applications for Commitment to Prison were not brought before the court. Procedures resumed from March 2013.

2) Data sourced from the Tallyman Informer system.

3) Data rounded to the nearest 10.