Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of all Child Maintenance Service paying parents paid (a) 100% of their assessed child maintenance liability, (b) part of their assessed liability and (c) none of their assessed liability in the latest period for which data is available; and whether his Department can produce such figures for the entire CMS caseload, including Direct Pay arrangements.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) does not routinely monitor the amount of maintenance paid by Paying Parents using Direct Pay arrangements. Receiving Parents on Direct Pay should contact the CMS if maintenance is not being paid in full, so that the case can be moved to the Collect & Pay service. For this reason, the Department does not publish regular compliance statistics for Direct Pay arrangements.

However, the Department has published Direct Pay Research which includes an assessment of compliance amongst Direct Pay users, based on a survey of service users which was carried out in early 2024.

For Collect & Pay arrangements, statistics are published quarterly. The latest figures can be found in section 6 of the most recent Child Maintenance Service statistics (data to March 2026). Please note that, while the CMS always aims to achieve full compliance, statistics quote the number of Paying Parents who pay 90% or more of their quarterly liability. This is because, for reasons relating to collection scheduling, some fully compliant Paying Parents may register in the statistics as paying slightly below 100%.