Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether debt accrued by non-resident parents transfers automatically to the Child Maintenance Service for enforcement when the Child Support Agency is abolished.

Our first priority is to collect money for children who will benefit from regular ongoing maintenance payments, rather than the pursuit of historic arrears in cases where the children have now grown up.

However, where arrears of child maintenance are linked to an on-going child maintenance case on the 2012 scheme, we will move arrears in those cases to the Child Maintenance Service and pursue them as appropriate alongside the on-going maintenance case.

In cases where the arrears are not linked to an on-going 2012 case, and a parent with care does not request that their arrears are written off, we will transfer them to the Child Maintenance Service and pursue collection as resources allow.