Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to help tackle unpaid child maintenance.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is committed to ensuring separated parents support their children financially, taking robust enforcement action against those who do not.

The CMS has a relatively low percentage of unpaid maintenance. Only 8% of the total maintenance due to be paid since the start of the CMS remains to be collected through the Collect & Pay service.

The CMS has been improving its service to allow Direct Pay arrangements to quickly move to Collect and Pay when the Paying Parent is not paying or when Direct Pay is no longer appropriate.

The CMS has a range of strong enforcement powers that can be used against those who consistently refuse to meet their obligations to provide financial support to their children including deducting directly from earnings, bank accounts and forcing the sale of a property.

The Department plans to streamline the enforcement process further by removing the requirement to obtain a court issued liability order and instead allow the Secretary of State to issue an administrative liability order. Introducing this simpler administrative process will enable the CMS to take faster action against those paying parents who actively avoid their responsibilities.