Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reason (a) child maintenance payments are allocated first to (i) enforcement charges and (ii) debt and then to children and (b) there is no provision to retrieve payments which have been allocated incorrectly by the system or manually.

(a)The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) does not prioritise the collection of enforcement charges over on-going maintenance and arrears. Only when all the money due to children, along with any associated collection fees, has been collected, will the CMS collect the remaining charges associated with the case, including enforcement charges. The only exception would be where an enforcement charge forms part of a liability order, which would be collected alongside the other debt associated with that order.

(b)The system does have the Manual Allocation capability, which enables a caseworker to allocate money received across any outstanding liability on a case