Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service in securing maintenance from paying parents.

A principle of child maintenance is to increase levels of cooperation between separated parents and encourage parents to meet their responsibilities to provide their children with financial support. Where a family-based child maintenance arrangement is not suitable the Child Maintenance Service offers a statutory scheme for those parents who need it.

The Government is dedicated to ensuring parents meet their obligations to children and the Child Maintenance Service will do everything within its powers to make sure parents comply. Where parents fail to pay their child maintenance, the Service will not hesitate to use its enforcement powers, including deductions from earnings orders, removal of driving licences, disqualification from holding a passport, and committal to prison. The Service is committed to using these powers fairly and in the best interests of children and separated families.

Statistics on child maintenance arrangements and collections are part of the CMS quarterly statistics published on gov.uk in tables 4, 5 and 6 of the National Tables. The below information is from the latest publication for data up to March 2024.

• In the 12 months up to March 2024 the child maintenance service arranged £1.4 billion child maintenance, an increase from £1.2 billion during the previous 12 months.
• 61% of all CMS arrangements use Direct Pay, with 37% using Collect and Pay and just over one billion pounds was arranged through the Direct Pay service in the last 12 months (we do not measure the compliance of Paying Parents on the Direct Pay service).
• Since March 2023, the percentage of parents paying something towards their maintenance through collect & pay has increased to 69% from 65%.
• In the period April 2023 to March 2024 £316.8 million was arranged through the Collect & Pay service:

o £224.9 million was paid

o £91.9 million was unpaid