Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department plans to (a) end direct pay arrangements and (b) use the collect and pay model for all future child maintenance agreements; and what estimate her Department has made of the number of existing agreements that would be affected by this change.

A consultation on proposed reforms to the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) was published by the previous Government on 8 May 2024. This included removing Direct Pay and managing all CMS cases in one service to allow the CMS to tackle non-compliance faster, and exploring how victims and survivors of domestic abuse can be better supported. This follows the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act receiving royal assent in July 2023.

The consultation was extended by this Government at the end of July and ran until 30 September 2024. We are currently analysing the responses we have received, and the Government will publish a response in due course.

At the end of September 2024, the CMS was managing 749,000 arrangements of which approximately 60% of arrangements used Direct Pay and 40% Collect and Pay.