Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many child maintenance administrative liability orders were rejected by courts in each year between 2021 and 2024; and for what reasons courts rejected these applications.

Where parents fail to take responsibility for paying for their children, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) will not hesitate to use the range of enforcement powers available, and a liability order facilitates this.

A liability order allows the CMS to formally have the debt a paying parent owes legally recognised in a court of law. It can choose which enforcement method to proceed with depending on the circumstances of the case, and the welfare of any qualifying children involved.

Following the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023 receiving royal assent in July 2023, secondary legislation is required to bring into force existing powers that allow the CMS to make an administrative liability order (ALO) against a person who has failed to pay child maintenance and is in arrears.

The ALO will replace the current requirement for the CMS to apply to the court for a liability order enabling CMS to take faster action against those paying parents who actively avoid their responsibilities and will get money to children more quickly.

Liability orders have not yet been replaced by ALOs, so we are only able to provide data for liability orders. Published data can be found on the national tables page 6.1. Please find a summary of the data below.

Data on the reasons a court rejected a liability order is not held centrally and to compile it would not be an effective use of operational resources.

The CMS applied for approximately;

• 17,800 liability orders between October 2023 and September 2024,
• 15,100 liability orders between October 2022 and September 2023, and
• 11,300 liability orders between October 2021 and September 2022.

Approximate number of liability orders withdrawn or dismissed (rejected);

• 1,200 liability orders between October 2023 and September 2024,
• 900 liability orders between October 2022 and September 2023, and
• 900 liability orders between October 2021 and September 2022.

(Please note that the figures exclude Scotland).

It is worth noting that an important reason for liability orders being withdrawn is that they are settled prior to going to court.