Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service in considering the period a child spends with each parent when calculating the child maintenance payments.

No recent assessment has been made.

We believe that this approach strikes a balance between reflecting extra costs incurred by the paying parent and providing stability of maintenance payments.

Reductions are made for the extra cost of care where it is shared by the paying parent. The paying parent must have overnight care of any qualifying children for at least 52 nights a year. The amount of child maintenance payable is reduced to a maximum of fifty per cent based on the number of days’ overnight care is provided over a 12-month period.