Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to ensure that the Child Maintenance Service takes action against people who are in arrears.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) will do everything within its powers to make sure parents comply and has made significant improvements to the process to speed up action when payments first break down and to target enforcement action more effectively.

Where parents fail to take responsibility for paying for their children, the CMS will not hesitate to use the full range of strong enforcement powers available. These include, using Enforcement Agents (previously known as bailiffs) to take control of goods, forcing the sale of property, removal of driving license or UK passport, deductions directly from earnings and bank accounts or even commitment to prison.

8% (£682.1 million) of the total maintenance due to be paid since the CMS began, remains to be collected through Collect & Pay but this is falling.

In the past year to September 2024, the CMS collected £16.8 million from paying parents with civil enforcement actions in process and an additional £5.4 million from paying parents with our most serious enforcement action in process.

In the twelve months to September 2024, there were 2,857 applications to the courts in England, Wales and Scotland for our most serious enforcement powers. Of these the courts issued two immediate prison sentences and 316 suspended prison sentences.