Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of reforming the Child Maintenance Service to (a) increase protections for the victims of domestic abuse and (b) to prevent the withholding or artificial reduction of child maintenance payments being used as a form of economic abuse.

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,
• exploring views on collection fees and the impact of proposals to reduce, but maintain, fees 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.

CMS Domestic Abuse training has been updated with input from external stakeholders and wider DWP to ensure caseworkers recognise and respond safely and appropriately to customers who are experiencing domestic abuse or are survivors of domestic abuse. This package includes an understanding of abuse, including economic abuse, and, of course, given the context, covers post separation abuse.

The CMS will use its strong enforcement powers to pursue those who willfully avoid their financial obligations to their children. Cases involving complex income can be investigated by the Financial Investigation Unit (FIU). This is a specialist team which can request information from financial institutions (such as banks, investment companies and mortgage companies) to check the accuracy of information the CMS is given.