Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to tackle issues raised in the Independent Case Examiner's Annual Report 2020 on the Child Maintenance Service, including the findings on the way that Service presents its accounts information.

Since the report was published in October 2020 the Child Maintenance Service has been running at a reduced level and has been focussed on frontline activity serving our customers due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

However, we are now starting to increase that service and have introduced a Transformation Programme that will constantly review how we work and help to automate lots of processes.

We are continually improving our contact channels and we plan to improve our calculation letters in line with our online portal and system. This is so that all lines of communication between Child Maintenance Group and customers present information to customers in the same way to reduce confusion.

There are also proposed changes to our online portal that surround explaining the calculation and explaining the payment plan to our customers, these changes are planned for Quarter 3 of the financial year.