Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to improve the (a) responsiveness and (b) accountability of the Child Maintenance Service when people request clarification of figures used in their assessments.

The Child Maintenance Service are wholly committed to delivering the best possible service to all customers within our growing caseload.

To ensure calculations are accurate the department continues to build on its already proportionate and cost-effective controls, such as:

• use of verified income from HMRC and benefit systems as outlined in legislation and a principal part of service design.

• use of child benefit systems to verify qualifying child(ren)

• procedures and policy to request additional verification

• a dedicated Financial Investigation Unit who addresses allegations of misrepresentation and fraud

• a robust mandatory reconsideration (MR) and appeals process

• a robust 3 Tier Quality Framework.

In all instances where a new calculation is made both parents will receive a written breakdown of the figures used in the calculation which also includes advice on where to learn more about child maintenance calculations, how to contact the Child Maintenance Service and how to raise a dispute if they disagree with the calculation.