Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the collection of late payments by the Child Maintenance Service.

The Government is dedicated to ensuring parents meet their responsibilities to provide their children with financial support and the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) will do everything within its powers to make sure parents comply. Where parents fail to pay their child maintenance, the CMS will not hesitate to use its enforcement powers, including deductions from earnings orders, removal of driving licences, disqualification from holding a passport, and committal to prison. The Service is committed to using these powers fairly and in the best interests of children and separated families.

Statistics on child maintenance arrangements and collections are part of the CMS quarterly statistics published on gov.uk in tables 4 and 5 of the National Tables.  The below information is from the latest publication for data up to March 2025.

• In the 12 months up to March 2025 the CMS arranged £1.5 billion child maintenance, an increase from £1.4 billion during the previous 12 months.

• In March 2025, 57% of all CMS arrangements used Direct Pay, with a total of £1.1 billion arranged through the Direct Pay service in the last 12 months (we do not measure the compliance of Paying Parents on the Direct Pay service).

• In March 2025, 41% of all CMS arrangements used the Collect and Pay service and since March 2024, the percentage of parents paying something towards their maintenance through this service has remained level at 69%.

• In the period April 2024 to March 2025, £376.1 million was arranged through the Collect & Pay service:
• £266.9 million was paid
• £109.1 million was unpaid

The CMS has a low percentage of unpaid maintenance with 7% (£713.1 million) of the total maintenance due to be paid since the CMS began in 2012, still to be collected through Collect & Pay. This has steadily fallen since the 17% due to be paid in March 2015.