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 ensure that child maintenance arrears owed under previous Child Maintenance Service schemes are recovered effectively.

The main focus of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is to collect money owed to children who will benefit today, thereby preventing the build-up of arrears under CMS. Arrears owed under previous Child Support schemes are at least 12 years old. It is a key principle that unpaid child maintenance should be paid immediately.

Powers were introduced in 2018 that enabled the CMS to close the remaining cases on the Child Support Agency (CSA) following the collection or write-off of historic arrears.

Closing the CSA was a key element of the child maintenance reforms. It means that all cases are now managed on a single, more efficient and effective system.