Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many complaints about the Child Maintenance Service were investigated by the Independent Case Examiner (a) overall, (b) by the receiving parent and (c) by the paying parent in each of the last five years.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Independent Case Examiner’s office investigated 2,142 Child Maintenance Service (CMS) cases over the last 5 complete reporting years, broken down as follows:

The Independent Case Examiner’s office does not hold the information to provide a response to parts (b) and (c) of the question.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to help ensure that the CMS child maintenance calculation adequately reflects the (a) living expenses and (b) income of both parties.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) operates on the principle that both parents have financial responsibility for their child, including their food and clothing, as well as contributing towards the associated costs of running the home that the child lives in.

The calculation represents an amount of money that is broadly commensurate with the amount that a paying parent would spend on the child if they were still living with them, irrespective of the income or assets of the receiving parent.

The CMS will assess how much the paying parent should pay the receiving parent, which in most cases is based on a percentage of the paying parent's gross annual income. The income of the receiving parent is not taken into consideration as they are already contributing as the child's primary caregiver and their income should not remove the responsibility of a paying parent to support their child.

A review is ongoing to look again at the child maintenance calculation to ensure it is fit for purpose and fair for both parents in light of societal changes since it was last looked at.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to ensure the accuracy of the (a) systems and (b) IT used by the Child Maintenance Service.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

Regular updates ensure the Child Maintenance Service's systems comply with policy. Each change follows industry standards, including thorough testing before and after implementation. The core principles for calculating Child Maintenance have remained largely unchanged since 2012, with no current system defects affecting these calculations.

The Department for Work and Pensions rigorously monitors accuracy, with the National Audit Office setting a target of monetary value errors under 1%. This standard is consistently met.

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 reduce call waiting times to the Child Maintenance Service; and if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of call handling times by that service.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

CMS are committed to delivering the best possible service to all customers within our growing caseload, though fully recognise that call waiting times are sometimes longer than we would like.

To address this, we are working to improve the efficiency of our customer interactions through both the telephone and Digital channels, and by promoting self-service online. These are freeing up CMS resource to support customers that need to contact us by telephone.

The class leading CMS online service supports customers in understanding options around child maintenance arrangements through to completing applications and the ability to manage their case online. These services are available 24/7, and in July 2024 over 1 million customers were logging on to their online My Child Maintenance Case account and using them. To improve the efficiency of the service, improvements have been made to process simple actions automatically, whilst also improving training and guidance for CMS colleagues.

As a result, call volumes are reducing, and improved customer service being delivered through the combination of Online and Telephone channels.

CMS is working to improve all forms of communication with customers, including greater use of SMS and email as well as improving letter content.

The Department continually seeks to review, evaluate, and enhance tools and training material to support staff in delivering a quality customer service and takes timely action to further train and support staff where further improvements can be made. Additionally, CMS have extended their telephony service to 6pm on weekdays to meet demand.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many liability orders have been pursued by the Child Maintenance Service since 1 August 2023.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

A principle of child maintenance is to increase levels of cooperation between separated parents and encourage parents to meet their responsibilities to provide their children with financial support. Where a family-based child maintenance arrangement is not suitable the Child Maintenance Service offers a statutory scheme for those parents who need it.

The Government is dedicated to ensuring parents meet their obligations to children and the Child Maintenance Service will do everything within its powers to make sure parents comply. Where parents fail to pay their child maintenance, the Service will not hesitate to use its enforcement which includes liability orders. The Service is committed to using these powers fairly and in the best interests of children and separated families.

The Department plans to bring forward changes to allow Child Maintenance Service (CMS) to make an administrative liability order against a person who has failed to pay child maintenance and is in arrears. The administrative liability order will replace the current requirement for the CMS to apply to the court for a liability order, which can take up to 22 weeks. We expect the new liability order process to take around six to eight weeks, meaning CMS can use its strong enforcement powers more quickly for those who seek to avoid their financial obligations to their children.

We will bring forward the legislation as soon as possible.

The Department publishes quarterly statistics for the Child Maintenance Service and the latest statistics are available up to March 2024. The next release to June 2024 is scheduled for Tuesday 24th September 2024 at 09:30am.

The statistics for liability orders are shown in Table 7.1 of the National tables. The relevant data taken from that table, covering the period requested, is shown in the following table:

Liability Orders in process and money collected in Great Britain, and Liability Orders applied for and granted in England and Wales, July 2023 to March 2024

Source: Child Maintenance Service Administrative and Clerical Data

Notes:

1. This table includes actions taken to collect both maintenance arranged by the Child Maintenance Service, and Child Support Agency arrears that have been transitioned to Child Maintenance Service systems. This may include actions taken against parents for whom no ongoing maintenance has been arranged under the Child Maintenance Service.

2. Figures are rounded to the nearest 100 or £100,000.

3. "In Process" counts give the number of Paying Parents for which the relevant enforcement action was ongoing at the end of the quarter. "Ongoing" includes the period in which the action was being formally considered, in addition to the period during which the action was actively being progressed.

4. A Paying Parent can be taken to court over unpaid child maintenance. Courts can grant a Liability Order, which is a legal recognition that a debt is owed. This enables recovery of the debt through further Civil Enforcement Actions, e.g. referral to an enforcement agency.

5. Some Liability Order figures are restricted to England and Wales and exclude Scotland, this is indicated in the row title where relevant.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will undertake a review of the Child Maintenance Service.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

A consultation on proposed reforms to the CMS was published by the previous Government on 8 May 2024. The consultation includes exploration of removing Direct Pay and managing all CMS cases in one service to allow the CMS to tackle non-compliance faster. The consultation also explores how victims and survivors of domestic abuse can be better supported.

The Government extended the consultation to the 30 September 2024 to ensure full stakeholder engagement can take place, we will then consider the next steps for CMS.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to help tackle unpaid child maintenance.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Department plans to bring forward changes to allow the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) to make an administrative liability order against a person who has failed to pay child maintenance and is in arrears. The administrative liability order will replace the current requirement for the CMS to apply to the court for a liability order, which is an outdated process and can take up to 22 weeks. We expect the new liability order process to take around six to eight weeks, meaning the CMS can use its strong enforcement powers more quickly to go after those who wilfully avoid their financial obligations to their children.

We will bring forward the legislation as soon as possible.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the total value of child maintenance arrears was on 30 August 2024.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Department publishes quarterly statistics for the Child Maintenance Service and the latest statistics are available up to March 2024. The next release covering the statistics to June 2024 is scheduled for Tuesday 24th September 2024 at 09:30am.

The total value of child maintenance that has not been paid and now needs to be collected through ‘Collect and Pay’ at the end of March 2024 was £634.9 million, as shown in Table 6 of the National tables.

The following information is a summary from the latest publication for data up to March 2024.

• In the 12 months up to March 2024 the child maintenance service arranged £1.4 billion child maintenance, an increase from £1.2 billion during the previous 12 months.
• 61% of all CMS arrangements use Direct Pay, with 37% using Collect and Pay and just over one billion pounds was 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).
• Since March 2023, the percentage of parents paying something towards their maintenance through collect & pay has increased from 65% to 69%.
• In the period April 2023 to March 2024 £316.8 million was arranged through the Collect & Pay service:

o £224.9 million was paid

o £91.9 million was unpaid

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 ensure gender equality in the work of the Child Maintenance Service.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) aims to provide a high-quality service to all its customers. The CMS treats parents equally as individuals based on their roles within the scheme and makes no reference to gender. The Department has a specific duty to assess the impact of proposed policies and services and any changes to them on equality to ensure the Department meets its Public Sector Equality Duty obligations.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service in collecting arrears payments.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) always encourages paying parents to pay their maintenance on time, to avoid accrual of arrears. Where a paying parent fails to pay on time or in full, the CMS aims to take immediate action to recover the debt and re-establish compliance. The CMS will initially negotiate a payment that is feasible for the parent to pay. If this is unsuccessful and the paying parent is employed, the CMS will use a Deductions from Earnings Order (DEO) to take payment directly from their wages. The CMS has a range of strong enforcement powers that can be used against those who consistently refuse to meet their obligations to provide financial support to their children. These powers include the ability to deduct directly from the paying parent’s bank accounts, forcing the sale of property and disqualifications from holding or obtaining driving licenses and passports. We are committed to making the most effective use of these strong enforcement powers and have made a number of improvements to our enforcement process to make it quicker and more efficient.

Found: Child Maintenance Service statistics

Found: DWP Customer Experience Survey: Child Maintenance Service 2021 to 2022

Found: DWP Customer Experience Survey: Child Maintenance Service 2021 to 2022

Found: findings: Universal Credit, State Pension (SP), Retirement benefits (excluding SP), Disability benefits, Child

Found: DWP Customer Experience Survey: Child Maintenance Service 2023 to 2024

Found: DWP Customer Experience Survey: Child Maintenance Service 2022 to 2023

Found: DWP Customer Experience Survey: Child Maintenance Service 2023 to 2024

Found: DWP Customer Experience Survey: Child Maintenance Service 2022 to 2023

Found: for info Reform_UK_Our_Contract_with_You.pdf (nationbuilder.com) Key points • Reform the Child