Asked by: Samantha Niblett (Labour - South Derbyshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service in ensuring its processes remain gender‑neutral.
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 of 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 its policies and processes, and any changes to them on equality grounds to ensure it meets its obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty.
The CMS proactively invests in developing, reviewing, and improving support tools and training materials to help staff deliver quality customer service. Caseworkers receive training and appropriate guidance on how to make decisions on the CMS’s behalf and are required to follow guidance and apply the law to the facts of a case.
Asked by: Adam Jogee (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to improve support for children impacted by decisions taken by the CMS.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) supports children through ensuring sustainable child maintenance arrangements are in place. In 2025, £1.6bn maintenance was arranged by CMS. Taken together with private arrangements, this has the ongoing impact of lifting 120,000 children out of relative low income (on an after-housing-costs basis).
To further improve our support, we intend to remove Direct Pay when parliamentary time allows. Moving to a single, strengthened Collect and Pay system will allow the CMS to monitor all payments, identify missed or partial payments immediately, and take faster enforcement action. Ahead of this change, the CMS is already moving non-compliant parents more quickly from Direct Pay to Collect and Pay to enable us to tackle non-compliance faster and get more money flowing to children.
We also intend to enhance the effectiveness of CMS in collecting arrears payments by streamlining the enforcement process. This will remove the requirement to obtain a court issued liability order and instead allow the Secretary of State to make an administrative liability order. Introducing this simpler administrative process will enable the CMS to take faster action against those paying parents who actively avoid their responsibilities and will get money to children faster. The CMS are working with His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and the Scottish Government to establish a process for implementation and plan to introduce regulations to Parliament as soon as possible.
CMS undertake regular quality assurance checks to ensure processes are delivered accurately, reducing the requirement for rework and reinforcing our aim to ‘get it right first time’. These measures demonstrate our commitment to minimising delays and ensuring that child maintenance reaches children promptly.
Asked by: Catherine Fookes (Labour - Monmouthshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help tackle financial abuse.
Answered by Natalie Fleet - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The VAWG strategy and the Financial Inclusion Strategy set out ambitious commitments to tackle this issue of financial abuse.
We are working with the financial sector to make sure that coerced debt, credit ratings, Child Maintenance Service payments, and joint mortgages cannot be used as tools of abuse.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with the Ministry of Justice regarding the consistency and frequency of communication between police forces and victims of financial abuse and coercive control.
Answered by Natalie Fleet - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The government recognises the serious harm that these forms of abuse can cause and the challenges of policing them effectively. Our ‘Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy’ includes a range of provisions against financial abuse including coerced debt, credit ratings, mortgages and other financial services and the work of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). On 20th April 2026 HM Treasury published a revised toolkit on tackling economic abuse, with specific links to the VAWG Strategy. We will also update the Statutory Guidance on Coercive or Controlling Behaviour (CCB) by the end of 2026 to reflect the evolution in our understanding of CCB since the original guidance was published.
In April 2025, the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection (NCVPP) launched to provide national leadership on VAWG within policing. The Centre will improve the response to violence against women and girls, driving a change in policing attitudes to ensure that officers respond effectively to VAWG crimes, including CCB, and offer victims better support and consistent protection.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with the Ministry of Justice on the urgency with which police forces tackle financial abuse and coercive control.
Answered by Natalie Fleet - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The government recognises the serious harm that these forms of abuse can cause and the challenges of policing them effectively. Our ‘Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy’ includes a range of provisions against financial abuse including coerced debt, credit ratings, mortgages and other financial services and the work of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). On 20th April 2026 HM Treasury published a revised toolkit on tackling economic abuse, with specific links to the VAWG Strategy. We will also update the Statutory Guidance on Coercive or Controlling Behaviour (CCB) by the end of 2026 to reflect the evolution in our understanding of CCB since the original guidance was published.
In April 2025, the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection (NCVPP) launched to provide national leadership on VAWG within policing. The Centre will improve the response to violence against women and girls, driving a change in policing attitudes to ensure that officers respond effectively to VAWG crimes, including CCB, and offer victims better support and consistent protection.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether there has been an increase in the annual number of reported errors made by the Child Maintenance Service since July 2024.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) operates within the wider DWP Quality Strategy designed to prevent, detect, and correct errors at the earliest opportunity. Where payments have been made in error, the CMS has processes to refund overpayments to the paying parent and, where appropriate, to seek recovery from the receiving parent. Decisions on reimbursement are made on a case-by-case basis and the welfare of all children affected in any given case will be considered as part of making this decision.
In addition, the Department’s approach to accuracy and error is subject to independent scrutiny, including oversight by the National Audit Office, providing further assurance that robust controls are in place and that any issues are identified and acted upon promptly.
The Department remains committed to improving its systems and processes to reduce the likelihood of error, ensure payments are correct, and take swift action to resolve issues where they occur.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) measures assessment accuracy by comparing the total weekly monetary value of correct and incorrect maintenance calculations to produce an overall percentage of correctly assessed cases. For 2024/25, CMS Monetary Value Error (MVE) accuracy was 99.5%, unchanged from 2023/24, where accuracy was also 99.5%. This indicates that the overall level of accuracy in maintenance assessments has remained stable over this period.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) Client Fund Accounts are due to be published in December 2026, which will include the assessment accuracy for 2025/26.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of reported errors made by the Child Maintenance Service in 2025–26.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) operates within the wider DWP Quality Strategy designed to prevent, detect, and correct errors at the earliest opportunity. Where payments have been made in error, the CMS has processes to refund overpayments to the paying parent and, where appropriate, to seek recovery from the receiving parent. Decisions on reimbursement are made on a case-by-case basis and the welfare of all children affected in any given case will be considered as part of making this decision.
In addition, the Department’s approach to accuracy and error is subject to independent scrutiny, including oversight by the National Audit Office, providing further assurance that robust controls are in place and that any issues are identified and acted upon promptly.
The Department remains committed to improving its systems and processes to reduce the likelihood of error, ensure payments are correct, and take swift action to resolve issues where they occur.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) measures assessment accuracy by comparing the total weekly monetary value of correct and incorrect maintenance calculations to produce an overall percentage of correctly assessed cases. For 2024/25, CMS Monetary Value Error (MVE) accuracy was 99.5%, unchanged from 2023/24, where accuracy was also 99.5%. This indicates that the overall level of accuracy in maintenance assessments has remained stable over this period.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) Client Fund Accounts are due to be published in December 2026, which will include the assessment accuracy for 2025/26.
Asked by: Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the Child Maintenance Service has effective measures in place to identify payments taken in error and return monies swiftly.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) operates within the wider DWP Quality Strategy designed to prevent, detect, and correct errors at the earliest opportunity. Where payments have been made in error, the CMS has processes to refund overpayments to the paying parent and, where appropriate, to seek recovery from the receiving parent. Decisions on reimbursement are made on a case-by-case basis and the welfare of all children affected in any given case will be considered as part of making this decision.
In addition, the Department’s approach to accuracy and error is subject to independent scrutiny, including oversight by the National Audit Office, providing further assurance that robust controls are in place and that any issues are identified and acted upon promptly.
The Department remains committed to improving its systems and processes to reduce the likelihood of error, ensure payments are correct, and take swift action to resolve issues where they occur.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) measures assessment accuracy by comparing the total weekly monetary value of correct and incorrect maintenance calculations to produce an overall percentage of correctly assessed cases. For 2024/25, CMS Monetary Value Error (MVE) accuracy was 99.5%, unchanged from 2023/24, where accuracy was also 99.5%. This indicates that the overall level of accuracy in maintenance assessments has remained stable over this period.
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) Client Fund Accounts are due to be published in December 2026, which will include the assessment accuracy for 2025/26.
Asked by: John Milne (Liberal Democrat - Horsham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the Child Maintenance Service sends template letters to clients stating that a call was attempted in cases where no call was made.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) uses standard letter templates for efficiency, including references to attempted contact, but these are intended to reflect activity recorded on a case. If a letter indicates an attempted call, this should be based on a genuine attempt logged by CMS staff or its telephony systems. Template SMS messages are also sent to customers after failed call attempts.
If a customer believes they have received a letter that does not accurately reflect what has occurred, they are encouraged to raise the matter with the CMS directly so it can be investigated and corrected where appropriate.
Asked by: John Milne (Liberal Democrat - Horsham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the Child Maintenance Service's service level agreement is for contacting clients; and how compliance with that agreement is measured.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) takes a flexible and tailored approach to customer contact, with standards aligned to the nature and complexity of different enquiry types. This ensures customers receive support appropriate to their circumstances and chosen contact channel, rather than through a single overarching service target.
Compliance within these standards is monitored through a range of performance indicators, enabling CMS to assess responsiveness and quality, and to support continuous improvement.
Where specific standards are in place, such as for complaints, CMS aims to contact complainants within 15 working days to provide an outcome or agree next steps.