PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Child Maintenance Service - 5 February 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

The Government are dedicated to ensuring that parents meet their obligations to children, and we take robust enforcement action against those who do not. Parents who paid some maintenance on the collect and pay service increased from 64% to 69% over the 12 months from September 2022.

My constituent’s daughter is a young lady who has missed out for more than a year on child maintenance payments, because her father changed jobs and the Child Maintenance Service lost track of him. My team have been involved, and despite lots of faffing, she still has not received a payment. She is one of around half of children in separated families who are not receiving the maintenance payments they deserve. Will the Minister explain what his Department is doing to ensure that the employers of these missing parents are properly chased up?

Where parents have certain categories of taxable income not being captured by the standard child maintenance calculation, they can make a request to the CMS to have the calculation varied. We have consulted on proposals to include more types of taxable income held by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the standard maintenance calculation.

The Department has a number of ways to try to get paying parents to cough up, and we must remember that this is cash for the children. In July 2022, the Government consulted on child maintenance and improving our enforcement powers through the commencement of curfew orders, and we still have not had a response to that consultation. I would be grateful to hear from the Government when they plan to respond, and I remind them of the other powers in place, such as depriving people of the ability to drive or of their passport. This is a simple thing, where people have the money and will not cough up the cash. I think we need to get on with curfew orders.

My right hon. Friend is quite right that the Government have consulted on the use of curfews, which are complex and interact with numerous Government services. Several enforcement initiatives aimed at improving compliance are currently in train, and we need to get those in place and assess their effects before we can best see how curfews might fit with them. I note her enthusiasm for curfews and might well put her in touch with Viscount Younger of Leckie, the Minister in the Lords, whose policy brief this is, so that he can update her on our latest thinking.