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Written question asked by Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party) on Friday, 15 February 2019, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 19 February 2019. It was answered by Justin Tomlinson (Conservative) on Monday, 25 February 2019 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Children: Maintenance

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of paying parents using the child maintenance service are in arrears.

Answer

Paying Parents using the Child Maintenance Service can either arrange the payments between themselves (Direct Pay) or if the parents cannot do this or they don’t pay, the Child Maintenance Service have the Collect & Pay service which can collect and manage the payments between the parents. The Department has no knowledge of what has been paid for Paying Parents using the Direct Pay service as parents manage the payments between themselves. In September 2018, 65% of Child Maintenance Service arrangements were Direct Pay.

The Department does hold data on compliance rates for Paying Parents using the Collect and Pay Service which can be seen in ‘Table 7: Paying Parent Compliance’ of the Child Maintenance Service statistics: August 2013 – September 2018.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-august-2013-to-september-2018-experimental

Please note that the table does not accurately represent the proportion of Paying Parents who are in arrears. “Compliance” means that the paying parent paid some child maintenance in the last three months. So a parent may have paid some child maintenance but may still be in arrears. If a parent is not compliant they have not paid any of their liability in the quarter.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
222044
Session
2017-19
Subjects
Children Arrears Maintenance
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk