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Written question asked by Andrew George (Liberal Democrat) on Friday, 28 August 2026, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 2 September 2026. It was answered by Lilian Greenwood (Labour) on Tuesday, 8 September 2026 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Children: Maintenance

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what analysis his Department has undertaken of the reasons why assessed child maintenance liabilities are not paid in full, broken down by (a) deliberate non-payment, (b) affordability concerns, (c) disputed assessments, (d) administrative factors and (e) other reasons.

Answer

The Department recently published research which was commissioned as part of the wider evidence base used to inform the Department's review of the child maintenance calculation.

Amongst other things, this looked at the reasons given by both Paying and Receiving Parents as to why they did not pay or receive their full calculated amount of maintenance. These results are discussed in the chapter entitled ‘Insights on liabilities and hypothetical changes’.

These findings are based on the reasons for non-compliance self-reported by a sample of CMS users.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
19804
Session
2026-27
Subjects
Children Maintenance Non-payment
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk