Children: Maintenance
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to ensure that the Child Maintenance Service enforces parent (a) compliance and (b) payment.
Answered by Andrew Western
Where a paying parent fails to pay on time or in full, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) aims to take immediate action to recover the debt and re-establish compliance. 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 also 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.
The Department plans to enhance effectiveness in collecting arrears payments by delivering changes via regulations to streamline the enforcement process. This will remove the requirement to obtain a court issued liability order, and instead allow the Secretary of State to issue 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.
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