Child Maintenance Service

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Farmer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reform the Child Maintenance Service.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, in the few days since I secured this debate, I have been contacted by a large number of organisations and individuals expressing strong views based on very difficult experiences as either paying or receiving parents in the child maintenance system. The parliamentary digital engagement team did sterling work to publicise this debate and elicit testimony from the public to inform it. I am very grateful to every one of the 1,524 people who took the time to respond and I hope to do some justice to their stories in my remarks.

That the number using the Child Maintenance Service across Great Britain is high is unsurprising, given that an estimated third of all children grow up in separated families. In December 2020, the Department for Work and Pensions reported that 756,500 children—roughly equivalent to the whole populations of Bristol and Newcastle cities combined—were covered by CMS arrangements. This fairly small cohort of speakers today does not represent the importance of child maintenance reform to those directly involved, their extended families and wider society. At least we will have longer to unpack properly our concerns in this highly contested area of policy. To quote Professor Patrick Parkinson, a key architect of the Australian child support reforms, it

“involves making compromises between the conflicting interests of mothers, fathers, children and the state … A win for one interest group … is a loss for another. Child support policy is a complex and contentious area involving zero sum calculations in political terms.”

No pressure then, Minister.

The contention is wholly understandable: the process of separation, however amicably achieved, is usually emotionally and financially stressful. A once-intimate relationship undergoes significant change, sometimes at the behest of one partner and strenuously resisted by the other. The indissolubility of parenthood and the important shift away from clean break divorce mean that both parents will still need to co-operate, at the very least around money and contact.

History has taught us there are no silver bullets and a whole host of potential unintended consequences when it comes to reforming child maintenance. Nearly 40 years ago, the seminal Finer report proposed a dedicated agency for administering maintenance payments. The ground lay fallow until 1993, when the Child Support Agency first opened its doors following the Child Support Act 1991. Just two years later, more legislation was required to fix its considerable problems, setting the tone for the sporadic reforms that produced the current system, in place since 2012.

We appear overdue for another wave of change, especially as universal credit is now a much more mature welfare system. The interaction of benefits with child support payments is a particularly salient issue. A reformed child maintenance system must do even more to ensure that paying and receiving parents, and the children both are raising, albeit not under the same roof, are not living in financial poverty as a result of its operation.

Looking briefly at how the current system works, many separated parents agree and adhere to private family-based arrangements. The Child Maintenance Service, which replaced the Child Support Agency, is for parents who have been unable to do this. Around two-thirds of children are covered through direct-pay arrangements, where the CMS calculates maintenance liabilities and parents arrange payments between themselves. A third are covered through collect-and-pay arrangements, where the CMS collects and manages payment between parents. Paying and receiving parents experience this system very differently, as evidenced in responses to the parliamentary survey. Almost half were from paying fathers and almost all the receiving parents, 40% of respondents, were mothers.

Emerging themes from this exercise map on to those in the academic literature and other cases I was sent. First, paying parents highlighted how the nature of CMS calculations could lead to financial hardship, which was unalleviable by working longer hours, as any additional money would be directed towards child maintenance. The Social Security Advisory Committee recently asked the DWP to examine ways of improving the child maintenance formula and its link with earning thresholds to address such concerns. My first question to the Minister is this: has there been any progress on this issue, given the DWP’s commitment to inform future policy development with the views expressed in SSAC’s consultation?

Secondly, as the receiving parent obtains less money if children stay overnight, this can disincentivise sharing care. Thirdly, and correlating with these previous two themes, paying parents reported impacts on their mental health, suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts. Fourthly, many reported issues with customer service, errors in calculations and inconsistencies, as did many receiving parents.

Three other areas stood out among receiving parents’ responses. First, they were dissatisfied with the effectiveness of action taken to collect payments. Secondly, they felt inadequately safeguarded in situations involving domestic abuse; for example, the continuation of control by withholding payment. Finally, self-employment and zero-hours contracts were deemed to create loopholes, so paying parents could hide income. I hope other noble Lords will go into more detail on this wide range of issues, which I have been able only to touch on, and suggest solutions to the Minister.

Paying and receiving parents diverge in what they perceive to be acceptable ways of resolving systemic difficulties. For example, internationally, many child support systems now rely on both parents’ income when determining liabilities, where most women work. In the parliamentary survey, 93% of paying parents said both parents’ incomes should be included, compared to 18% of receiving parents. Admittedly, counting mothers’ income can reduce incentives for workforce participation, but changes in Australia actually increased incentives for more qualified mothers, such as nurses and teachers, to return to work or increase hours. Their reforms, which have helped diminish the extent to which child support is a source of mass grievance, required designing a markedly complex formula, which had to be fair across a broad cross-section of circumstances. This took an expert committee eight months and significant research. A similarly intense process would be required here.

The other health warning is that, as child support systems interact with a country’s welfare system, translating ideas from one jurisdiction to another is always problematic. However, can my noble friend say whether the Government have any plans to consult on the merits of aligning Great Britain to other child support systems by including both parents’ incomes?

Finally, one theme that did not emerge in the survey but was raised by the Social Security Advisory Committee in 2019 was whether separated parents are getting the support that they need through a challenging and stressful time in their lives. The committee pointed to the need for an overarching, joined-up government strategy for separated parents, covering all relevant departments and child maintenance. Necessary, but not sufficient, is the commendable cross-departmental work to reduce parental conflict.

I declare my interest as a director of the Family Hubs Network and say that access points to services offering far more holistic support could be provided in the family hubs that the Government have promised to champion. Such access was instrumental to the progress made in Australia: family relationship centres, integral to its 2006 family law reforms, provide a gateway to the many different kinds of advice and support that parents need. The germ of such an idea was in our own landmark Children Act 1989, which specified that local authorities should provide family centres, where families could get help to overcome difficulties, including when parents separate. Can my noble friend the Minister inform the House how different departments of government are working together, including to deliver family hubs?

In conclusion, child maintenance will always be a system under scrutiny or being “reformed”, but state action must also be accompanied by a cultural shift in attitudes towards parental responsibility. We need to get to a place where there is a strong and pervasive expectation that, first, both parents will always share the cost of raising children, and, secondly, with the holistic support that I have described, they will sort out the thorny post-separation issues that stem the flow of child maintenance.

Child Poverty: Ethnicity

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, it is obviously concerning that certain ethnic minority groups still have a greater percentage of children in low-income households than the national average and illuminating that children from Pakistani and Bangladeshi households perform higher than the national average at GCSE level despite this. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley has just indicated, there is a disparity here. Also, white Irish and white British pupils have the largest gaps between average educational outcomes for students eligible for free schools meals and those who are not, while Chinese, black African, Bangladeshi and Pakistani students have the smallest gaps. In other words, income is only one determinant that should be of interest to policymakers.

This further substantiates evidence from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities that certain ethnic groups, such as black African, Indian and Bangladeshi pupils, perform better than white British groups once socioeconomic status is taken into consideration. The commission partly attributes such achievements to “immigrant optimism” and greater devotion than the native population to education as a way out of poverty. It recommends that the Government invests in research to understand what factors drive the success of high-performing pupil communities, including black African, Chinese, Bangladeshi and Indian ethnic groups, and how this can be replicated to support all pupils.

The CRED report has proven controversial for many reasons, but it contains important messages that we ignore to the detriment of those whom policy should support. Its findings and those of the ONS highlight that poor white British populations should also be seen as ethnicities deserving of policy attention. Poor white people in the north-east of England are the largest group with multidimensional disadvantages, such as income and life expectancy. Importantly, the north-east also has the largest proportion of lone-parent families in England after London. The CRED report made the neglected point that family breakdown is

“one of the main reasons for poor outcomes”,

and that

“Family is also the foundation stone of success for many ethnic minorities.”


Those ethnicities that are doing better educationally also have lower numbers of families where there is only one parent; for example, 40% of black African families and 6% of Indian families, compared with 60% of black Caribbean families. Strengthening families must be central to effective policy to tackle social inequality. As co-founder of the Family Hubs Network, I welcome the Government’s adoption of family hubs as official policy and their continued funding of the reducing parental conflict and supporting families programmes. Will the Minister say what the Government are doing to ensure that family hubs and these other strands of policy are outworked in a way that fully includes families from all ethnicities?

Kickstart Scheme

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I think I answered that question when I answered the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart. As I said, I will take that back to the department, write to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness and place a copy in the Library. However, as it stands, there are no plans to change the eligibility.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, what are the Government doing to ensure that the Kickstart scheme meets the needs of understaffed sectors of the employment market which are well suited to this age cohort and therefore more likely to sustain young people’s employment once subsidies end? I am thinking particularly of both large and small hospitality employers, which are struggling to fill vacancies as pubs and restaurants gear up to reopen fully.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

We are working closely with a whole range of employers in sectors impacted by the pandemic, particularly the hospitality sector, where we have enabled employers to create Kickstart opportunities sooner than the economy might otherwise allow. We have seen a strong response from the hospitality sector, with involvement from the national academy of food and drink and major employers like Greene King offering Kickstart jobs across the country, and we will continue to do so.

Covid-19: Universal Credit

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I give an assurance to the noble Baroness that I will speak to her in more depth about the points she raises. Once I have done that, I will of course go back to the department and talk to those there.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, the number of vacancies in the period November 2020 to January 2021 is up by 64,000 from the previous quarter to almost 600,000. What are work coaches doing to ensure that claimants take these vacancies up, and what plans do the Government have to incentivise moving into work by reducing the taper rate and increasing work allowances?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I say to my noble friend and the whole House that we should thank God that we have work coaches. Their training has been enhanced, they are focused on the individual and they make sure that those individuals get the support and access to the benefits that they need. More importantly than anything else, they are getting access to the help they need to get back to work. Universal credit was designed to make work pay, so not all of a person’s earnings are deducted from UC. The department has made changes to improve the financial incentives to work by reducing the taper rate to 63% from 65%. All these things are continually looked at.

Universal Credit

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I note the point about the timing of any decision, but that is with my friend in the other place, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Government are redoubling and trebling our efforts for those people who have found themselves in difficulty, including the people from Debenhams and Arcadia who are concerned for their futures, to get people back to work. We are completely focused on it. We have doubled the number of work coaches; we have Kickstart; we have the youth offer; we have sector-based work academies; and the Jobcentre Plus staff, the work coaches and the employment teams are engaging with employers to make sure that we have every vacancy we can get and we get people back to work as quickly as we can.

[Lord Farmer (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we should keep at the forefront of our thinking that universal credit was designed not to trap people in benefits dependency but to give them every help and incentive to get back into work. This has perhaps never been more important, both for individual morale and to enable economic recovery. What is the DWP doing to support people to get back into employment and enable the economy to recover from the financial impact of Covid?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for reminding us about the principles of universal credit and, at the same time, of the difficult circumstances that people find themselves in. I stress again that we are providing help through dedicated work coaches and engagement with employers. We are supporting people back into work in a whole host of ways, not least the 250,000 green jobs that we want to create. We do not want to trap people on benefits; we want to help them.

Youth Unemployment

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The Government have an action plan that we are putting into action. It is our Plan for Jobs, which is grossed up into a £30 billion fund. I have already mentioned some of things that we are doing with that money; I do not want to repeat them. I take the point about the devil making work for idle hands, I really do, but what is different here is that young people will get a work coach—a personal coach—who will stick with them. We will do everything we can to make sure that young people transfer into work, achieve their destiny and do not fall into activity that we do not want to see them involved in.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, blunt-instrument measures that force the shielding of the old and vulnerable, instead of allowing them to choose to shield themselves, are devastating areas of the economy in which young workers’ careers flourish. This is widening the divide between young and the old. The Government are balancing many considerations, but are they including the impact of tighter restrictions on intergenerational harmony? And, crucially, what are the Government doing to support young people who are not receiving universal credit?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The department is committed to providing targeted support for young people, including those who are still claiming jobseeker’s allowance. This support offers basic skills training, traineeships, work experience, sector-based work academies and support that is funded through other organisations. I would say to the noble Lord that immense work is going on with different businesses. I know that my Secretary of State and the Minister responsible for employment will be going to Pinewood Studios to launch “from aviation to the creative industries”. The Buckinghamshire LEP has done a great job and we hope that there will be opportunities similar to that all over the country.

Low-income Families: Benefits Freeze

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

I understand the points that the noble Baroness has raised—you cannot argue with them. One of the major contributing factors was that inflation was twice what we thought it was going to be. It is no excuse, but that was it. I am touched that she thinks I can influence the Chancellor; I will have a really good go and keep her posted. My door is open to talk about this further.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, over a decade ago the Joseph Rowntree Foundation proved that the tax credits approach to child poverty had run out of steam. How are this Government following the evidence on the root causes of child poverty, which include family breakdown?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

My noble friend makes a point about tax credits. While I have no doubt that they did a lot of good, some of their ramifications caused difficulty, in that we had an annual rather than a monthly reconciliation, as we are trying to have under universal credit. I believe that the monthly reconciliation under universal credit, while not perfect, is much better than waiting until the end of the year. On child poverty and family breakdown, obviously there are families who have great difficulty fiscally, and we have to try to help them, but the evidence shows that helping parents to move into and remain in work is the best option for moving them out of poverty. We want to see child poverty fall and remain determined to tackle it. My door is open for further discussion on this; I will do anything I can to move things forward.

Child Poverty

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble Baroness that our policies are doing that; in fact, they are doing precisely the opposite. We have increased in an enormous number of ways the support—not just financial but practical—we give to children in low-income families. Indeed, the previous Question illustrates that. On how we measure poverty, the noble Baroness is right: we should debate, and have debated, looking at how we measure poverty. That is why on 17 May the Minister for Family Support, Housing and Child Maintenance announced that new experimental statistics to measure poverty will be developed, working with the Social Metrics Commission and published by DWP in 2020. We are looking to rethink the measures of poverty.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, while the survey findings are challenging, there are clearly additional factors at play—not simply a lack of money. A comment highlighted in the report and likely representative of many others is that:

“Their social and emotional needs are not being met and this is having detrimental effects on their learning and behaviour”.


We cannot assume that this is wholly due to long working hours. What are HM Government doing to ensure that parents struggling to nurture their children are given early help?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Farmer for the enormous amount of work he has done and continues to do so selflessly in this area. He is absolutely right: this is not just about money. The truth is that support for the family structure is critical. Parents play a critical role in giving children the experiences and skills they need to succeed. Children exposed to parental conflict can suffer long-term harm. That is why we have introduced a new Reducing Parental Conflict programme, backed by up to £30 million. This programme will encourage councils across England to integrate services and approaches that address parental conflict into their local services for families.

Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit: Two-child Limit

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, the noble Baroness’s question is across government, but it is important from our standpoint at the Department for Work and Pensions that we concentrate on lifting people out of poverty so that they can support their children and develop as role models. A child living in a household where every adult is working is about five times less likely to be in relative poverty than one in a household where nobody works, so we support parents into work. For example, the Government spend £6 billion on childcare each year, which is not reflected in our poverty statistics, to help parents go out to work, support their families and develop a responsible living situation where they can properly feed their children.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, financial stability is important for healthy child development, but so too is relationship stability. The Government have replaced the family stability indicator with parental conflict measures, yet many divorces and separations take place in low-conflict relationships. Research shows that these are more damaging to children than when high-conflict relationships end. What are the Government doing to prevent family breakdown, not just reduce parental conflict?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My noble friend makes a good point. Although our welfare reforms—and, in particular, universal credit—are already transforming lives to lift children out of poverty and support parents into work, child development and family stability depend on so much more than financial stability and benefit payments alone. That is why the Government are, for example, helping local authorities across England train front-line practitioners to identify relationship distress, provide appropriate support and refer as appropriate.

Poverty: Metrics

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Stroud for obtaining this important debate.

Parliamentarians have an opportunity to transform lives, society and our economy by tackling the root causes of poverty and taking an approach to social justice which changes the lives of the poorest and benefits everybody. When families on the margins find stability in work and escape the social breakdown that holds them back, more adults and children can thrive and become net contributors within society. Demands on the public purse are reduced, and we all gain. However, given the shortness of time this evening, I will be brief and to the point.

By asking about social factors around poverty, the Social Metrics Commission has helpfully highlighted that, as my noble friend Lady Stroud mentioned, many people with disabilities are living harder lives than some ever realised, and that households earning up to £200,000 can receive childcare support, yet lack of quality affordable childcare continues to keep the poorest families out of work.

But it is with regret that I have to challenge the claim that the commission has united left and right, and point out that it has instead missed the elephant in the room. Why do I say that? First, although there is a greater focus on the social conditions of poverty, it remains a relative financial measure and will drive a financial rather than a social response. This runs counter to the Government’s emphasis on improving life chances in the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, which enabled policymakers to paint from a much richer palette. My noble friend Lord Freud, from whom it is a pleasure to hear again on this subject, committed the Government to,

“look at all the root causes … They include addiction, problem debt and family instability. The approach will enable anyone to hold us to account for the actions we have taken and the progress we have made”.—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1599.]

I therefore urge the Government again to reintroduce the family stability indicator. Previously the Minister, my noble friend Lord Agnew, told this House that evidence,

“tells us that the quality of relationships within a family had a greater impact on child outcomes than the structure of the family”.—[Official Report, 2/11/17; col. 1539.]

While the family stability indicator did not provide a complete picture, it is essential to have in the mix—hence my second and perhaps even greater criticism of the commission’s work. It once again misses the biggest driver of poverty in the UK today: family breakdown. We will never adequately address poverty by ignoring this national crisis or failing to include indicators to measure it.

This is where left and right should concur. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently found that persistent poverty hovers at around one in 10 of most household types; for lone-parent households, it is one in four and rising. The commission’s own measure shows that most family types hover around a 22% poverty rate, while the rate for lone-parent families more than doubles, at 54%. Without adequate regard to the fact that we are a world leader in family breakdown, any commission, however well meaning, will fail not only to unite politics but get to grips with this ultimate root cause of poverty.