Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

183CC: After Clause 26, insert the following new Clause—
Review: child maintenance enforcement(1) Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a review considering whether the overall wellbeing of children is being harmed by the non-commencement of section 34 of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 (transfer of arrears) and the uncommenced sections of both the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act 2023 and the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023.(2) If the review considers that the overall wellbeing of children is being harmed by the non-commencement of those provisions, the Secretary of State must, within two months of the publication of the review, make a statement setting out the Government’s position on the commencement of those provisions.”

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I start by saying that it is great to see my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott in the Chamber on the Front Bench. She and I worked together when we were in the Department for Work and Pensions, and I have to say that she was an exceptional Minister for the Child Maintenance Service. What motivated us all was improving the welfare and well-being of children.

I start my intervention by flagging that, frankly, I had quite a lot of arguments or disagreements—I do not think you are allowed to argue in the Lords—with the clerks about the scope of this amendment. The clerks consistently reiterated that trying to do something to make it easier for children to get child maintenance was not connected to the well-being of children because nobody could guarantee that the child maintenance payment would go to the child. I pointed out that, for example, Healthy Start does not go directly to the child; the money still goes to the parent, and the parent can buy a certain amount of food, which you hope will go to the child. I am flagging this now because the intention was to bring a particular amendment about commencing certain legislation, and I will talk to that now.

One of the important things is a recognition—it has been referred to already in previous groups—of the impact of poverty on children. Something like nearly double the proportion of families with a single parent are in poverty—I think that is relative poverty—compared to two-parent families. From my perspective and the research that we did, and from looking into this with my noble friend, we felt that aspects of the cost of living were simply not being addressed and that we needed to get a lot more parents to start paying for the upkeep of their child.

One thing that has been a success overall is that, for just over a decade, 1 million children have been accounted for in arrangements made through the Child Maintenance Service. The split is roughly that 60% of those are in what is called Direct Pay and about 40% are in what is called Collect and Pay.

Direct Pay is where a calculation is made by the Child Maintenance Service and one parent is supposed to pay that to the parent who has the child mainly in their care. For whatever it is worth, there is an annual recalculation, but the department does not monitor precisely what happens there. As regards Collect and Pay, I note the Government’s intention today. I will not get into the merits of the decision announced today by the Government about Collect and Pay; I am happy to leave that for another time.

We have a situation in which there are approximately 390,000 children there. In the quarter to December 2024—the most recent statistics that are available—43.6%, basically 44% of children, did not get a single penny. That is 170,000 children. It is fair to say that they got some contribution: about 45.6% got paid 90% or more, but 22% received anywhere between, basically, zero and 90%.

I am also conscious that the Select Committee on which I serve is doing an inquiry into child maintenance, so I do not intend to delay the consideration of the Committee, because I am sure we will come back to child maintenance in more detail at another time. One key thing that may not be realised is that in these arrangements where the interlocutor is the Government—whether through arranging the Direct Pay calculations or Collect and Pay, where money is taken from one parent and passed to another—we should think about some of the issues that that has caused. I welcome what the Government have done, or will do at a certain point, in changing the benefit deductions so that child maintenance now comes at the very top, but the two issues that I am referring to were sufficiently concerning when I was in government.

That is why we supported what were basically handout Bills, which passed through this House. One related to domestic abuse and the other to moving to something where you could have an administrative liability order. After commissioning Dr Samantha Callan, who has also given evidence to the Select Committee, we brought about a Bill that came through this House. I cannot quite remember whether it was shepherded through by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, or the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, but one did one and one did the other.

I was a bit concerned by the answers given by the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about why, in particular, the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act had not been commenced. She started to get into a variety of complications about how complicated it is not only to identify but to justify with evidence whether somebody is a victim of domestic abuse, which concerned me. I appreciate that today the Government have decided to scrap Direct Pay and move everybody on to Collect and Pay, so that will uncover any situation where there is domestic abuse, but I am not sure how long that is going to take, so we still have a real problem. I would love to see it commenced.

On the other aspects and the liability order, this is why we put in place, or helped to facilitate, the child support Act. That was done to make enforcement quicker. Let us be candid. Approximately £700 million is owed to parents. There are a variety of ways in which that can happen. However, one of the ways particularly seems to affect self-employed parents who are due to pay. Without entirely repeating the legislation, the intention of the Act was to speed up the process of getting a liability order. At the moment it takes nearly six months to go to a magistrate, having exhausted multiple other avenues. The outcome of this was supposed to be to reduce that to a maximum of six weeks. I am really concerned that this Act has not been commenced. There are a variety of reasons, I am sure, including something to do with Scotland. However, we should get on with it. A variety of things have been said today about children’s well-being, on phones and other issues that have already been addressed on aspects of poverty strategy. This is a real action that could unlock a lot of money for young children, and I believe that we need to get on with it.

More broadly, I am conscious of the fact that only the Government can do a lot of this administrative liability. That is not just because they are the only ones who can do this sort of order; it is actually in law. If you have an arrangement through the Child Maintenance Service, you cannot then go to the small claims court yourself and say, “This person owes me money”. Everything has to be done through the hands of the Child Maintenance Service. This was one of the devices to try to speed that up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am not surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, managed to persuade those in a position to be persuaded that this amendment should have the opportunity to be discussed this evening. There is something refreshing about the idea of the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Stedman-Scott, rightly pursuing people who owe money for their children and who have that responsibility. I have no doubt that my noble friend Lady Sherlock and the current Secretary of State will be equally relentless in making sure that families are paying for the children for whom they have responsibility, and that is quite right.

I know from what the noble Baroness said that the intention of this amendment is to probe and push on the progress being made with each of the pieces of legislation that she talked about. I hope to provide some reassurance on that.

First, the powers within Section 34 of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act enable debt owed to parents or the Secretary of State to be transferred to other parties, including debt collection agencies. This power was introduced as an option to deal with the £3.8 billion debt burden that had accrued under the former Child Support Agency. A proportion of that debt was owed directly to the Secretary of State, and I am assured that the issue of Child Support Agency debt has now been resolved. The Child Maintenance Service has strong and effective enforcement powers, including imposing prison sentences for non-payment.

On the specific point about debt collection agencies, there is no evidence that using debt collection agencies would actually secure more child maintenance than current enforcement powers. In fact, a previous trial absolutely demonstrated that, so there is no evidence that commencing this power would have a positive impact on children’s well-being.

Secondly, the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023 introduced powers that, once commenced, would enable an administrative liability order to be made against a parent with outstanding child maintenance arrears. As the noble Baroness says, this introduces savings in court costs and time. I am pleased to confirm that progress is being made to implement the necessary legislation to bring this power into force as soon as possible. The Government are working with His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunal Service and the Scottish Government to establish a process for implementing ALOs, and plan to introduce regulations to Parliament by the end of this year.

The Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act 2023 recognised that direct pay may not always be appropriate for victims and survivors of domestic abuse. The Act intended to provide them greater protection when using the Child Maintenance Service, by allowing them to move to the collect and pay service but only where there is evidence of domestic abuse. The Government recognise that removing opportunities to use the Child Maintenance Service to inflict economic abuse will benefit the well-being of children. However, many victims and survivors would be unable to provide that necessary evidence as required by the Act. For those who could, there are risks that providing evidence of their experience of abuse and reliving events could lead to further trauma.

That is why the Government today published our response to the consultation, Child Maintenance: Improving the Collection and Transfer of Payments. It sets out plans for reforms to introduce a service that protects all parents from financial abuse and, importantly, includes no requirement for victims and survivors to provide evidence of their circumstances. These reforms, therefore, go further than the provisions contained in the 2023 Act to protect victims and survivors of domestic abuse. They will have a positive impact on children and their well-being, as more child maintenance liabilities will be enforced, leading to more money going to children, which I know is the objective of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, in moving this amendment.

I hope that I have provided sufficient reassurance for the noble Baroness to withdraw this amendment, although she has already identified that she has other ways to put pressure on the Government to ensure progress, and I have no doubt that she will continue to do so.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

In consideration of what the Minister has said, of which I am conscious of certain aspects, I am pleased, in particular, to hear that the Child Support (Enforcement) Act should come into effect by the end of the year. I will take up some of the other matters to which she referred directly with the responsible Minister. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 183CC withdrawn.