Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on how many occasions in respect of the Child Maintenance Service instigating court action for wilful refusal or culpable neglect in paying child maintenance has led to (a) disqualifying the paying parent from holding or obtaining a driving licence for up to two years, (b) disqualifying the paying parent from holding or obtaining a passport and (c) committing the paying parent to prison for a maximum of six weeks since that service was established.

Child Maintenance Service (CMS) sanctions (sending Paying Parents to prison, or disqualifying them from holding or obtaining a passport or driving licence) are a last resort and only used when every other method of recovering unpaid child maintenance has been tried.

The number of cases referred to court by CMS, along with the outcomes, are only available from July 2019 and are published quarterly. The latest published figures for Child Maintenance Service (CMS) are up to the end of December 2020 and can be found in “Table 7.2: Enforcement Actions - Detail on Sanctions” of the National Tables here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-statistics-data-to-december-2020-experimental