Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reasons her Department uses shared care bands when calculating reductions to child maintenance payments; and what her Department's rationale was in deciding what those bands should be.

Where there is shared care an adjustment may be made to the maintenance calculation to take account of the overnight care a paying parent is expected to have over a twelve month period.

Bands are used to allow for simpler calculations and to reduce the need to consider small changes. Child maintenance is calculated at a weekly rate so the reduction is applied in ratios of sevenths to reflect how the number of nights per year relates to a weekly amount.