Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made an assessment of trends in the level of child maintenance arrears from parents that pay through the Direct Pay system.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) always encourages paying parents to pay their maintenance on time, in order to avoid accrual of arrears. Where a paying parent fails to pay on time or in full, it aims to take immediate action to recover the debt and re-establish compliance.

Our strategy is to tackle breakdowns at the earliest opportunity and use preferred Method of Payments (Deductions of Earnings Orders/Direct Debits) which achieve a higher rate of compliance, whilst agreeing more sustainable ongoing payments.

The CMS work with parents to provide affordable payment plans that keep maintenance flowing, offering due consideration to fluctuations in earnings and a significant proportion of Paying Parents who are on lower incomes.

The CMS has a relatively low percentage of unpaid maintenance. Only 8% of the total maintenance due to be paid since the start of the CMS remains to be collected through Collect & Pay. This was as high as 17% in March 2015.

The CMS do not hesitate to step in and move a case to collect & pay as soon as they are notified payments are not being made.  Around 3% of direct pay arrangements move to collect and pay each quarter – a small percentage but this shows that parents can and do move to collect and pay to secure help in getting their child maintenance payments.