Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to reduce the rate of non-compliance from paying parents to receiving parents using the Child Maintenance Service.

The Child Maintenance Service has wide ranging powers to enforce the collection of both ongoing child maintenance liability and also arrears. Our Compliance and Arrears strategy further strengthens our enforcement powers by enabling the deduction of child maintenance from a wider range of bank accounts, tackling ‘asset rich’ parents by assuming a notional income from certain assets, and enabling non-compliant parents to be disqualified from holding or obtaining a UK passport.