Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 5 September 2019 to Question 285165 on Children: Maintenance, for what reasons she has not made an assessment of the effect on equality of calculating child maintenance liabilities using gross income due to different tax liabilities in the constituent parts of the UK.

An assessment of the decision to use gross income to calculate child maintenance liabilities was carried out when we developed the 2012 statutory scheme.

It is important that the rules used to calculate a child maintenance liability are applied consistently to avoid the complexities for clients that would result from applying different rules to different parts of the UK. The maintenance calculation is designed to be affordable for the non-resident parent, while still ensuring that they contribute a significant proportion of their income to support children they no longer live with.

There is no evidence to suggest that parents are disproportionately affected by the decision to use gross income, because of where they reside in the UK.