Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to seek improvements to the child maintenance system; and what recent discussions she has had with statutory and non statutory bodies to discuss system improvements.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is taking steps to make improvements across the child maintenance system and create a modern, accessible and robust service through our Service Modernisation Programme and CMS reforms.

Throughout our Service Modernisation Programme, we have worked with suppliers who have experience of transforming organisations globally – this is ongoing, and we benefit from their insight and innovation. Additionally, we have worked with other government departments to understand elements of their transformation, for example HMRC on how they have modernised guidance.

The Service Modernisation Programme (SMP) has already delivered significant improvements to the customer experience through the provision of online services and Digital Assist Telephony Service enabling parents to access their on-line My Child Maintenance Case at any time. We have restructured our telephony call routing system, made incremental improvements to customer communications, including a full review of letters, and made significant advancements to our IT systems. The wide-reaching programme aims to continue to reform and modernise CMS services with increased effectiveness and efficiency and will continue to engage a wide range of statutory and non-statutory bodies to do this.

The CMS has recently concluded a public consultation on policy changes to the CMS (The Child Maintenance: Improving the collection and transfer of payments) and are analysing the responses. This includes removing the Direct Pay service and managing all CMS cases in one service to allow the CMS to tackle non-compliance faster. The consultation also sought views on how victims and survivors of domestic abuse can be better supported to use CMS, and whether removing Direct Pay completely would benefit victims and survivors of domestic abuse. This is ongoing and the Government will publish a response in due course.

Following the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023 receiving royal assent in 2023, government consulted on accelerating enforcement to inform its proposed regulations to support the introduction of administrative liability orders. Proposed changes will streamline the enforcement process and facilitate compliance from paying parents more quickly. We are working to bring them into effect as soon as possible.

The department is also conducting a programme of work to review the maintenance calculation to make sure it is fit for purpose, reflects today’s social trends and is future proofed to handle further changes.