Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of cases were categorised as in debt (a) in 2018, (b) in 2022 and (c) now.

We do not have the number of case groups with child maintenance debt as of 2018 and the latest data we can supply is for September 2023 which will match the most recently published Child Maintenance Service Statistics.

It should be noted that that we have interpreted your question as asking how many paying parents had child maintenance debt. We do not have data on if the parents have other types of debt.

* Please note this will include paying parents with collect & pay cases, direct pay cases and collect & pay cases who have no ongoing child maintenance liability.

** The case groups with child maintenance debt are sourced from administrative data and therefore has not undergone the same rigorous quality assurance as officially published statistics.