Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service.

737,600 children are covered by Child Maintenance Service arrangements; the majority of cases use Direct Pay, where parents arrange maintenance payments between themselves.

During the quarter ending March 2020, £243.1 million in child maintenance was paid through the Collect & Pay service, or due to be paid through Direct Pay.

When measuring the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service, the Service collects data on the rate of compliance. The most recent quarterly statistics show that 68 per cent of all paying parents cleared some of their child maintenance through the Collect & Pay service.

At the end of March 2020, 49,200 Paying Parents on the Collect & Pay service had a Deduction from Earnings Order / Request in force. £28.0m was collected from these Paying Parents during the quarter. In the quarter ending March 2020, £2.6m was deducted directly from Paying Parents’ bank accounts.

These figures are published quarterly as part of the Child Maintenance Service experimental statistics, which can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-maintenance-service-statistics-data-to-march-2020-experimental/child-maintenance-service-statistics-data-to-march-2020-experimental