Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to improve the enforcement of child maintenance payments.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is committed to making the most effective use of its strong enforcement powers and have made a number of improvements to its processes to drive case compliance and challenge non-compliant behaviours.

The Department publishes quarterly statistics for the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) and the latest statistics are currently available to June 2025. Table 6 in the latest National tables provides information on all enforcement actions used by the CMS from quarter ending June 2015 to quarter ending June 2025 to collect both the maintenance arranged by the CMS, and Child Support Agency arrears that have been transitioned to CMS systems. This may include actions taken against parents for whom no ongoing maintenance has been arranged under the CMS.

The table shows that between April 2017 and June 2025, the CMS has collected a total of £95.9m from Paying Parents via civil enforcement actions.