Unlike the British Government, the United States Government recognises that “Some noncustodial parents do not pay regularly, and some spend a lot of effort and energy evading their responsibility for their children. The anxiety the custodial parent feels when payments are not regular can easily disrupt the family’s life.”

For this reason, it has has included “immediate income withholding” in all child support orders. “if an arrearage equal to one month’s payment occurs, that will automatically trigger withholding.” In other words, if arrears exceed one month, the case will automatically incur the American version of a deduction from earnings order. Contrast this with the vertically uphill struggle mothers encounter in the UK to get a deduction from earnings order put in place.

DWP Research Report 232, published in 2005, interviewed 600 separated parents.

“The largest regular payment being received was just £37 a week including arrears, and this involved a deduction from earnings order (DEO). Of those paying freely from earned income, only one was paying a regular amount, on time. This NRP was paying £30 a week, on time, but had been assessed to pay £50 per week.”

In December 2006 the Labour Government said, in “A New System of Child Maintenance” (page 12).

“We propose to pilot withholding wages as the first means of collecting maintenance, working closely with business during the development of the pilot.”

In 2007 the Department for Work and Pensions published DWP Research Report 530: “Informing the piloting of Deduction from Earnings Orders as the primary method of collecting child maintenance”. The full report is here, and the research summary is here. The research involved a quantitative survey with 1,503 UK-based employers covering micro (<ten employees), small (11 – 49), medium (50 – 199) and large sized (200+) companies, and found that:

“Employers surveyed generally support the concept of DEOs. Over half of employers interviewed thought that DEOs should be used to collect all child maintenance. There was even greater support for the use of DEOs with NRPs that have either failed to pay or indicate that they may fail to do so (which is the way DEOs are currently used).”

In July 2007 the Public Accounts Committee report into reforming the Child Support Agency said: “The Agency still performs less effectively than its counterparts in Australia and New Zealand, with higher average costs per case and lower rates of compliance. The Australian Child Support Agency has greater access than the UK Agency to individual tax information that enables it to determine income and expenditure directly, without having to rely on the individuals concerned to provide this information. Taxation is also used to collect arrears from non-resident parents. The Department, together with the Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs, should explore the scope for adopting these approaches to achieve quicker assessments and higher levels of compliance.” (Page 5)

In 2007 Patrick Parkinson, a British academic at Sydney University, a child support specialist, and a collaborator with the Centre for Social Justice, wrote an article for the Modern Law Review, “Reengineering the Child Support Scheme: an Australian Perspective on the British Government’s Proposals”:

“One area under consideration is making direct deductions from salary the default means of collecting child support even where a non-resident parent is prepared to set up a direct debit. While the Agency has the power to do this at present, and the legislation places no restrictions upon it, the practice of the Agency has been to use a deduction from earnings order only when there have been problems getting payments. 21 per cent of Agency cases currently involve direct deduction from salary. This reluctance to use direct deductions from earnings as a normal method of collection contrasts with the position in Australia. While the use of deductions from earnings has declined in recent years in favour of electronic transfers, 40.6 per cent of all the Australian Agency collection cases involve direct deductions from wages and salaries. Of course, payers may choose to make payments to the Agency by other means such as electronic banking, and their choice to do so is respected, as long as payments are maintained.”

In 2008 the Labour Government published DWP Research Report 503, “Relationship separation and child support study”, which found that:

“A clear majority of parents believed that direct deduction of maintenance from a NRP’s salary would be the most effective method of dealing with non- compliance.”

“Separated parents were shown a range of enforcement options which might be used if NRPs assessed under a Government child maintenance service repeatedly failed to make payments or tried to avoid payment. They were also asked which of the options listed they thought would be the most effective means of encouraging NRPs to comply with their child maintenance obligations. A clear majority in all three groups believed that direct deduction from salary would be the most effective method (76 per cent of non-CSA PWCs, 65 per cent of CSA PWCs and 70 per cent of NRPs) (Table 8.23). It is noteworthy that direct deduction from salary was supported by a significant majority of NRPs as an enforcement tool.”

On 15 June 2011 Maria Miller and the head of the Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission, Noel Shanahan, gave oral evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee. Noel Shanahan said:

“Deduction of earnings was introduced a few years ago, and it has been very successful. We have over 140,000 families where that works in approximately 80% of cases and the money flows through, straight from the earnings, straight through to the parent with care, straight through to the children. It has been very effective, is effective and shows high compliance. That is one of the areas where we would work with customers who come through to us who want to work on the statutory scheme. That is an option we have; we can work with them to put deduction from earnings orders in place. In fact, some non-resident parents actually request that; they see it as a way that works for them as well.”

But Maria Miller rebuffed every attempt by Conservative MPs, Karen Bradley and Sir Oliver Heald, to consider the potential benefit of using deduction from earnings orders more widely, on the grounds that this would not promote parental responsibility.

The Work and Pensions Committee report into the proposed child maintenance reforms, published on 3 July 2011, said:

“It is crucial that parents meet their obligations to support their children and we acknowledge that many already do so. However, the lack of a child maintenance agreement or failure to make due payments have severe financial consequences for families producing a devastating impact on children’s wellbeing. The most important aspect of any child maintenance system is to guarantee that maintenance is paid in full and on time. Evidence shows that this would best be achieved if all non-resident parents were required to pay child maintenance through direct deductions from salaries or bank accounts.” (Page 3)

It dedicated two pages to a futile attempt to convince the Government of the efficacy of deduction from earnings orders. (Page 8-9)

On 12 December 2011 the Government’s response to the Work and Pensions Committee report into the proposed child maintenance reforms was published. The Committee’s report had:

“A key objective for the Government’s child maintenance policy is to ensure that all parents take responsibility for the wellbeing of their children. We believe that ensuring that parents with care receive agreed payments at the correct level on a consistent basis from the non-resident parent is an important element in this. We recommend that the Government considers the introduction of a requirement that child maintenance payments are deducted directly from a non-resident parent’s salary or bank account, as we consider that this step would increase the number of payments that are delivered accurately and on time. We recognise that this does not appear within the Government’s Green Paper proposals, but we believe it is important for the Government to consider the merits of this option.”

The Government rejected this recommendation on the grounds that “imposing mandatory deductions from a nonresident parent’s pay where a parent has shown they are capable of managing these payments themselves does not fit with our strategy of promoting responsibility. At the heart of the Government’s recommendations is how we support parents to take responsibility for their children’s wellbeing. The Government believes imposing these orders where compulsion is not required to secure payment could place an unreasonable burden of additional work on employers and further increase the administrative cost to the taxpayer of operating the statutory child maintenance service which already costs around 40 pence for every £1 collected.”

On 25 April 2012 Glenda Jackson expressed frustration with Maria Miller’s evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee:

“The responsibility, surely, of a Department of State is to ensure that the structures are in place to make that automatic payment by the absentee parent as simple as possible. This Committee made recommendations on those kinds of issues which the Government have absolutely eschewed and turned away.”

“As the Minister has introduced the original setting up of the Child Support Agency, there was a recommendation then that it should be the Government’s responsibility in the first instance to take the money due to the child from the payee; that there should be some way of obtaining that money from payroll, which totally cuts across the kind of constant arguments that we know go on at the moment. Yet again, the present Government have eschewed that.”

Conservative MP, Harriet Baldwin, Chair of the Committee was incredulous at the inefficiency of the existing statutory service: “There must be cheaper ways to get these payments between these two people. This might perhaps be to do with payroll deductions or with credit cards. Even bailiffs would probably be cheaper than this, wouldn’t they?”

In July 2012 Iain Duncan Smith presented to Parliament “Supporting separated families; securing children’s futures”.

Page 5 said: “Analysis of the CSA caseload suggests that a large number of the current 1.1 million CSA cases could potentially consider a family-based arrangement. We know that around 20 per cent of clients on the 2003 scheme, who have been positively assessed and are being asked by the CSA for payments, do so by maintenance direct. Around a further ten per cent are regularly fully compliant with their payments, without deductions being made from their earnings or benefits separately. Furthermore, 50 per cent of clients say they would work together if supported.” The reference given was DWP Research Report 503.

So, when we discount the lie that “50 per cent of clients say they would work together if supported”, we find that 70% of the 1.1 million CSA cases open in 2012 involved fathers who refused to pay child maintenance unless deductions from earnings orders were in place.

On 21 July 2012 The Independent reported that: “Administrative problems are expected to arise as most of the 145,000 PWCs who, through the agency, have managed to set up deduction orders from their ex-partners' salaries or bank accounts, are required to negotiate again with their exes under the transition to the Child Maintenance Service.”

In September 2018 the Department for Work and Pensions published “experimental” Child Maintenance Service statistics from August 2013 to June 2018, which said:

“In the quarter ending June 2018, £21m was collected from parents undergoing a Deduction from Earnings order/request or a Civil Enforcement action on the Collect & Pay service. This was 64% of all money collected and paid to parents through the Collect & Pay service.”

This shows what an essential tool deduction from earnings orders are.