18 April 2017

Marion Fellows MP in a House of Commons debate about the Child Maintenance Service:

Both parents and my staff have raised concerns about the difficulty of making a complaint. The new system makes the first complaint an “inquiry” rather than a complaint. Parents and even my staff have to be persistent in escalating their issue to a complaint to have it properly investigated. I understand that the CMS cannot utilise the enforcement actions available to it without proper cause. However, I have had through my door numerous constituents who have not received full and proper payments from their ex-partners. Despite that evidence having been shown to the CMS, there is a severe lack of urgency. Parents are required to jump through hoops to get any sort of action taken and to fight their case. That demonstrates the lack of understanding of how important it is for parents with care to receive full and timely payments. It has also contributed to a culture of non-payment, which leads to ironically named “paying parents” not paying at all. 

This website is about so much more than my individual maintenance case! But the saga of my complaint is useful to show how the Department for Work and Pension is suppressing, mis-recording - and, basically, lying - about how many complaints it receives regarding child maintenance.

I would be really interested in hearing from any readers with similar stories, in order to build a body of evidence to challenge the Government line that the Child Maintenance Service receives very few complaints.