However, under cover of Brexit and the lack of media or political bandwidth for anything other than Brexit, plus the general horror of austerity, the current Government grew more ambitious and decided it could get away with writing off CSA arrears owed to children who are still children now.

On 21 February 2019 I received this letter from the Child Maintenance Service, telling me, with no trace of regret or apology, that they plan to write off my arrears of £13,318.24 accrued under the Child Support Agency, and owed for my son, who is still only fourteen years old.

This latest, boldest write-off procedure began in earnest on 14 December 2017, when the Department for Work and Pensions quietly launched a consultation on its “Child Maintenance: a new compliance and arrears strategy”. The consultation was deliberately launched over the Christmas holiday, when single parents would be even busier than usual juggling work and school holidays. The consultation closed on 8 February 2018, after just eight weeks, whereas the HM Government Code of Practice states that: “Consultations should normally last for at least 12 weeks, with consideration given to longer timescales where feasible and sensible.”

The independent Consultation Institute states that the second principle of consultation is that: “All those who have a justifiable right to participate in a consultation shuld be made reasonably aware of the exercise.”

The Child Maintenance Service has a simple, cost-free method at its disposal for communicating with parents through its “portal”, but it chose not to ask for parents’ views this way. Given how quiet they kept it, it is perhaps unsurprising that they only received four submissions.

In reality, almost none of the mothers affected by this had any idea that the Government was planning to write off their arrears until they received a letter informing them of the fact.

What follows below illustrates the gradual evolution and acceptance, as if through a war of attrition, that Child Support Agency arrears will be written off.

On 16 May 2011, Stephen Geraghty, former Commissioner of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, gave oral evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee:

Q65   Karen Bradley: For one person with an over there is an under somewhere else. Turning to CMEC's own estimates, in 2010 there was an estimate that total child maintenance arrears stood at £3.7 billion and only 13% of these outstanding payments were likely to be collectable. Is that right, and why is the percentage so low?

Stephen Geraghty: It is right. It is likely to be collected rather than likely to be collectable. What we are saying is that, given the current rate of progress and what we do with the resources we have currently, where accounts are paying something towards their arrears, and there is a reasonable expectation they will continue to do so, it would give you that number. We think about the same amount again is potentially collectable if there were a different application of resources and so on. If you look at the overall total, you have to ask whether the £3.8 billion is really due. If it is, should it be written off now, and then what is left? Probably about £1 billion is not really owed. These were estimates made in the 1995-97 period first to try to frighten them into giving information so we could make an assessment. The approach then was to put in these very high estimates, which is what the tax office tends to do so people provide the information. Most of that is written back off. Quite a significant amount of money has already been paid direct to the parent with care. When we recently did a sample of 10,000 old cases, which were closed but were subject to arrears, over half the parents with care said either that they did not want the money or had already had it direct from the non­resident parent (NRP). That is about a third in total. Then there is money that should be written off because the NRP is dead, which is a significant amount; the parent with care does not want it for various reasons; and some further estimates made in the 1993-95 period. Together, those two get you to about one third. Of the two thirds left of the £2.6 billion, we think that about £1 billion is potentially collectable. Most of what is left is over 10 years old, which rules out court action. If you look at the performance of the CSA over the last three years the balance of arrears has not gone up at all—in fact it has gone down slightly—and £3.5 billion has changed hands. Therefore, what is left unpaid is aging. As we get to grips with it, people who thought they would not have to pay now have to pay, and it is very difficult to collect. If you were a commercial lender, anything that was 10 years old you would not even still have on your books. If you look at door-to-door credit people, like Provident and so on, they would expect to take an impairment charge of about a third as soon as something is lent rather than wait that long. Therefore, the ability of people to pay in the arrears books is also very low. We did a sample of 1,000 cases that we credit-scored with Experian, a big credit-scoring company. Of those cases, nine—less than 1%—would have got credit for the amount they owed us. The chances of collecting from people with that sort of credit quality and arrears that old are very small. The recent performance of the agency has been very strong. £3.5 billion changed hands and the arrears have not gone up, but the outstanding problems are the history—the things that happened between 1993 and 2005 when all these arrears really built up—and the cost of the system, which is what the reforms are about.

Q66   Karen Bradley: So, it would not be unfair to say that a full review and proper impairment against some of these figures would change the balance?

Stephen Geraghty: We do not have an ability to provide for it. This is a note to our accounts. This money is not owed to the CSA. This is small amounts of money, 60% of the arrears are under £1,000, owed to a million people. Of course, some of it is owed to the Secretary of State, but we do not have any ability to impair it. In Australia they do; they have a classification of "not economic to pursue", and it goes off the books until something happens, say the NRP gets some money, get a job or something, but we do not have that ability here. We have a primary power on the books to do selective write off, but it has not been commenced. Of course, the cost of looking at each of those cases will be pretty high, apart from those where people are dead and it is obvious it should be written off.

In September 2011 the Advisory Panel on Arrears of Child Maintenance - A report to the Secretary of State on the handling of arrears of uncollected child maintenance warned:  

“The Panel underlines a clear note of caution in how the proposals are discussed, managed and communicated. Discourse around potential write- off, unreliable data and computer systems, alternative approaches such as arrears sale, outsourced collection, part payment are understandably controversial in some quarters.

The write-off powers currently available to the Commission (as included under the 2008 Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act) allow enhanced or full write off of the arrears balance without the PWC consent but need be considered on a case by case basis where regulations fit that collection would be deemed “unfair or inappropriate”. This power is as yet uncommenced (still requiring a second Parliamentary reading) by the Commission but was proposed in legislation for use in very limited circumstances. The Panel doubts whether the political appetite to broaden its exercise beyond collection being unfair or inappropriate exists.”

On 28 November 2011 Lord De Mauley told Peers:

“The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked for an update on the powers taken in the 2008 Act. The Government remain committed to pursuing arrears and will continue to use all of its expanded powers to this end while the Child Support Agency schemes remain open.

We frequently use deductions from earnings orders, lump sum deductions and deductions from accounts. Parents who fail to pay now face tougher sanctions, including having money deducted directly from their bank accounts or having their home seized. Primary powers enable the Government administratively - so without application to a court - to disqualify a non-resident parent from holding a driving licence or passport where we are of the opinion that the non-resident parent has wilfully refused or culpably neglected to pay child maintenance. These powers are not yet in force, and prior to any final decision being made to commence them, public consultation on the detail of how they would work would need to take place. If the noble Lord so wishes, I can write to him detailing exactly what powers we currently use and what we still plan to bring forward.”

“It is unacceptable for non-resident parents to neglect their child maintenance responsibilities and build up arrears. This is something the Government is determined to tackle. To this end, we will take a more robust approach to collection and enforcement in the new scheme and will use all avenues available to us to ensure outstanding arrears are paid and new arrears are not allowed to accrue. And we will not give up on cases. Following the introduction of the new scheme, the Commission will continue to pursue non-resident parents for any arrears of maintenance that they may owe, and this will include arrears from the schemes currently in operation. Where arrears have been accrued prior to the introduction of charging, no charges will be payable by either party in relation to these amounts.”

In July 2012 Iain Duncan Smith presented to Parliament his Green Paper, “Supporting Separated Families: Securing Children’s Futures”:

“Although we intend to end ongoing maintenance liability in all existing CSA cases over a three-year period, our forthcoming arrears strategy will allow us to focus on pursuing maintenance owed to children in those cases where it is appropriate to do so. We intend to continue this action long after the CSA schemes have closed. The CSA systems may have been imperfect, but that does not excuse parents of their responsibility to pay for their own children.”

Writing off arrears

CMG’s policy is to wait either until arrears are over £500 or for more than 16 weeks of missed payments before considering commencing enforcement action.  At the same time, it considers arrears older than 26 weeks to be ‘uncollectable’.  So it is deliberately delaying until arrears are uncollectable.

The Government is stealthily shifting and confusing the boundaries on writing off arrears.  

Legislation

The Child Support (Management of Payments and Arrears) Regulations 2009

The Child Support Management of Payments and Arrears (Amendment) Regulations 2012

These show that the intention to write off CSA arrears was there right back in 2012.

Made on 28th November 2012

Coming into force in accordance with regulation 1

1. These Regulations may be cited as the Child Support Management of Payments and Arrears (Amendment) Regulations 2012 and come into force on the day on which sections 32 (power to accept part payment of arrears in full and final satisfaction) and 33 (power to write off arrears) of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008(c) come into force. 

13G. The circumstances of the case specified for the purposes of section 41E(1)(a) of the 1991 Act are that-

(f) the non-resident parent has been informed by the Secretary of State that no further action would ever be taken to recover those arrears.

13H.—(1) Where the Secretary of State is considering exercising the powers under section 41E(1) of the 1991 Act, the Secretary of State must send written notice to the person with care or, where relevant, a child in Scotland and the non-resident parent.

(3) The notice must—

(a) specify the person with care or, where relevant, a child in Scotland, in respect of whom liability in respect of arrears of child support maintenance has accrued;

(b) specify the amount of the arrears and the period of liability to which the arrears relate;

(c) state why it appears to the Secretary of State that it would be unfair or inappropriate to enforce liability in respect of the arrears;

(d) advise the person that they may make representations, within 30 days of receiving the notice, to the Secretary of State as to whether the liability in respect of the arrears should be extinguished; and

(e) explain the effect of any decision to extinguish liability in respect of any arrears of child support maintenance under section 41E(1) of the 1991 Act.

(4) If no representations are received by the Secretary of State within 30 days of the notice being received by the person with care or, where relevant, a child in Scotland and the non-resident parent, the Secretary of State may make the decision to extinguish the arrears.

(5) For the purposes of this regulation, where the Secretary of State sends any written notice by post to a person’s last known or notified address that document is treated as having been received by that person on the second day following the day on which it is posted.

Secretary of State to take account of the parties’ views

13I. Where the Secretary of State receives representations within the 30 day period referred to in regulation 13H(3)(d), the Secretary of State must take account of those representations in making a decision under section 41E(1) of the 1991 Act.

SO IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE ON HOLIDAY FOR A MONTH OR IN HOSPITAL, YOUR ARREARS WILL BE WRITTEN OFF WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.  AND EVEN IF YOU MANAGE TO OBJECT IN TIME, THERE IS NO RIGHT OF APPEAL WHEN THE SSWP IGNORES WHAT YOU SAY.

On 27 November 2011  in a House of Lords debate on the Child Support Management of Payments and Arrears (Amendment) Regulations 2012, Baroness Stowell said:

”The regulations also provide the power to write off some arrears of child maintenance, but only in the explicit circumstances set out in the draft regulations. The provisions of the 2008 Act limit those regulations to circumstances where it would be “unfair or otherwise inappropriate” to pursue enforcement of the arrears. An example of where arrears can be written off under these regulations is where the parent with care has explicitly informed the department that they do not want the arrears collected. Where this is the case, the department will ask the parent with care to confirm this in writing and ensure that it provides all the information necessary to enable them to make a fully informed decision.

In other circumstances covered by the regulations, such as where the non-resident parent has died and we cannot recover from their estate, there is no way of ever collecting the arrears. In such cases, where the arrears will never be collected, it is not sensible to allow them to remain outstanding. It is better to be open and transparent and write off the arrears. Where the department is considering writing off arrears it will inform both clients of this if they are still alive and, where appropriate, will give them 30 days to make representations. As my honourable friend pointed out in the other place, this period has been extended from 14 days following responses received to the public consultation on these regulations.

The department will then consider those representations and inform both clients of the decision on whether to write off the arrears. Cases will always be considered on their own merits and the views and information provided by clients will always be taken into account. All arrears written off under the write-off and part-payment powers will be carefully and fully recorded. Clients will be kept informed of what is happening in their case and why. Where appropriate, their consent will always be sought.

In summary, these powers are intended to address a minority of cases. They will be used only where the department is unlikely ever to collect the arrears in full, where all enforcement measures have either been exhausted or are not appropriate, and where clients have either been informed or, where appropriate, have given their consent. The department will continue to collect arrears whenever a parent with care wishes and it is appropriate and possible to do so.”

On 19 December 2011 Maria Miller stated in a parliamentary debate:

“The Government are committed to tackling the legacy of £3.8 billion in child maintenance arrears owed by non-resident parents. They are determined to pursue every penny which can be collected, and the Child Support Agency is pursuing a range of initiatives and deploying its enforcement powers more effectively to pursue those parents who refuse to pay.

We have, however, to be mindful of the fact that not all of the arrears that are owed can realistically be collected; and indeed, not all arrears are actually wanted by the relevant parents with care.

I am therefore today publishing a consultation document on commencing powers contained within the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 to write off arrears of child maintenance in certain, limited circumstances and to accept a part payment of child maintenance in full and final satisfaction of the total amount due.

The use of the write-off power is limited—by the 2008 Act—to circumstances where it would be “unfair or otherwise inappropriate” to collect or enforce the recovery of child maintenance.

The power to accept a part payment will enable a non-resident parent to pay a proportion of the total amount due, with the full liability being treated as met. A part payment may only be accepted where the parent with care has given his or her express permission.

None of this undermines the Government’s determination to pursue those parents who refuse to live up to their responsibilities. The Government believe that failure to pay child maintenance must never be considered as an option.”

This, of course, was utterly ingenuous. As I show throughout this website, one of the main aims of the child maintenance reforms was to render payment optional, and the intention was always to avoid enforcement. The underlying, long-term intention was always to write off CSA arrears.

In May 2012 the National Audit Office published Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission Client Funds Account – Statutory Maintenance Schemes 2010/11, stating that:

“The method for analysing collectability is based on the presumption that arrears are uncollectable unless positive evidence of collectability exists. The new approach was adopted with effect from the 2008/09 client funds account.”

On 12 July 2012, in a House of Lords debate on the abolition of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission on 12-07-12, Lord Freud said:

My noble friend Lord German asked about historic debt and our strategy. It remains a priority. We have a debt of £3.8 billion outstanding. We want to collect as much of that as we can and are using all the powers available to us to do so.

This was, of course, a complete lie.

5 March 2012

HC1874

Oral evidence taken by the Public Accounts Committee

Margaret Hodge (Chair)

In April 2012 Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Lloyd asked a parliamentary written question 102647:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions whether parents with care who are owed arrears of maintenance and who choose to transfer to the future child support scheme will be notified at the point of transfer as to the amount of the arrears which the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission considers collectable and which will be transferred to the future scheme for collection.”

Maria Miller answered on 18 April 2012:

“The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is responsible for the child maintenance system. I have asked the Child Maintenance Commissioner to write to the hon. Member with the information requested and I have seen the response.

Letter from Noel Shanahan:

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Child Maintenance Commissioner.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether parents with care who are owed arrears of maintenance and who choose to transfer to the future child support scheme will be notified at the point of transfer as to the amount of the arrears which the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission considers collectable and which will be transferred to the future scheme for collection. [102647]

A parent with care will continue to be owed arrears when their existing case with the Child Support Agency is closed—this is regardless of whether they make an application to the new statutory maintenance scheme, and as such it will remain incumbent on the statutory maintenance scheme to pursue them whenever it is reasonable to do so. Parents with care will be kept informed of any action on their case and any arrears owed to them.”

In May 2012 the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission Client Funds Account – Statutory Maintenance Schemes 2010/11 stated:

“Although good progress has been made, issues remain over the collectability of child maintenance arrears. From 2008/09 a new approach was taken to assess collectability, which resulted in more robust information being produced to support our arrears figures.

The Commission does, though, remain committed to ensuring that parents meet their financial responsibilities for their children. Tackling non-compliance and reducing arrears is a priority for the Coalition Government and the Commission continues to pursue arrears through its enforcement powers and operational initiatives. However, we have to be realistic about arrears which cannot be collected and the Commission has launched a consultation to explore views on writing off some arrears in limited circumstances.

The Commission currently has no power to write off arrears.

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission took over responsibility for the child maintenance system in Great Britain on 1 November 2008.

The primary objective of the Commission is to maximise the total number of effective child maintenance arrangements, whether made collaboratively by parents through a family-based arrangement, by court order or through the statutory maintenance schemes. The Commission does this through its three core functions, which are to:

1. promote the financial responsibility that parents have for their children;

2. inform parents about the different options available, guide them to those most appropriate for them and support them in making family-based arrangements; and

3. provide an efficient statutory maintenance service, with effective enforcement.”

In December 2012 the Department for Work and Pensions’ Chief Accounting Officer, Sir Robert Devereux, said, in the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission Client Funds Account – Statutory Maintenance Schemes 2011/12:

”We have to be realistic that not all arrears are collectable. We are undertaking a trial in which we are providing a small group of clients an assessment of whether or not their arrears are currently collectable, in line with the recommendations of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. On 15 October 2012, the Government also published a response to the consultation on the Draft Child Support Management of Payment and Arrears (Amendment) Regulations 2012, Client Funds Account 2011/12, which set out the intention to take powers to write-off or allow part payment of some arrears in limited circumstances.”

“Most importantly, the Commission remains committed to pursuing payments and ensuring that parents meet their financial responsibilities for their children. The opinions given should not be taken as a signal that child maintenance arrears are no longer payable.”

In January 2013 the Government published Preparing for the future, tackling the past - Child Maintenance - Arrears and Compliance Strategy 2012-2017. The Government insisted it was being clear about arrears while taking two opposing positions throughout - that it would be too expensive to pursue arrears but that it expected such arrears to be paid. 

It also presented a false binary choice between “helping children who will benefit now” or spending taxpayers’ money on “historic arrears” where “children have grown up”, conveniently omitting cases like my own, where the arrears are several years old but the child is still very much a child.

This deliberate obfuscation paved the way to the present situation where the Government is, indeed, writing off arrears owed to children who are still very much children.

“The operational priority of the statutory service is to collect money for children who will benefit from regular ongoing maintenance payments today, rather than prioritising the pursuit of historic arrears in cases where the children have now grown up.  All areas of Government face budgetary challenges and tough choices must be made on how much of taxpayers money can be allocated to this area.  In older, arrears only cases the children have mostly by now reached adulthood so these arrears are a lower priority; but they remain owed and it is our ambition to collect them.  The position is clear - parents who owe money for their children, whenever that debt arose, are still expected to pay it.  The Government has no plans to conduct a wholesale write-off of CSA debt on the grounds that it is unlikely to be collected.

It is recognised in the commercial credit industry that the older the debt, the harder, and more expensive, it is to collect.  The Independent Advisory Panel noted that more than half of CSA outstanding arrears (51%) is over three years old.  We will therefore use proportionate resources to collect what’s owed, making sure the cost of recovery, in cases where it is wholly disproportionate to the sum owed, is a relevant consideration in deciding whether to take enforcement action in individual cases.

As highlighted by the Independent Advisory Panel on arrears, there is a shortage of detailed information on much of the historical outstanding arrears total.  However, the vast majority of the £3.8bn arrears may prove to be technically collectable.  That is to say that there is no legal or other impediment to it being collected, provided the debt can be properly verified.  This does not mean, of course, that it will all be collected (see ‘collectability’ below).  But the position is clear - parents who owe money for their children are still expected to pay it.  The Government has no plans to conduct a write-off of CSA debt on the grounds that it is unlikely to be collected.

On 5 March 2013 Labour MP Cathy Jamieson submitted a written parliamentary question 145802:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions with reference to his Department's definition of potentially collectable child maintenance arrears in the Arrears and Compliance Strategy 2012-2017, published in January 2013, how recently a parent must have had an arrears collection arrangement put in place for their arrears to count as potentially collectable.”

Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb answered:

“The Arrears and Compliance Strategy 2012-2017 quotes arrears collectability figures which are sourced from the Client Fund Accounts 2011-12. A full definition of potentially collectable is available at page 25 of the Client Fund Accounts at:

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/cmec-client-funds-account-2011-12.pdf

Potentially collectable arrears include arrears on cases which have had an arrears arrangement in place at any point in the previous six months but with no arrears payment in that time period. The Department's view of collectability is based on current arrears collection performance.

Virtually all child support maintenance arrears remain legally collectable as long as they have not been formally written off. In December 2012 the Department obtained the power to write off arrears of child support maintenance in very specific circumstances, some examples are as follows:

Where the non-resident parent has died and we cannot recover the arrears from their estate.

Where the non-resident parent has previously been advised that no further action would ever be taken to collect the arrears.

The Department has not yet written off any arrears.”

On 24 October 2013 written evidence submitted by DWP to the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into child maintenance reform hinted that in the future arrears might be written off without the consent of the parent with care:

6.6 Provision has also been made to allow some arrears to be written off in certain circumstances, for example where the parent who is owed the money no longer wants the arrears, or the non-resident parent has died and the arrears cannot be recovered from the estate. Decisions on writing off arrears are made on a case by case basis and are instigated at the specific request of the parent to whom the money is owed; otherwise they will have the ability to make representations prior to a final decision being made.

6.8 The Government will also keep under review the introduction of powers to enable part payment of arrears from non-resident parents in certain circumstances, with the possibility of making more proactive use of the power in the future. The legislation enabling this was first commenced at the end of 2012 and is currently facilitated only at the request of either parent.

On 27 November 2013 Steve Webb gave oral evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee’s session on Progress with child maintenance reforms, HC 797 on 27 November 2013.

Q119 Chair: There has been a lot of concern about the prioritisation of the collection of the different arrears groups, because, obviously, the strategy document makes clear that you are going to try to stop new arrears building up. However, the people who have been most ill-served by the old system are somehow going to be at the end of the line or the bottom of the heap depending on the analogy you want to use. Why have you adopted that approach?

Steve Webb: Everybody can’t be a priority. In a sense, everybody ought to get their child maintenance arrears and we are not ignoring anybody. That is the first thing to say. We clearly want to get this money, but if you have an option between stopping arrears starting then, in my view, that absolutely has to be the first thing we do. I liken it to the wall on the estate that has the first piece of graffiti, and if we do not deal with it, suddenly, it is everywhere. If we establish the right patterns of behaviour at the start, that is obviously the first priority; to tackle it at source.  The second question is: are there, for want of a better phrase, children with mouths to feed now? It seems to us that these are pretty brutal choices that we have to make. Yes, if we had lots of resources we could do everything all at once and everyone is a priority, but we don’t, so the next priority is children who have live maintenance entitlements to make sure that the people are still children. Where the children are grown up but there is still an outstanding maintenance liability, we are still going to go for those arrears; but inevitably, that is more about the past than about current living standards.

[Of course, as I show, Steve Webb had absolutely zero intention of “establishing the right patterns of behaviour at the start”, as illustrated by his delay, for two and a half years, in signing a one page Statutory Instrument enabling the Department for Work and Pensions to notify credit reference agencies about liability orders granted in respect of child support arrears, and his presiding over the unlawful failure to inform the Registry Trust about liability orders for child support arrears, as required under the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines Regulations 2005.]

Q120 Chair: So in operational terms, if you have been giving that low priority, what does it mean—that there is not really going to be any money spent on it and these folk can kiss goodbye to getting any money?

Steve Webb: No, but it would be dishonest of me to say that organisations don’t prioritise things. Absolutely the first port of call when we come in in the morning is: have payments been missed? Are we about to start arrears that should not be there? Let’s get on top of those. Next question is: are there children who are not going to get fed today because the maintenance is not flowing? Let’s get on to those. To the extent that we have the resources to then pursue that third group, we will do that, but I cannot say that everybody is a priority.
Q121 Chair: And are you going to be honest with people to actually let them know that they are now low priority?

Susan Park: Yes, and again that is one of the trials. The Australians do just that. They look at whether they have enough information and whether they have got any assets and they actually make it clear, both in the way they report the arrears and in the way that they inform both the mother and father. That is exactly one of the trials that we are looking at. Can we take a group of people, where we think we have done everything possible—including data washing the information through HMRC, going to the Land Registry and looking at banks—and we have come to the end and we have got zero. So taking those cases and a cohort of them, and then having an honest conversation with both parents but mainly the parent with care in this set of circumstances—unless anything changes, unless we get any new information—we have come to the end of the road and there is nothing more that we can do.  The difference that we have over the Australian system is that we keep washing that information through HMRC and Land Registry information. So we do not leave it completely alone; we actually continually data wash it. If anything pops up then we have a different conversation.

Q122 Chair: But a lot of these people might be self-employed—we have already discussed how difficult that is. There is a generation of non-resident parents who are the worst for compliance and have got away with it for years. I suspect it is the parents with care who come to all of our constituency offices, frustrated that all these years have gone by and they have not got any money from their ex-partner. Are you saying, through the approach you are taking, that in reality that generation are not going to be tracked down?

Steve Webb: No. It is very important that we do not send out the wrong message here. We are not letting people off the hook—the arrears stay there and should be paid. That is point 1. Point 2 is that we are not contrasting with a world where currently we are doing vast amounts of incredibly vigorous arrears gathering for these people, because if we were, they would not be the people you are talking about. It is not like we are going to move from vigour to apathy. We are saying that these are some of the very hardest cases. The kids have now grown up, so it is historic debt…

Susan Park:  The other thing that is different about the new service is that we have a customer directorate, which is the voice of the customers. Normally, in traditional civil servant-speak, policy people would sit in a darkened room and come up with lots of lovely policy ideas, and they would probably never take a view about how it works for the client. We did it differently because we had read our history books and we saw what had gone wrong.  Our customer directorate has been working with us to survey the clients as they have walked through. We are absolutely seeing it from the perspective of what it feels like as a customer of the new system. In addition, you could not operate it without the IT system working effectively. You are absolutely right that we have done it from both perspectives.

In December 2013 Dame Anne Begg asked a written parliamentary question 180366":

“To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will take steps to ensure that, following the planned process of Child Support Agency (CSA) arrears validation that will accompany the case closure programme, the Child Maintenance Service will give the same priority to the active recovery of any CSA arrears which a parent with care of a dependent child wishes to have collected, regardless of whether a £20 application fee has been paid to the Child Maintenance Service in respect of continuing maintenance for the child.”

Steve Webb answered on 18 December 2013:

“Non-resident parents may owe arrears to parents with care in existing Child Support Agency cases, regardless of whether they apply to the 2012 scheme. We do not intend to write those arrears off, unless the parent with care specifically requests that we should do so.  As our arrears strategy, published in January 2013, makes clear, we will give priority to collecting on cases where there is an ongoing maintenance liability. Where a parent with care does not apply to the 2012 scheme, but does want their arrears collected, we will transfer the arrears to the new computer system and will collect them as resources allow.”

In March 2014 the National Audit Office published Client Funds Account – Statutory child maintenance schemes 2012/13:

The child maintenance computer systems lack the functionality to ‘age’ arrears of payments to the parent with care from the non-resident parent. This impacts DWP’s ability to assess the collectability of debt. The cost of remedying this issue is considered prohibitive. For 2012, scheme cases the system will improve our ability to show the age of debt.  The factors considered in the collectability assessment include:

• evidence of payments having been made against the arrears in the six-month period prior to the reporting date;

• the existence, in the six months prior to the reporting date, of an agreement by the non-resident parent to clear the arrears;

• the age of the arrears; for arrears that have accumulated in the past six months on the CS2 system, which can arise whilst a case is being assessed, the subsequent payment history after the reporting date was considered.

On 15 July 2014, in Civil Service Quarterly blog Reforming child maintenance – taking a fresh approach, Tom McCormack, then Director of Change at Child Maintenance Group (now CMG Director) boasted:

“An important part of our pathfinder approach was having a series of escalation points for colleagues to raise issues to.  Our aim was to make sure we provided the necessary support to colleagues when all self-help avenues had been exhausted. The next step was for colleagues to discuss it with their team leader and then one of the operational support floor- walkers we had in place in each site. If resolution was not possible, then issues were raised to an Area Advice Centre and filtered to a National Advice Team. It’s all about client service – getting and keeping cases moving, improving colleagues’ understanding, and applying lessons learnt.  Learning was shared with colleagues through face-to-face education events, and guidance is available in new and improved procedures for caseworkers to refer to when needed.”

On 25 January 2015 minister Steve Webb issued a press release: “Absent parents now paying maintenance cash at record levels”, in which he promised:

The arrears strategy for child maintenance makes it clear that collecting arrears where children can still benefit today remains the priority so that these children can enjoy the standard of living they deserve.

The government has also made it clear that there are no plans for a wholesale write-off of CSA debt as old cases are closed.”

On 9 February 2015 Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope asked four written questions about child maintenance arrears.  Lord Freud’s identical scripted answer to all four questions showed scant regard for Lord Kirkwood’s questions and indicated strongly that the Government was moving in the direction of writing off arrears.

HL4804: “To ask Her Majesty’s Government why no target or key performance indicators have been set for the collection of child maintenance arrears.”

HL4805: “To ask Her Majesty’s Government what factors have changed since they announced in June 2010 that a target would be set for the collection of child maintenance arrears.”

HL4806: “To ask Her Majesty’s Government what recommendations were made by the Advisory Panel on the Arrears of Child Maintenance; and what action they took as a result of the panel’s recommendations put forward in 2011.”

HL4807: “To ask Her Majesty’s Government why they did not adopt an appropriate indicator for the collection of child maintenance arrears as recommended by the Advisory Panel on the Arrears of Child Maintenance.”

Lord Freud answered on 23 February 2015:

“Performance indicators have been set for those aspects of child maintenance activity that are most critical to the objectives set out in the Government’s strategy on arrears published in January 2013, namely to prevent the build up of arrears in the first place and prioritise the recovery of arrears where this will benefit children today. We therefore have indicators, for example, on the clearance of cases, collections, the number of cases contributing towards current liability and the number of children benefiting. A simple indicator for the collection of arrears would not reflect the objectives of the strategy. Since 2010 we have collected almost £600 million in arrears.  The recommendations are set out on pages 20 to 34 of the Advisory Panels 2011 Report “Advisory Panel on Arrears of Child Maintenance” which can be found at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120716161734/http:/www.childmaintenance.org/en/pdf/advisory-panel-arrears-sep-11.pdf  In response to the report the Department published its Arrears and Compliance Strategy 2012 – 2017 – “Preparing for the future, tackling the past.” which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/214338/cm-arrears-and-compliance-strategy-2012-2017.pdf  In December 2012, the Department introduced two sections of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008; the ability to write off debt in prescribed scenarios and to accept part payment in full and final satisfaction.  We have also trialled the use of the Australian Model of arrears classification, and are considering the results to inform future action.”

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Asked by Dame Anne Begg on 18 March 2015

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make it his policy, in respect of past interim maintenance assessments, that only that proportion of resultant child maintenance arrears which is deemed to be collectable will be transferred to the Child Maintenance Service.

Answered by Steve Webb on 23 March 2015

The Department is currently defining its detailed policy and processes for validating historic arrears, including those accrued from an Interim Maintenance Assessments (IMA). The intention is that IMA debt will be addressed in order to reduce the amount that will be managed by the Child Maintenance Service. Our detailed approach is under consideration.

On 16 December 2015 the National Audit Office reported in Client Funds Account 2014/15 - 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes

“Under a new accounts direction there is no longer the requirement to report an analysis of the collectability of the arrears balance in the Notes to the account.

However, the Department continues to consider this a meaningful measure and will continue to publish an annual estimate in the Client Funds Account to establish the three categories of collectability.”

Likely to be collected

Amounts outstanding, which meet certain criteria indicating that the Department had a good chance of collecting the outstanding arrears. The criteria are:

• Receipt of at least one payment against the outstanding arrears in the six-month period prior to the reporting date.

• Funds received in the Department’s Client Funds bank account in excess of the on-going scheduled payments for cases with arrears which, due to system limitations, could not be allocated to a case, but indicate the non-resident parent’s intent to clear arrears.

Potentially collectable

Amounts outstanding for which the evidence base indicating that the arrears will be recovered is not as strong as for the ‘likely to be collected’ category, but which meet criteria suggesting that the Department has a reasonable chance of collecting the arrears. The criteria are:

• The existence of a maintenance arrears schedule at any point during the six months prior to the reporting date, even though no payments were received in the period. Arrears schedules are established following contact with the non-resident parent, who makes a commitment to clear the arrears over a speci ed period. Non-resident parents do not always adhere to the schedule, but the fact that contact had been made with the individual and a commitment had been made is considered to indicate that the arrears are potentially collectable.

• For recent arrears, i.e. aged three months or less, the receipt of at least one payment against those arrears after the reporting date. Recent arrears arise on new cases, where the set-up process can mean that no receipts can be accepted immediately, or on older cases where an existing maintenance arrangement has recently broken down. Schedules are seldom put in place until arrears have been accumulating for more than six months; enforcement resources are concentrated on re-establishing broken down arrangements quickly. Consequently, receipts after the balance sheet date for young arrears are considered to provide reasonable evidence that the arrears will be cleared.

• The anticipated impact of some of the enforcement powers on the arrears, were the powers to be used more widely. The two powers considered were the deduction order, which enables the Department to seize funds from non-resident parents’ bank accounts, and the use of orders for sale of non-resident parents’ property.

Uncollectable

These balances represent amounts outstanding which do not meet any of the criteria outlined above for the ‘likely to be collected’ or ‘potentially collectable’ categories.

On 1 March 2016 Labour MP Karen Buck asked parliamentary written question 29358:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) gives the same priority for collection to arrears owed to parent with care who transfers from the Child Support Agency to the CMS by a paying parent as new arrears which accumulate under the 2012 scheme.”

On 9 March 2016 minister Priti Patel answered:

“The Child Maintenance Service is committed to ensuring parents fulfil their obligation to make financial provision for their children. The approach to the collection of arrears was set out in the DWP Child Maintenance Arrears and Compliance Strategy, Preparing for the future, tackling the past published on 31 January 2013.”

On 17 March 2016 in a parliamentary debate on the draft Child Support (Deduction Orders and Fees) (Amendment and modification) Regulations 2016, Shailesh Vara told Debbie Abrahams that it was taking up to six months for arrears cleansing, but that swift enforcement would ensue as soon as a single payment was missed on the new system.

On 12 July 2016 Janet Allbeson of Gingerbread wrote:

“Hundreds of millions of pounds worth of child maintenance arrears are still being held on the CSA system, undergoing a process variously described as “case clean up”, “arrears cleansing” or “arrears validation”.  It is only once this process is complete, that the arrears will either be written off, or transferred over the CMS for possible collection.

The “arrears cleansing” process is an attempt to get to grips with the legacy of years of CSA neglect of accumulated child maintenance debt.  “Part of the problem in the past,” admitted the Minister in charge of child maintenance in 2013, “has been that arrears have been allowed to build up without any action being taken by us.”

The DWP predicted that more complicated cases could take up to six months.  Recent figures obtained by Steve McCabe MP indicate that a considerable gap is currently building up between the number of cases entering the ‘cleansing’ process and those emerging at the other end, when a notice of the validated arrears is sent to the parent owed maintenance.

Single parents have contacted Gingerbread to complain how, having waited for months for the CSA to consider legal action against a consistently non-paying non-resident parent, their case had been shut down before the commencement of any action.  There is then a further delay of many months while the arrears go through the ‘cleansing’ process, and whilst no enforcement action takes place.  Meanwhile the CMS, in processing their new application for child maintenance, has been given no knowledge of the other parent’s record of non-payment.  There then follows a further period of weeks and months, with the CMS starting from scratch in dealing with the non-payer.

One of the grounds for arrears write-off is where the parent owed the arrears requests it.  Missing Maintenance draws attention to the official letter sent to those owed maintenance, when giving notice of the final, validated sum.  This openly suggests they consider writing off the debt.  The letter says, “Some clients in a similar position to you tell us that they do not want their child maintenance managed by the new organisation and wish to make a fresh start by writing off their arrears.”

For many parents, frustrated by years of CSA foot-dragging when it comes to pursuing maintenance, the letter suggesting debt write-off adds insult to injury.

It remains to be seen how “actively” a former CSA parent will have to request that the CMS chase arrears now transferred to the service.  Having resisted write-off, how many parents will realise that they must still “actively request” future collection?  Past experience of the CSA’s “client-led” approach is not encouraging.  In practice, it seemed to mean that - unless the parent repeatedly took the initiative and called to demand that debts be pursued - nothing would happen.

At this point, all the signs are that the majority of the CSA arrears being transferred to the CMS system are likely to sit untouched and uncollected on the CMS system.  This may be welcomed by a cash-strapped DWP bureacracy, but it is bad news for the children of single parents.

Single parents lead busy lives, often juggling low-paid work with raising their children.  Many with experience of using the CSA have grown disheartened at the agency’s failure to successfully pursue child maintenance debts owing to them.  The risk is that, through a combination of weariness, low expectations, an unwillingness to pay for a service which, based on experience of the CSA they are uncertain can deliver, a considerable proportion may give up both on future child maintenance and hence on the past payments still due.

Not only will children be failed as a result; society also loses when - due to a lack of persistent and concerted action to tackle non-payment - payment of child maintenance ends up being seen as optional rather than obligatory.”

In September 2016 the Child Poverty Action Group noted, in evidence submitted to the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into child maintenance reform:

“There are no statistics published to show how much outstanding arrears have been written off, or part payment accepted in full and final payment of arrears, (both under powers brought into force in December 2012). However, the concern is that initiatives such as these prioritise 'tidying up' the arrears profile for the CMS rather than pursuing payments due to persons with care. At present, the CMS is only likely to consider an offer of part payment if it receives a proposal from a non-resident parent at her/his initiative, but has said that, in future, it may use the part payment powers actively to try to reach agreements between parents. Clear information on the way that the power is currently being used, and its effect on parents, is essential.”

Plus, see my email to Amyas Morse.

In November 2016 Labour MP Steve McCabe asked parliamentary written question 54654:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many of the 239,300 Child Support Agency cases where, by the end of June 2016, liability had been ended but the case closure process had yet to be fully completed, had been waiting (a) up to one month, (b) up to two months, (c) up to three months and (d) for more than three months for the completion of the closure process.”

On 28 November 2016 Minister Caroline Nokes answered:

The number of cases that have an end liability date but no case closure completion date is as follows:

Time Period Number of cases

Up to 30 Days 17,100

Up to 60 Days 15,400

Up to 90 Days 20,600

Over 90 Days 197,300

The Child Maintenance Service would not initiate any enforcement action until Child Support Agency cases were fully closed and arrears transferred, if they were unable to persuade or trick mothers into allowing their CSA arrears to be written off. And the Department for Work and Pensions classifies any arrears where no payment has been received in the last few months as “uncollectable”. Therefore, by forcing nearly two hundred thousand families to wait for longer than ninety days, they were ensuring that all of those families would have a further sum of arrears that it would not deem cost effective to attempt collecting.

I was just one of those 197,300 cases. I have catalogued the exhausting saga of persuading the Child Maintenance Service to transfer my arrears here. In brief, it took three written complaints (which were variously lost, ignored and misclassified as “dissatisfaction” plus two complaints to the “Independent” Case Examiner, before my arrears were finally transferred nearly a year after my CSA case was opened. In all that time, despite no payments being made on my new CMS case, the CMS refused to initiate any kind of enforcement action until the arrears were correctly transferred, thus ensuring an extra year of “uncollectable” child maintenance, which it no doubt plans to write off at some point in the future, just as it is now writing off my arrears accrued by the CSA. Of course, I now realise the reason why the Child Maintenance Service fought so hard, first to persuade me to agree to write off the arrears, and then not to transfer them: the longer term plan was always to write them off. I am sure that thousands of women simply gave up out of exhaustion.

On 7 December 2016 minister Caroline Nokes gave oral evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee. On 7 December 2016 Caroline Nokes MP and Tom McCormack, head of CMG, gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee.

Labour MP Steve McCabe asked what happened to CSA arrears when cases were closed. Caroline Nokes told the Committee that most of the CSA debt was owed for children who are now in their mid-thirties or for piddling amounts of under £500 - which was untrue.

Steve McCabe pushed her to explain the procedure for CSA case closure where the children concerned were still children. Eventually, under pressure, she lied that for arrears cases where the children are still children, the CMS was using its powers “relentlessly”.

Q80 Steve McCabe: Good morning. I am assuming we all want the new CMS system to work [wrong!], but I am interested in what happens to children who are owed money under the old CSA system, and particularly about the cleansing and validation process. I wondered if you would just explain to me how exactly that works.

Caroline Nokes: Okay. It is complicated and it is time consuming and I think I would like to emphasise that it is also expensive. The process of a case being selected for closure, it has done its segments and we are moving on to arguably what is the hardest segment is coming next, but we have closed cases where parents have been nil assessed, so there has never been any money flowing. We have closed cases where there is steady maintenance being transferred from the non-resident parent to the parent with care, and we are about to move on to those where maintenance is being paid but it is being paid via a deduction from earnings order, for example. It is those cases that have been through some level of enforcement and compulsion to make sure that the parent does pay.

I am as conscious as you will be about the level of arrears that has built up under CSA. We have to remember this is a scheme that has been running since 1993, so in many, many cases much of that debt is hugely historic. Our focus and our priority, and I think rightly, has been on cases where there are current children who will benefit from maintenance. I do not think it is too much of a stretch to say that there could be arrears owed for children—I use the term loosely—who are now of a similar age to members of this Committee, and that gives you—

Chair: I doubt as old as that.

Caroline Nokes: Not all of you, no, Frank, but some of you. I think that is the reality. When a case is selected for closure, the CSA writes to the parent with care and, indeed, the non-resident parent if we have a contact address for them and tells them that the case has been selected for closure. That is done six months ahead of the closure date. There is a manual process and that is why I say it is both time consuming and expensive. There is a manual process to identify what level of arrears there are. There are, of course, always attempts to collect those arrears but, as I have said, much of it is very historic debt and, therefore, it is incredibly difficult to collect. If we cannot make any inroads into that amount of debt, it is then quarantined and placed on the CMS system for when that case is closed on the CSA and a new case is opened on the CMS.

I think it is important to emphasise that this is not a transfer. You do not move from the CSA to the Child Maintenance Service automatically. Your case is closed and then you as a parent with care would choose to open up a new case on the CMS or you may not choose to. I think that that is a really important point to make. There are a significant proportion of parents who choose not to, which might be for a variety of reasons including that such passage of time has passed that relations are much less conflicted with a former partner and they can set up a family-based arrangement. They might choose to come to Child Maintenance Options, have the conversation and then go away and set up a family-based arrangement, or they could choose to go through that gateway and have a CMS case set up.

Q81 Steve McCabe: I understand what you are saying, but would it be fair if I characterise that as saying that unless the receiving parent actively states that they want to pursue the arrears you will make the assumption that they do not?

 Caroline Nokes: No, we do not do that and we do not have write-off powers unless a parent with care tells us.

Q82 Steve McCabe: But do they actively have to tell you they want you to pursue the arrears or do you do that automatically?

Caroline Nokes: Where we believe that it is economically viable to collect arrears we will always pursue them. As I went back to say, some of this is very old, really old, and our priority throughout this has to be children that need maintenance now.

Q83 Steve McCabe: There is about £350 million in outstanding arrears. Obviously, some of that will be much older, some of it more recent. I am just trying to understand how the strategy works. Are you actively pursuing new CMS cases and are arrears in a holding position and you actively pursue them if something turns up? Is that how it works?

Caroline Nokes: I do not want anyone to get the impression that £3.8 billion of arrears have been allowed to grow lightly. They have not. CSA, just as CMS does now, has always had an active policy of pursuing those arrears, but the harsh reality is that there are some parents out there who have deliberately avoided paying maintenance for their children over incredibly long periods of time. We will always go after debt that we think we can retrieve both for the Secretary of State indeed and for the parent with care, but we have to be realistic about the cost of that and whether we are doing the right thing by spending taxpayers’ money pursuing funds that we have very little likelihood of collecting.

Q84 Steve McCabe: I am pursuing this because I am trying to narrow down the cases where it is worth pursuing. I am prepared to accept that there are some very historic cases where there must come a point where you would write off, but the question is about the people who feel that they have supplied quite a lot of information about where their ex-partner might be, the kind of earnings he or she may have, the kind of lifestyle they are leading, yet somehow or other this person persistently fails to pay. I am just curious because your Department said in answer to a question I raised that about 200,000 former CSA cases are waiting over 90 days just to get a finalised arrears balance before anything happens. Then often that is the last bit of information they have. If someone is in the situation where they believe they have a legitimate claim for arrears that is not ancient, although may have been going on for a very long period of time with the arrears building, what comfort will they take from what they are hearing this morning? Can they assume that if they wish those arrears to be pursued they will be actively pursued and they will get the same priority as new CMS cases?

Caroline Nokes: A brutal answer: they will not get the same priority if there is not a child involved. If that child is now in their mid-30s, they will not get the same priority as a CMS case—

Steve McCabe: If we are talking about a child?

 Caroline Nokes: If it is still a child, absolutely. If we are talking about a child under CSA, then absolutely they will. What we have is a massive range of enforcement powers, which we use relentlessly. I think we have to understand that where we can identify bank accounts, where we can identify tax records, where we can identify driving licences, mortgage borrowing, credit cards, we can get a pretty good hook on where somebody will be living. We do get deductions from earnings orders. We have powers to deduct direct from bank accounts. Under the review of our compliance and arrears strategy, we are looking at powers to deduct direct from joint bank accounts. We do have some non-paying parents who will channel their earnings through maybe a close relative’s account or maybe a partner’s joint account with them, and we are looking at powers to go after them. We have the ability to use enforcement officers—you might recognise them as bailiffs—to go and seize property. We can get charges on property where there is a house owned so that a house cannot be sold or remortgaged without the child support debt having to be paid.

However, in some cases there are people who go to extreme lengths to avoid being tracked down. Some of them even go abroad and that makes it very, very difficult for us to pursue them. Absolutely, where we think that there is a realistic chance, where we can identify someone, where we can find an address, where we can look at their tax records, these are all powers that we have not previously had to look at tax records, to look at DVLA records, to work with the Ministry of Justice to identify where people are, and we are pursuing them. The reality is when you look at the breakdown in numbers that I had earlier on and I do not appear to have anymore, a massive percentage proportion of that debt, I think in the region of 26% of that debt, is people who owe less than £500. Let’s think about that really carefully. Is it worth us spending taxpayers’ money to pursue 26% of that debt when it is individuals who owe less than £500 each?

Q85 Steve McCabe: Would it be possible to know of the £350 million outstanding in the CSA arrears-only cases how many of them fall into £500 worth of debt and what proportion of the overall £350 million you anticipate actively pursuing? Presumably, they are not all people who owe as little as £500. Some of them owe several hundred thousand pounds, don’t they?

Caroline Nokes: I have seen some of the breakdown and you are right, but inevitably it is a sliding scale. By the time you get to people that owe between £20,000 to £50,000 it is a tiny, tiny proportion of individuals. I think they are worth going after, absolutely worth going after but, as I said, I think it is 26% owe £500 or less.

As reported in the National Audit Office’s Client Fund Accounts, DWP considers any arrears where there has been “nil compliance” for over six months to be “uncollectable”.   Therefore, by causing further arrears to accrue, it is causing further sums of child maintenance to become, in its own view, “uncollectable”.

1.1 This submission provides an update on progress since the Work and Pensions Committee’s Fifth Report of Session 2010-12: The Government’s proposed child maintenance reforms; and the Government’s 12 December 2011 response to this report.

Recommendation 13 (paragraph 73)

The Committee recommend that the full range of enforcement powers listed in the 2008 Act are commenced.

As explained in our 12 December 2011 response, the Government agrees in principle with the Committee’s recommendation that further enforcement powers should be provided and we are continuing to look into this. However, our operational priority remains ensuring an effective statutory service is in place.  On 31 January 2013, the Government published “Preparing for the future, tackling the past: Child Maintenance – Arrears and Compliance Strategy 2012–2017”. This explained that in reforming the statutory Child Maintenance Service, the Government’s chief priority is to ensure more parents pay the child maintenance they owe not only in full, but also on time. Only by the effective prevention and management of arrears can we get more money flowing to children and avoid increasing debts owed by parents for their children.

However, it also acknowledged that we must deal with a legacy of allowing arrears to build up, with money owed by parents expected to pay child maintenance accruing in the Child Support Agency at an average rate of £20 million per month between 1993 and 2008. The operational priority of the statutory service is to collect money for children who will benefit from regular on-going maintenance payments today, rather than prioritising the pursuit of historic arrears in cases where the children have now grown up. 

An Arrears Strategy working group has been established in CMG to test and implement a number of initiatives outlined in the Arrears and Compliance Strategy. The aim of the strategy is to achieve a reduction in the arrears balance by either recovering it from the non-resident parent and / or write off of an element of arrears using existing and new write off powers.

Initiatives being piloted include pro-active calls to parents with care to discuss the options in collecting any arrears and the extension of part payment powers as full and final satisfaction of an arrears balance owed to Secretary of State.

The success of these and other pilots will inform whether CMG roll these activities out for the whole 1993 and 2003 scheme case load as part of the Case Closure Programme. 

On 9 June 2016 Labour MP Steve McCabe submitted parliamentary question 40130:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 27 May 2016 to Question 37474, how many full-time equivalent officials of his Department are responsible for any debt collection activity that the CMS system is undertaking to ensure that former Child Support Agency child maintenance arrears are received.”

On 14 June 2016 minister Priti Patel answered:

“Where CSA arrears are moved across to the CMS system we will actively pursue collection where the CSA clients fall within three specific scenarios. These include firstly where a re-application has been made to CMS relating to the same case; secondly where the CSA arrears were being paid in the last 3 months prior to being moved over to the CMS system; and finally where a client actively requests we collect them.  Given this approach to the collection of these CSA arrears, they are collected through our business-as-usual processes within our Case Maintenance, Arrears and Enforcement Teams within CMS, where at June 2016 there were 3,256 full time equivalent staff.”

On 12 July 2016 Janet Allbeson of Gingerbread wrote:  “Single parents have contacted Gingerbread to complain how, having waited months for the CSA to consider legal action against a consistently non-paying non-resident parent, their case had been shut down before the commencement of any action. There is then a further delay of many months while the arrears go through the ‘cleansing’ process, and whilst no enforcement action takes place. Meanwhile the CMS, in processing their new application for child maintenance, has been given no knowledge of the other parents’ record of non-payment. There then follows a further period of weeks and months, with the CMS starting from scratch in dealing with the non-payer.

On 16 December 2016 the National Audit Office reported in Client Funds Account 2015/16 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes HC 855:

2.7.1 The Case Closure Programme began in 2014 including processes to contact all 1993 and 2003 system clients to consider if they would like their arrears managed on 2012 system or written off.  The Department anticipates that, as the volumes of cases transitioning increases, the 1993 and 2003 arrears balance, which will continue to be reported in this Account, will fall in value but not in its entirety as not all parents will agree to previous arrears being written off.  As parents transition onto the 2012 scheme or opt to move onto a family-based arrangement, where arrears have built up under the 1993 or 2003 schemes they are asked whether they wish for the arrears to be written off. During 2015–16, £30.1 million arrears were written off of which £11.9 million (40%) resulted from parents with care opting to write off arrears as part of the 2012 scheme transition process.

On 23 November 2016 Labour MP Steve McCabe submitted written parliamentary question 54655:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, of the 198,200 proactively selected Child Support Agency (CSA) cases and the 16,200 reactively selected CSA cases which had completed the case closure process at the end of June 2016, in how many cases former CSA arrears were (a) written off and (b) transferred to the Child Maintenance Service.”

On 28 November 2016 minister Caroline Nokes answered:

“The table below shows the number of selected cases which had completed the case closure process as of the end of June 2016, detailed by the number of cases which have had CSA arrears written off and the number of cases where CSA arrears have been transferred to the Child Maintenance Service.

Number of proactively selected cases

Number of reactively selected cases

Total selected cases

CSA arrears written off 52,700

CSA arrears transferred to the Child Maintenance Service 85,800

Notes:

1 Figures rounded to nearest 100

2 Figures as at 30th June 2016. Selected cases may have CSA arrears written off after this date.

3 Cases that have had CSA arrears written off may not have had the entirety of their arrears written off. Cases can therefore have both CSA arrears written off and CSA arrears transferred to the Child Maintenance Service.”

Does this really mean that 38 % of cases have had some or all arrears written off?!!!

On 16 January 2017 Labour MP Roger Godsiff submitted a parliamentary question 60144:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps are being taken to collect the almost £4 billion of child maintenance arrears debt currently owed.”

Minister Caroline Nokes answered on 20 January 2017:

“We currently have a range of strong collection and enforcement powers to pursue Child Maintenance arrears. Our main focus is to collect money owed to children who will benefit today. We are currently reviewing our approach to arrears built up under the 1993 and 2003 schemes and expect to publish our new arrears strategy later this year.”

On 28 March 2017 the National Audit Office published its report HC 1054, “Child maintenance: closing cases and managing arrears on the 1993 and 2003 schemes”:

“During 2015-16, the Department wrote off £12 million of the arrears balance after parents with care of children opted to write off arrears, around 8% of arrears on cases closed in 2015-16. The Department does not hold data in a way that allows it to identify how many parents choose to write off the arrears they are owed.”

Its press release stated: “The Department has assessed that around three-quarters of the £4 billion arrears balance is uncollectable. It assesses arrears as uncollectable when there has been no recent contact with the non-resident parent and no payment against arrears in the last six months. The Department has not yet set out how it will manage the £3 billion of uncollectable arrears.”

“Since 2012 the Department has reduced its overall enforcement actions to recover arrears on the 1993 and 2003 schemes. The Department has reduced its enforcement activities in excess of the reduction in case volumes. When a parent owes arrears the Department can deduct up to 40% of their salary after tax, using a deduction from earnings order. It issued 69% fewer orders between 2012-13 and 2015-16. The Department is also taking fewer actions to have debt recognised by a court, which allows, for example, the case to be referred to bailiffs. The Department does not carry out a full review of the impact and outcomes of its enforcement activities. When the Department does take action to recover arrears, it prioritises cases where arrears have moved to the 2012 scheme and there are continuing maintenance payments (paragraphs 3.3, 3.12 and Figure 4).”

2.5 From the time the Department tells a parent that their case will close it can take six to 12 months for it to be finally closed. Before the Department closes a case it “cleanses” any arrears on the case. This includes completing any outstanding actions, changes of circumstances and write-offs, and resolving any issues or queries raised by the non-resident parent. It does not include a complete recalculation of the arrears balance built up. The number of cases where the Department needs to check arrears had grown to 163,000 by September 2016 and continues to increase. The Department told us that this was because case closure and case management are taking longer than expected, it transferred 500 staff to Employment and Support Allowance, Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment, there has been a fall in staff numbers, and it has chosen to focus efforts on ending payments of child maintenance.

3.2 The Department for Work & Pensions (the Department) is managing 1993 and 2003 scheme cases with a total arrears balance of £4 billion at March 2016. It assesses that it will not collect £3 billion of these arrears, as shown in Figure 3. It has assessed collectability by classifying the arrears into three categories:

• Likely to be collected, for example where a parent has received at least one payment against the arrears in the past six months.

• Potentially collectable, for example where there has been contact with the non-resident parent, who has made a commitment to clear the arrears over a specified period.

• Uncollectable, where neither of the above apply.

3.3 The Department’s current arrears and compliance strategy does not aim to recover all arrears, and the Department has not allocated sufficient resources to do so. It has not yet set out how it will manage the uncollectable arrears balance. The current strategy prioritises arrears on 1993 and 2003 scheme cases that have moved to the 2012 scheme and have continuing maintenance payments. Around half of 1993 and 2003 scheme cases where there are continuing maintenance payments are in arrears. The Department’s focus is on collecting maintenance for children who will benefit from regular continuing payments today, rather than prioritising the pursuit of historic arrears in cases where the children have now grown up. However, all parents who owe maintenance are still expected to pay. The Department plans to publish a new strategy for addressing arrears in 2017.

3.5 As part of the case closure process the Department asks parents with care of children whether they want any arrears owed to them written off. It advises parents in a letter that they can make a fresh start by writing off arrears owed to them. Non-resident parents receive a different letter. In these the Department provides information on how to pay but does not suggest that non-resident parents make a fresh start by paying off the arrears they owe. Stakeholders have raised concerns about a lack of neutrality in the information provided to parents by the Department.

3.6 During 2015-16, the Department wrote off £12 million of the arrears balance after parents with care of children opted to write off arrears, around 8% of arrears on cases closed in 2015-16. The Department does not hold data in a way that allows it to identify how many parents choose to write off the arrears they are owed.

3.11 There are around one million cases with arrears. Most parents who owe arrears do not have enforcement action taken against them. The Department will not take enforcement action unless the amount owed in arrears is above £500. Of all cases with arrears in September 2016, 44% fell below this threshold, but accounted for only 2.2% (£77 million) of the total value of arrears. Non-resident parents who owed more than £20,000 in arrears accounted for 3.8% of cases, but 39% (£1.4 billion) of the value of arrears.

3.12 The Department has reduced its enforcement activities in excess of the reduction in case volumes. Figure 4 overleaf shows the change in volume across a range of enforcement activities between 2012-13 and 2015-16. For example, liability orders legally recognise debts, allowing the Department to take further action. The number of liability orders granted by courts fell from 15,660 (1.3% of all 1993 and 2003 cases with arrears) to 3,660 (0.3%). Arrears on 1993 and 2003 scheme cases grew from £3,853 in March 2013 to £3,976 in March 2016. The Department does not carry out a full review of the impact and outcomes of its enforcement activities.

In a debate on 18 April 2017, SNP MP Marion Fellows said:

During the transfer process from CSA to CMS, according to the charity Gingerbread, who have been doing fantastic work to raise this issue and support families, many parents have been pressured into not transferring their historical arrears over to their new claim. The DWP calls this a fresh start. However, no equivalent letter is sent to paying parents to encourage them to pay off their arrears.”

This was precisely my experience. My CSA case was closed on 3 October 2015. Because my son’s father had refused to pay anything since 2010, and owed £13,318.24, I was allowed, when reapplying to the Child Maintenance Service, to go onto its misnamed “Collect and Pay service” rather than “Direct Pay”, which is what most mothers are obliged to accept. On 8 October 2015 I received a letter from the CSA suggesting that I allow the arrears of £13,318.24 to be written off. And on 25 January 2016 I received a further letter from the CSA reminding me: “You can ask the new organisation to stop managing the arrears you are owed at any time.”

There then followed a year long saga of me fighting the CSA to transfer my arrears to the CMS - something they very clearly did not want to do.

Of course, it was all a complete waste of energy and time on my part, because, as I suspected, the Department for Work and Pensions had planned all along to write off my CSA arrears, and the arrears owed to hundreds of thousands of mothers like me.

DUP MP Jim Shannon said:

“Gingerbread referred to “new debts piling up in the new system worth an average of £668 per family.”  That is a huge amount of money to a single-parent family; it could be the uniform or the lunch money. There must be a way of getting that money paid or the matter addressed. Gingerbread also notes that “almost £4bn of unpaid maintenance arrears has accumulated over the 23-year lifespan of the Child Support Agency…which is in the process of being shut down and replaced by its successor, the Child Maintenance Service”.  We hope that the CMS will learn from the mistakes of the CSA and deliver a better system. I look to the Minister to explain how such a better system will be unveiled and how it will ensure that parents and children get their money when they should. However, the Government estimate that only 12% of that amount is ever likely to be recovered. Although I may look to the Minister for a positive response and for guidance, I am well aware that the Government have already stated that they will not get all the money anyway—they have almost drawn a line in the sand and said, “We can’t do it.” I have to say that that is very disappointing.”

On 26 April 2017 the Work and Pensions Committee published its inquiry into the Child Maintenance Service. Written evidence CHM0025 from the Department for Work and Pensions, submitted in September 2016, said:

“The Child Maintenance Service will, over the longer term, be responsible for managing arrears of child maintenance that have accumulated under the Child Support Agency. These balances will first be checked to ensure they are stable, and the receiving parent is then contacted to check they still want the arrears before being brought across and managed by the Child Maintenance Service. The published Child Maintenance Arrears and Compliance Strategy 2012-2017 (Preparing for the Future, Tackling the Past[10] ) sets out the Department’s commitment to prioritising the collection of current maintenance over historic debt, while ensuring historic arrears balances are stabilised and managed as resources allow. While our focus is collecting money owed to children who will benefit today we will only write off arrears in limited circumstances. In general, unless the receiving parent requests write off, all arrears will still be owed.”

Further written evidence from the Department for Work and Pensions (CHM103) to the Work and Pensions Committeee inquiry into the Child Maintenance Service said:

“We actively pursue parents who are not meeting their financial responsibilities.  However, taking enforcement action can be a costly process, particularly in cases where the Non-Resident Parent is determined not to pay.   When considering enforcement action, we prioritise cases where today’s children stand to benefit, where the value of the debt outweighs the cost of the action, and where the action is likely to lead to recovery of the debt.”

On 9 October 2018 Minister Justin Tomlinson wrote a response to Frank Field, Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee:

“You asked for further information about the full rationale for the Department’s approach to writing off debt, including details of how the write off thresholds were reached.

Debt on the Child Support Agency (CSA) schemes has built up since the launch of the statutory maintenance service in 1993.  Much of this debt is now extremely old, and relates to children who are now adults.  We have tried various options to collect this debt, including using external debt collection companies, and negotiating with clients to reach agreements on part payment in full and final settlement.  None of these approaches has proved effective.

In many of these cases, the paying parent cannot afford to pay the debt.  We know that there were serious issues with accuracy in the early years of the CSA schemes, and as such many of these debts to not reflect financial circumstances of the paying parent, and are unaffordable.

We want to create certainty for both the receiving parents and paying parents in these historic cases about the status of their debt.  We also want to be able to draw a line under the issues of the past, and focus our efforts and resources on the new Child Maintenance Service, to best serve the children of today.  Our approach provides the opportunity for one last chance of collecting the debt in cases wehre the receiving parent wants this and it is cost effective to do so.  As I’m sure you understand, action to collect and enforce maintenance is expensive, so we cannot justify use of taxpayers’ money to take this action on low value debts when the prospects of successful recovery are so poor.

The thresholds we propose are based on the approximate use of enforcement action.  Depending on which actions we use, activity to attempt collection costs around £1000 per case.  Older debt is typically more difficult to collect.  We have therefore set a higher threshold of £1000 for cases over ten years old, and a reduced threshold of £500 for newer cases where the debt should be easier to collect.

You asked how the Department intends to go about explaining this approach to claimants who are owed debts that the Department intends to write off.

Depending on which category a case falls into, a client will receive a different letter or series of letters explaining what is happening and why, and where appropriate giving them the opportunity to ask us to try to collect their debt.  These letters will be sensitively worded and acknowledge that this may not be the outcome a client was hoping for.”

On 14 December 2018 the new powers to write off child support arrears came into force.

The Department for Work and Pensions published internal guidance on its new write-off powers.

Power to write off arrears

CHILD SUPPORT ACT 1991 (c. 48) Ss. 41C-41E

Power to treat liability as satisfied

[141C.—(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations–

(a) make provision enabling the [2Secretary of State] in prescribed circumstances to set off liabilities to pay child support maintenance to which this section applies;

(b) make provision enabling the [2Secretary of State] in prescribed circumstances to set off against a person’s liability to pay child support maintenance to which this section applies a payment made by the person which is of a prescribed description.

(2) Liability to pay child support maintenance shall be treated as satisfied to the extent that it is the subject of setting off under regulations under subsection (1).

(3) In subsection (1), the references to child support maintenance to which this section applies are to child support maintenance for the collection of which the [2Secretary of State] is authorised to make arrangements.]

[341D.—(1) The Commission may, in relation to any arrears of child support maintenance, accept payment of part in satisfaction of liability for the whole.

(2) The Secretary of State must by regulations make provision with respect to the exercise of the power under subsection (1).

(3) The regulations must provide that unless one of the conditions in subsection (4) is satisfied the Commission may not exercise the power under subsection (1) without the appropriate consent.

(4) The conditions are–

(a) that the Commission would be entitled to retain the whole of the arrears under section 41(2) if it recovered them;

(b) that the Commission would be entitled to retain part of the arrears under section 41(2) if it recovered them, and the part of the arrears that the Commission would not be entitled to retain is equal to or less than the payment accepted under subsection (1).

(5) Unless the maintenance calculation was made under section 7, the appropriate consent is the written consent of the person with care with respect to whom the maintenance calculation was made.

[341E.—(1) The Commission may extinguish liability in respect of arrears of child support maintenance if it appears to it–

(a) that the circumstances of the case are of a description specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State, and

1 S. 41C inserted (26.11.09 for reg. making purposes and 25.1.10 in all other instances) by the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 (c. 6) s. 31.

2 Words substituted in s. 41C (1.8.12) by the Public Bodies (Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission: Abolition and Transfer of Functions) Order, Sch. para. 53.

3 Ss. 41D and 41E inserted (10.12.12) by the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 (c. 6), paras. 32 and 33.

Power to accept part payment of arrears in full and final satisfaction

Power to write off arrears

 382

Supplement No. 44 [Apr 2013] The Law Relating to Child Support

(b) that it would be unfair or otherwise inappropriate to enforce liability in respect of the arrears.

(2) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision with respect to the exercise of the power under subsection (1).]

Client Funds Account 2014/15

CMS 2012 Child Maintenance Scheme

Presented to the House of Commons pursuant to Section 7 of the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000

Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 16 December 2015 HC 686

1.4.5 Collectability

All outstanding arrears on the 2012 scheme were reported as collectable in the Year to 31 March 2014 due to how recent most of the arrears were on the system. We have reviewed this assumption and still believe it appropriate to report all arrears on the 2012 scheme as collectable.

Client Funds Account 2014/15

1993 and 2003

Child Maintenance Schemes

Presented to the House of Commons pursuant to Section 7 of the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000

Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 16 December 2015 HC 687

1.6 Collectability

Under a new accounts direction there is no longer the requirement to report an analysis of the collectability of the arrears balance in the Notes to the account.

However, the Department continues to consider this a meaningful measure and will continue to publish an annual estimate in the Client Funds Account to establish the three categories of collectability.

Likely to be collected

Amounts outstanding, which meet certain criteria indicating that the Department had a good chance of collecting the outstanding arrears. The criteria are:

• Receipt of at least one payment against the outstanding arrears in the six-month period prior to the reporting date.

• Funds received in the Department’s Client Funds bank account in excess of the on-going scheduled payments for cases with arrears which, due to system limitations, could not be allocated to a case, but indicate the non-resident parent’s intent to clear arrears.

Potentially collectable

Amounts outstanding for which the evidence base indicating that the arrears will be recovered is not as strong as for the ‘likely to be collected’ category, but which meet criteria suggesting that the Department has a reasonable chance of collecting the arrears. The criteria are:

• The existence of a maintenance arrears schedule at any point during the six months prior to the reporting date, even though no payments were received in the period. Arrears schedules are established following contact with the non-resident parent, who makes a commitment to clear the arrears over a specified period. Non-resident parents do not always adhere to the schedule, but the fact that contact had been made with the individual and a commitment had been made is considered to indicate that the arrears are potentially collectable.

• For recent arrears, i.e. aged three months or less, the receipt of at least one payment agains those arrears after the reporting date. Recent arrears arise on new cases, where the set-up process can mean that no receipts can be accepted immediately, or on older cases where an existing maintenance arrangement has recently broken down. Schedules are seldom put in place until arrears have been accumulating for more than six months; enforcement resources are concentrated on re-establishing broken down arrangements quickly. Consequently, receipts after the balance sheet date for young arrears are considered to provide reasonable evidence that the arrears will be cleared.

• The anticipated impact of some of the enforcement powers on the arrears, were the powers to be used more widely. The two powers considered were the deduction order, which enables the Department to seize funds from non-resident parents’ bank accounts, and the use of orders for sale of non-resident parents’ property.

Analysis of Collectability 2013/14

Client Funds Account 2014/15 – 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes 9

Uncollectable

These balances represent amounts outstanding which do not meet any of the criteria outlined above for the ‘likely to be collected’ or ‘potentially collectable’ categories.

The 1993 and 2003 systems lack the functionality to ‘age’ arrears of balances due to the parent with care from the non-resident parent, which is the standard accounting approach. This impacts the Department’s ability to assess the collectability of debt on this basis. The cost of remedying this issue is considered prohibitive.

An Arrears Strategy working group has been established in CMG test and implement a number of initiatives outlined in the Arrears and Compliance Strategy. The aim of the strategy is to achieve a reduction in the arrears balance by either recovering it from the non-resident parent and / or write off of an element of arrears using existing and new write off powers.

Client Funds Account 2015/16

1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes

16 December 2016 HC 855

Arrears arising from cases on the 1993 and 2003 schemes, which have been transferred to the 2012 computer system, are still particular to the 1993 and 2003 schemes and are reported in this publication. The Department remains committed to pursuing payments, and ensuring that parents meet their financial responsibilities for their children.

1.5 Outstanding arrears of child maintenance

In addition to reporting the receipts and payments of maintenance monies, the Department is required to report on the value of outstanding child maintenance arrears, covering the 1993 and 2003 schemes.

Outstanding child maintenance arrears totalled £3,976 million at 31 March 2016 (an increase of £19 million on 1993 and 2003 scheme arrears at 31 March 2015 of £3,957 million), and were owed by non-resident parents to their respective parent with care and to the Secretary of State. The Department is responsible for pursuing their collection. The £3,976 million arrears owing have accumulated over the last 23 years.

1.6 Collectability

Under a new accounts direction, CMG no longer has the requirement to report an analysis of the collectability of the arrears balance in the notes to the account.

However, the Department continues to consider this a meaningful measure and will continue to publish an annual estimate in the Client Funds Account to establish the three categories of collectability.

Likely to be collected Amounts outstanding, which meet certain criteria indicating that the Department had a good chance of collecting the outstanding arrears. The criteria are:

 Receipt of at least one payment against the outstanding arrears in the six-month period prior to the reporting date.

 Funds received in the Department’s Client Funds bank account in excess of the on-going scheduled payments for cases with arrears which, due to system limitations, could not be allocated to a case, but indicate the non-resident parent’s intent to clear arrears.

Potentially collectable Amounts outstanding for which the evidence base indicating that the arrears will be recovered is not as strong as for the ‘likely to be collected’ category, but which meet criteria suggesting that the Department has a reasonable chance of collecting the arrears. The criteria are:

 The existence of a maintenance arrears schedule at any point during the six months prior to the reporting date, even though no payments were received in the period. Arrears schedules are established following contact with the non-resident parent, who makes a commitment to clear the arrears over a specified period. Non-resident parents do not always adhere to the schedule, but the fact that contact had been made with the individual and a commitment had been made is considered to indicate that the arrears are potentially collectable.

Client Funds Account 2015/16 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes 7

 For recent arrears, i.e. aged three months or less, the receipt of at least one payment against those arrears after the reporting date. Recent arrears arise on new cases, where the set-up process can mean that no receipts can be accepted immediately, or on older cases where an existing maintenance arrangement has recently broken down. Schedules are seldom put in place until arrears have been accumulating for more than six months; enforcement resources are concentrated on re-establishing broken down arrangements quickly. Consequently, receipts after the balance sheet date for young arrears are considered to provide reasonable evidence that the arrears will be cleared.

 The anticipated impact of some of the enforcement powers on the arrears, were the powers to be used more widely. The two powers considered were the deduction order, which enables the Department to seize funds from non-resident parents’ bank accounts, and the use of orders for sale of non-resident parents’ property.

Uncollectable These balances represent amounts outstanding which do not meet any of the criteria outlined above for the ‘likely to be collected’ or ‘potentially collectable’ categories.

Arrears have increased by £19m which represents a 0.5% overall increase. This has mainly been driven by more NRPs defaulting on maintenance arrangements. The increase in the proportion of CSA arrears classed as uncollectable reflects the increased ageing of arrears. This is an effect of the published arrears strategy which continues to prioritise the collection of CSA maintenance for cases with those children who will benefit today, over the collection of older arrears.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/578743/hc855-client-funds-account-2015-16-1993-and-2003-cms-print.pdf

On 31 January 2013, the Government published “Preparing for the future, tackling the past: Child Maintenance – Arrears and Compliance Strategy 2012–2017”. This explained that in reforming the statutory Child Maintenance Service, the Government’s chief priority is to ensure more parents pay the child maintenance they owe not only in full, but also on time. Only by the effective prevention and management of arrears can we get more money flowing to children and avoid increasing debts owed by parents for their children.

However, it also acknowledged that we must deal with a legacy of allowing arrears to build up, with money owed by parents expected to pay child maintenance accruing in the Child Support Agency at an average rate of £20 million per month between 1993 and 2008. The operational priority of the statutory service is to collect money for children who will benefit from regular on-going maintenance payments today, rather than prioritising the pursuit of historic arrears in cases where the children have now grown up.

An Arrears Strategy working group has been established in CMG to test and implement a number of initiatives outlined in the Arrears and Compliance Strategy. The aim of the strategy is to achieve a reduction in the arrears balance by either recovering it from the non-resident parent and / or write off of an element of arrears using existing and new write off powers.

Initiatives being piloted include pro-active calls to parents with care to discuss the options in collecting any arrears and the extension of part payment powers as full and final satisfaction of an arrears balance owed to Secretary of State.

The success of these and other pilots will inform whether CMG roll these activities out for the whole 1993 and 2003 scheme case load as part of the Case Closure Programme.

Child Maintenance Group has continued to make use of write off powers introduced as part of Write off and Part Payment legislation introduced in 2010, with £31 million being written off on 1993 and 2003 scheme cases (2014/15, £31 million).

I have a question.  NAO report to the House of Commons dated 8 December 2016, which accompanied  the Client Funds Account 2015/16 1993 and 2003 Child Maintenance Schemes:

As parents transition onto the 2012 scheme or opt to move onto a family-based arrangement, where arrears have built up under the 1993 or 2003 schemes they are asked whether they wish for the arrears to be written off. During 2015–16, £30.1 million arrears were written off of which £11.9 million (40%) resulted from parents with care opting to write off arrears as part of the 2012 scheme transition process.

ii) Child Maintenance Group has continued to make use of write off powers introduced as part of Write off and Part Payment legislation introduced in 2010, with £31 million being written off on 1993 and 2003 scheme cases (2014/15, £31 million).

Strategy for the publication of information about the 2012 Scheme administered by the Child Maintenance Service.  Last updated November 2016.

Further arrears information is in the early stages of development and assurance. We are looking at providing some information on legacy arrears transitioned from the Child Support Agency schemes by early 2017.

The insistent trivialisation and marginalisation of arrears for children “who have now grown up” also ignores the financial hit taken by mothers over their own lifetimes as a consequence of not receiving child maintenance.  Mothers’ savings and pensions are diminished, leading to higher rates of poverty in old age.  This is sex discrimination.  The effects of Mr Price’s failure to pay child maintenance will not magically evaporate the moment that our son leaves full time education.  They will live on, in reduced life chances for our son throughout adulthood, and a higher risk of poverty for me continuing after he leaves home and into my old age.

Government’s response to the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into child maintenance

12 September 2017

“The planned consultation on the new Arrears and Compliance Strategy will include proposals for the handling of unpaid maintenance cases where there is no ongoing liability (arrears-only cases). The Government intends to seek the views of the public and stakeholders to inform the content of the new strategy, which will provide further clarity on our plans for handling historic debt.

As part of the CSA case closure process, parents are informed of their arrears balance. There are two types of cases that are termed arrears-only. The first group constitutes the bulk of the debt and comprises cases with historic arrears that accrued many years ago and where the child is now an adult. The second group arises from cases that had an ongoing liability under the CSA, but neither parent chose to apply to the CMS when their CSA case closed. Parents with care are given the option to write off their arrears, and are informed that if they do not opt for write-off then their debt will be moved to the CMS system where it will be held, and collection of the arrears attempted as resources allow in accordance with the arrears strategy. The Government agrees that parents should be informed about whether there are plans in place to collect the arrears owed on their case, and this will be addressed in the proposals for the forthcoming Arrears and Compliance Strategy.”

On 8 February 2018 I submitted my response to the consultation:

Your glossary of terms claims that Child Maintenance Options gives “impartial information and support to help parents make informed choices about child maintenance”.  This claim is false.  From its beginning in 2008 until 2013, Child Maintenance Options staff were trained by Karen and Nick Woodall from the Centre for Separated Families.   Karen Woodall called the Child Support Agency “that horrendous, state intervention into family life, that destroys any ability of the family to continue to work together and the spiteful, faceless bureaucracy that purports to be about children’s well being but in reality is simply state sponsored robbery”.  The couple were implacably hostile to any statutory system and believed that child maintenance must always be resolved between parents themselves, even where serious domestic violence was a factor.  Although they no longer work with DWP, their ideology of parental collaboration at all costs is firmly entrenched within Child Maintenance Options.  It is not impartial.

Do not call me a “receiving parent”.  Like 97 per cent of parents with care, I am a mother.   Like many, I do not receive a bean.  Likewise, it is offensive and fraudulent to call my son’s father a “paying parent”.  By definition, he is not a paying parent, because he does not pay anything.

I am on “Collect and pay”.  However, you do not collect or pay anything.

The Ministerial Foreword contains several “falsehoods”, which I will outline below.  

* The reformed child maintenance system provides much less incentive to pay child support than even before.  Where a father is determined not to pay, he can now, more than ever before, be assured that he need not do so.  Paying child maintenance now truly is optional.  The 20 per cent charge levied on a father under the misnamed “Collect and pay” is meaningless if no money is collected or paid.  20 per cent of zero is zero.

* The service is not “working well” for mothers and children.  I agree that it is working exceptionally well for fathers who want to avoid paying child maintenance.  It is surpassing Iain Duncan Smith’s wildest dreams in the extent to which it is reducing the amount of child maintenance going to children.

* Throughout the child maintenance reforms, ministers have deliberately stuck their fingers in their ears and ignored all objections and concerns.  They have also wilfully ignored most of the recommendations of the Work and Pensions Committee, Maria Miller particularly egregiously.

* You do indeed need to “prevent parents evading their financial obligations to their children”.  However, the underlying aim of the reforms has been precisely that: to enable fathers to evade their financial obligations.  Iain Duncan Smith and Maria Miller co-opted a couple of fanatical fathers’ rights activists, Karen and Nick Woodall, to direct ideology and policy on child maintenance reform.  They were given academic respectability by their long-time collaborator, Christine Skinner, a child support policy “expert” from York University, who was a former director and vice chair of their charity, and who shares their conviction that child maintenance must be negotiated between parents and never imposed by the state.

* It is insulting to talk of achieving “even higher levels of compliance within the statutory scheme”.  The level of compliance is shockingly low.  You admit that only 51 per cent of liabilities are collected under the laughably named “Collect and pay”.  But what I find particularly dishonest is the repeated press and statistical releases which make such claims as “seven out of eight parents are now contributing towards their children’s upbringing”.  I have a Freedom of Information Act reply which confirms that you classify as successful any “Collect and pay” where as little as one penny is paid in a thirteen week period.  Technically, you are not lying - one penny is “contributing”.  But the intention and the effect is utterly fraudulent.

Now on to the debt.  My case is very typical.  Appalling, shocking, but utterly typical.  In December 2010 my son’s father left his employment to avoid paying child maintenance through the deduction from earnings order that had been in place since my son was one year old.  I have many pages of typed notes detailing the hours I spent pursuing the Child Support Agency to seek two liability orders in respect of the arrears that accrued.  He told the CSA that he was self employed but failed to provide any evidence of his income.  In October 2015 the CSA closed my case and asked me to write off the £13,300 arrears I was owed.  Failing to obey Iain Duncan Smith and somehow, miraculously, make a “family based arrangement” with a man who had refused to buy so much as a bag of nappies voluntarily throughout my son’s life, I made a fresh claim to the Child Maintenance Service and insisted that I wanted the arrears to be transferred.  I received a second letter, giving me seven days from the date of the letter to reply if I wanted my arrears to be pursued.  Again, I insisted.  Yet it took eleven months, and several formal letters of complaint including two to the very-much-not-Independent Case Examiner, for my arrears to be transferred from the CSA to the CMS.  I had to make herculean efforts to prevent you from writing off my arrears.  The amount of time I had to spend was extraordinary, and I have no doubt that it was deliberate.  In almost all cases, the DWP will succeed in wearing mothers down.  It is truly monstrous.  When minister Caroline Nokes gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, she rather contemptuously snorted that the CMS does not receive many complaints.  This is because there is a deliberate policy of misclassifying formal complaints as “dissatisfactions”, which have no time limit and are not formally recorded.  So, in my case, I wrote several formal letters of complaint after my numerous phone calls had failed to get my arrears transferred, and yet these formal letters were classified as “dissatisfactions” and not formally recorded as complaints.  It really is quite extraordinary.

The previous arrears strategy for 2012 to 2017 was deliberately ambiguous and evasive in its language.  It presented a false dichotomy of wisely spending tax payers’ money on making sure child maintenance was paid for children now or wasting tax payers’ money futilely pursuing ancient arrears for children who had long since grown up.  It very deliberately left out the huge number of cases like mine, where the arrears were several years old but the child was still a child.  When I read the National Audit Office reports and discovered that DWP categorises any arrears more than six months old as “uncollectable”, I realised that the underlying arrears strategy was to take no action, or as little action as humanly possible, to pursue any arrears, and to allow those arrears to age until the child becomes an adult, at which point the decision to write off the arrears becomes much more publicly palatable.  And that is exactly what you are doing with my arrears: waiting until my now thirteen-year-old son reaches adulthood.  Or possibly - and again, the new arrears strategy is purposely ambiguous on this point - you are not even going to wait until he’s grown up before writing off the arrears.

You have never had any intention whatsoever of pursuing or enforcing the arrears.  After my gargantuan efforts to get my arrears transferred and two further liability orders granted (making a total of four liability orders), I discovered that no further action would be taken.  When Iain Duncan Smith first put forward his proposals for child maintenance reform, the Work and Pensions Committee expressly said that the DWP must publish enforcement statistics.  Yet the Child Maintenance Service, which has now been running for five years, is still publishing “experimental” statistics, which omit enforcement statistics as a deliberate and highly effective tactic to avoid admitting the truth, which is that enforcement actions are way down even by the woeful standards of its predecessor, the CSA.  To try and get round this wilful obfuscation, I did my own digging, and I found out some shocking facts, which show that Caroline Nokes’ claim to the Work and Pensions Committee that the DWP was “relentlessly” using all its enforcement powers was utterly false.  For example:

The Registry of Judgments Orders and Fines Act 2005 made it mandatory for child support officers to refer liability orders to the Registry Trust within one working day.  There was no administrative cost to this action.   In 2012 there was a precipitous drop in the numbers referred, which points to a deliberate order having been issued rather than behavioural extinction.  Somebody ordered DWP staff to disobey regulations in order to preserve the credit ratings of fathers who owed child support arrears.

The Child Maintenance (and Other Payments) Act 2008 brought in the possibility to inform commercial credit reference agencies about child support arrears.  Seven years later, the minister Steve Webb signed a one page document enabling the necessary secondary legislation.  It was not until the end of 2017 that the first batch of liability orders were sent to Experian.  Naturally, the four liability orders pertaining to my case were not among them, and the two earlier ones, representing the largest chunk of money, are now too old to be referred.  This is deliberate policy.  A man who owes nearly £17,000 child support must not have his credit rating damaged.  Meanwhile, my credit rating is increasingly damaged through poverty, which could be substantially alleviated by the £17,000 I am owed.

I welcome the proposal to remove passports from fathers who refuse to pay child maintenance.  But I know that you have absolutely no intention whatsoever of removing a single passport.  It is merely a gimmick and a distraction.  Not a single person has been committed to prison or lost their driving licence since 2012.  About thirty people go to prison every year for failing to pay fines for TV licence evasion.  The Government believes that failing to pay your TV licence is more heinous than failing to pay child support for the duration of a person’s childhood. Women received 74% of the 114,000 criminal convictions in 2019 for not paying the TV licence.

I would like to strongly suggest that the Government makes a presumption of child neglect where fathers refuse to pay child maintenance.

I am now stuck.  In 2007 the Supreme Court in Strasbourg ruled that Mary Kehoe did not have the right to seek enforcement of the child support she was owed via the courts, because the CSA should do it.  We now have a situation where the CSA is gone and the CMS, set up at the cost of hundreds of millions of pounds, is a sham.  The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child says that states must ensure that both parents contribute towards the financial costs of bringing up their children.  The United Kingdom is flouting the UN Convention.

I cannot make a “family based arrangement”.  I tried for five months when my son was a baby.  My son’s father completely stonewalled me.  Iain Duncan Smith and Maria Miller knew perfectly well that many thousands of mothers in situations like mine would be unable to make private arrangements.  They closed our cases expressly to cause child poverty in order to increase stress and stigma as part of their campaign to demonise single mothers and our bastard children.

The Sorting Out Separation website is a sham.  Iain Duncan Smith and Maria Miller gave contracts to Karen and Nick Woodall to design the website and to train the call handlers on the helpline.  Their charity, the Centre for Separated Families, was insolvent when the contracts were awarded, and the payments never reached the accounts of the charity.  They even managed to get two of their friends, Nick and Ruth Langton, who are also fanatical fathers’ rights activists, work as one of the charities - Wikivorce - handling the official helpline.  And Tim Loughton, the Education Minister, gave the couple £444,000 to train early years workers to minimise and disbelieve mothers’ allegations of domestic violence.  Again, this money vanished.  The Centre for Separated Families was dissolved in December 2016 owing £178,000 to HMRC.  Iain Duncan Smith, Maria Miller and Tim Loughton have facilitated half a million pounds or more of fraud in the pursuit of impoverishing and punishing single mothers and our children.

I recently tried to seek judicial review of the DWP’s refusal to compensate me for its maladministration of my case and its refusal to use its enforcement powers.  I was threatened with having to pay DWP’s costs if I were to fail, and I felt I had to back down.  If you try to write off my arrears, I will try again to seek judicial review.

I received an automated email confirming receipt of my response.

But it seems that my response was binned because the DWP did not like what I had to say. The Department for Work and Pensions claimed to have received only four submissions to the consultation, which - even taking into account the brevity of the consultation period and how quiet they kept it - is shockingly low. I wonder whether there is any way of finding out how many responses were really received?

On 31 August 2018 I sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department for Work and Pensions, asking for clarity on whether the forthcoming legislation to write off Child Support Agency arrears would apply to cases like mine, where the children are still minors.

I received no reply to this Freedom of Information request, despite sending reminders on 2 October 2018 and 14 January 2019. The Department for Work and Pensions usually answers my requests - mostly on the twentieth working day, sometimes after the twentieth working day, sometimes denying my request or failing to answer it. But it is relatively rare for it to ignore my requests altogether. In other Freedom of Information requests submitted around the same time, I told them of my intention to seek judicial review. I strongly suspect that my request was ignored, three times, to prevent me from having essential information that would have convinced me to seek judicial review.

On 6 September 2018 the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee considered the Draft Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018, saying:

“We take the view that the enforcement measures proposed are likely to have very little effect in improving the current 57% compliance rate for Non-Resident Parents which has been roughly static for the past two years.”

“We note the figure quoted by a number of sources that the current rate of compliance of NRS using the current Child Maintenance Service is 57% and has been roughly static for the past two years. While the stronger enforcement measures set out in this instrument sound impressive, DWP’s own estimate is that Deduction Orders on joint and business accounts are only likely to successfully obtain the money owed in about 200 cases per year. We question whether this is going to make an appreciable difference to that overall compliance statistic.”

The Department for Work and Pensions explained its rationale to the Scrutiny Committee:

“Maintaining the historic debt on CSA IT systems. This would incur significant technology costs of around £25 to £30 million per year–an annual cost potentially lasting for decades.

• Moving all the debt to the CMS [Child Maintenance Service] system. This would cost at least £230 million, requiring a check of the debt balance for each case before it is moved to ensure it is correct.

• Neither of these options would enable us to attempt collection of any of the debt, as they would adversely affect our funding position, leaving no resources to do anything but maintain the cases as archive records. In short, this means that not writing off would cost the taxpayer more money, and be worse for parents.”

The Committee responded:

“The Committee was surprised that the measures which have the potential to write off billions of pounds worth of debt, including debts owed to the Secretary of State, were not also analysed more fully in an Impact Assessment. Nor is any indication given of the number of cases which will be subject to this termination process. While we fully acknowledge the DWP’s need to balance the costs and the benefits of the system to the taxpayer as well as the parents, we would expect to have been presented with a more cogent explanation for the decisions about the various thresholds that the Regulations apply.”

Of course, this was the plan all along - to complain that it would be too costly to transfer CSA arrears to the Child Maintenance Service as well as too costly to maintain them. This would have been obvious from the start. The fact that Iain Duncan Smith and Maria Miller chose to waste hundreds of millions of pounds on closing down the CSA instead of spending even a fraction of it on improved enforcement really does show the underlying ideological objective of the child maintenance reforms - to reduce the amount of money going to single mother families no matter how much money doing so would cost the taxpayer.

On 30 October 2018 Baroness Buscombe told Peers, legislating on regulations to allow the write-off of CSA arrears: “For a case to be in scope for the regulations, the debt must have accumulated on either the 1993 or 2003 CSA cases; it must be an arrears-only case, where no maintenance is due for a child currently; and it will not have received a payment within the past three months.

House of Commons Briefing Paper “Child Maintenance: The write-off of arrears on CSA cases (UK), 27 January 2021