Ninth Report - Child Maintenance

Select Committee

Public Accounts Committee HC 255 22 June 2022

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Conclusions & Recommendations 36 items (29 recs)

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Government response

Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Ninth report from Session 2022-23 · published 14 Oct 2022

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Recommendations & Conclusions

36 results

2 Recommendation

The Department has displayed insufficient curiosity around the needs of some of the most vulnerable...

Recommendation

The Department has displayed insufficient curiosity around the needs of some of the most vulnerable separated families and their children. Take-up of the Department’s CMS scheme is substantially lower than it expected. An estimated 18% of separated families used the … Read more The Department has displayed insufficient curiosity around the needs of some of the most vulnerable separated families and their children. Take-up of the Department’s CMS scheme is substantially lower than it expected. An estimated 18% of separated families used the CMS scheme in 2019–20, compared to an expected 33%. As a result, there may be around 350,000 parents with caring responsibilities who do not have a child maintenance arrangement but would like one. The Department’s research shows that the lowest-income households are most likely to have no form of child maintenance arrangement. Some 39% of surveyed separated parents who were either not working or were economically inactive had no child maintenance arrangements in place, compared with only 21% of those who were working. Some ethnic groups, including Black parents, also appear less likely to use the statutory scheme but the Department has no plans to look into why this 6 Child Maintenance is the case. The Department’s customer satisfaction survey for the scheme excludes non-English speakers, meaning the views and experiences of this group are not represented. We welcome the Department’s commitment to raising awareness of its CMS scheme and other services, but we are disappointed that this had not happened sooner and are not convinced that its current approach focuses enough on why take- up is lower amongst specific groups. Recommendation: The Department should: • within one year, develop a clear action plan to assess, tackle and monitor the ‘take-up gap’ between the number of separated parents that would benefit from using its statutory CMS scheme (and other relevant support services) and those that actually use them; and • to support this, undertake more inclusive research to understand its customers and users of its service. It should ensure people who do not communicate in English are included in its research and establish why under-represented groups, such as some minority ethnic groups, seem less like Show less

HM Treasury

Ninth Report - Child Maintenance

Recommendations & Conclusions

The Department has displayed insufficient curiosity around the needs of some of the most vulnerable...

The Department’s system of child maintenance is not designed to protect those subject to domestic...

The Department has not taken responsibility for detecting child maintenance fraud, instead shifting this responsibility...

The Department is too willing to blame low levels of customer satisfaction on CMS customers...

The Department is too slow to take effective enforcement action, leaving children without maintenance for...

The Department’s ability to collect child maintenance is limited by the affordability of payments and...

The Department has repeatedly failed to achieve savings targets for the child maintenance scheme over...

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence...

The Department also told us that some issues identified with the integration of child maintenance...

Take-up of the Department’s CMS scheme is substantially lower than it expected.

The Department told us that it “absolutely” wanted parents who were not receiving maintenance because...

The Department does not know whether all groups of parents find CMS equally accessible or...

The NAO found that parents from some minority groups, such as Black, African, Caribbean or...

Customer satisfaction with the CMS is no better than under the old CSA schemes.

The Department’s Customer Charter (the Charter) covers four customer service areas: ‘ease of access’; ‘getting...

The Department received 6,521 complaints about child maintenance (around six for every 1,000 customers) in...

Despite child maintenance having the highest rate of complaints within the Department, the Department upholds...

The Department designed the current child maintenance system to emphasise collaboration between parents, with the...

Parents can use the child maintenance system to continue to abuse their former partners, for...

We asked the Department how it ensured that its approach to monitoring child maintenance cases...

The Department told us that it provided specific training for staff to identify domestic abuse...

The Department’s legislation for child maintenance is designed to encourage parents to use Direct Pay...

We asked the Department why it was taking so long to identify missed payments and...

The Department has improved its enforcement of maintenance on Collect & Pay arrangements, but many...

There are several reasons why enforcing payments can take a long time.

We asked the Department what use it was making of its enforcement powers.54 Parliament granted...

Low-income paying parents are more likely to build up child maintenance arrears than those who...

We therefore asked the Department about the affordability of payments.

The amount Paying Parents pay is based on a means tested calculation set out in...

In 2011, the Department announced that it would close the old Child Support Agency (CSA)...

The Department has no long-term strategy for tackling the growing unpaid maintenance balance under the...

The Department has improved the accuracy of its maintenance calculations.

The Department refers cases of suspected fraud to its Financial Investigations Unit (FIU) to assess...

The Department cannot currently demonstrate that its approach to fraud and error within child maintenance...

The Department has reduced the gross cost of administering child maintenance by £132 million (27%)...

The Department told us that its Transformation programme should reduce costs and improve payment compliance...