Children: Maintenance
Work and Pensions

Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston, Labour)

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what plans the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has to charge for the collection of old child maintenance arrears which have accumulated under the previous two child support schemes when fees to use the new statutory child maintenance system are introduced from July 2013.

Maria Miller (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Disabled People), Work and Pensions; Basingstoke, Conservative)

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, what plans the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has to charge for the collection of old child maintenance arrears which have accumulated under the previous two child support schemes when fees to use the new statutory child maintenance system are introduced from July 2013.

There are no such plans. Historical arrears from the two current schemes that are collected under the new scheme will not have a collection or enforcement charge levied against them. They will continue to be collected regardless of whether or not a parent to whom the debt is owed decides to open a case in the new child support scheme.