To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Child Maintenance Service is taking to improve collect and pay compliance.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) continues to take rigorous action to collect maintenance, combining robust negotiation activity with the highly effective use of its extensive range of Enforcement Powers. This approach is driven by the Payment Compliance strategy increasing CMS compliance influencing activities to tackle non-paying cases and challenge non-compliant behaviours. CMS applies a Continuous Improvement focus to Enforcement strategy and processes.

From the latest CMS official statistics, in the quarter ending In the quarter ending September 2023, of 180,000 Paying Parents due to pay via the Collect and Pay service:

• 57,000 (31%) paid no maintenance
• 130,000 (69%) paid some maintenance, of which: 40,000 (22%) paid up to 90% of the maintenance due for the quarter (further breakdowns of this group are available on Stat-Xplore) 85,000 (47%) paid over 90% of the maintenance due for the quarter

Further detail on compliance is provided in the About these statistics section of this release.

As a result of this intense effort The Child Maintenance Service has a relatively low percentage of unpaid maintenance. Only 8% of the total maintenance due to be paid since the start of the CMS remains to be collected through Collect & Pay. This was as high as 17% in March 2015.

CMS does not hesitate to step in and move a case to collect & pay as soon as they are notified payments are not being made. Around 3% of direct pay arrangements move to collect and pay each quarter – a small percentage but this shows that parents can and do move to collect and pay to secure help in getting their child maintenance payments. With the focus of improving customer outcomes, there has been an increase from 64% to 69% of customers who are paying anything towards their maintenance via collect & pay since September 2022.

The published statistics provides data to September 2023 - Section 6. Paying Parents and the Collect and Pay service and National Tables, table 5 Child Maintenance Service statistics: data to September 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

We’ve announced measures to significantly speed up CMS enforcement processes that will reduce the time it takes to secure a liability order from 22 weeks to as low as 6 weeks. A consultation on detailed proposals has recently concluded and the Government response will be published shortly.