Department for Work and Pensions written question – answered at on 10 July 2025.
Jo Platt
Labour/Co-operative, Leigh and Atherton
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Government’s response to the consultation entitled Child Maintenance: Improving the Collection and Transfer of Payments, published on 23 June 2025, what steps she is taking to prevent non-compliant paying parents from exploiting exemptions to the 20% non-compliance fee.
Andrew Western
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
By replacing Direct Pay, we will tackle non-compliance, reduce opportunities for domestic abuse and lift children out of poverty.
As part of this, we will require all those parents who are non-compliant to pay a 20% collection fee. We do not envisage there being any exceptions to the fee for parents who refuse to pay what they owe.
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
