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Child Maintenance Payments

Volume 455: debated on Wednesday 24 January 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) if he will estimate the number of children that will be lifted out of poverty by increasing the benefit disregard with regard to child maintenance payments across all child support cases to (a) £15, (b) £20, (c) £25, (d) £30, (e) £35, (f) £40, (g) £45 and (h) £50 in each year from 2008-09 to 2015-16; (113530)

(2) if he will estimate the cost to the Exchequer of increasing the benefit disregard with regard to child maintenance payments across all child support cases to (a) £15, (b) £20, (c) £25, (d) £30, (e) £35, (f) £40, (g) £45 and (h) £50 in each year from 2008-09 to 2015-16.

The number of children lifted out of poverty and cost of increasing the levels of the child maintenance disregard in income support, jobseekers allowance, housing benefit and council tax benefit in 2009-10 are shown in the following table:

Level of disregard

Number of children lifted out of poverty

Cost in extra benefit expenditure (£ million)

£20

n/a

50

£30

30,000-40,000

100

£40

40,000-50,000

140

£50

50,000-60,000

170

n/a = not available

Notes:

1. Number of children lifted out of poverty is defined here as the number of children in households lifted above 60 per cent. of equivalised median household income before housing costs by increasing the level of the disregard.

2. Estimates provided are indicative and should only be used to give some idea of scale, since there is uncertainty over future distributions of earnings and maintenance receipts, and figures are sensitive to the assumptions used and drawn from a sample of data.

3. Figures for the number of children lifted out of poverty by a £20 disregard are not available due to a small sample size.

4. Poverty figures are based on analysis of 2004-05 Family Resources Survey and are rounded to the nearest 10,000.

5. Costs are calculated to the nearest £10 million and are based upon a combination of DWP administrative and survey data.

Information for other years and other levels of disregard are not currently available and could be supplied only at disproportionate cost.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the estimated cost is to the Exchequer in each year from 2008-09 to 2013-14 of extending the £10 benefit disregard to cases on the original child maintenance scheme in accordance with the proposal contained in the White Paper ‘A new system of child maintenance.' (113532)

The estimated cost of extending the £10 benefit disregard to cases on the original child support scheme, assuming that the introduction takes place towards the end of 2008 is shown in the following table:

Estimated cost (£ million)

2008-09 (part year)

10

2009-10

20

2010-11

15

Note: Figures are rounded to the nearest £5 million.

Precise costs for years after 2010-11 are not currently available and could be produced only at disproportionate cost.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what criteria are planned to be used to identify those described on page 25 of the White Paper, A new system of child maintenance, as those non-resident parents who are most at risk of not paying maintenance. (113535)

The administration of the Child Support Agency is the matter for the Chief Executive. He will write to the right hon. Member with the information requested.

Letter from Stephen Geraghty, dated 24 January 2007:

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Questions about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what criteria are planned to be used to identify those described on page 25 of the White Paper. A new system of child maintenance as those non-resident parents who are most a risk of not paying maintenance. [113535]

The section of the White Paper quoted refers to the commitment in the Child Support Agency Operational Improvement Plan to develop risk profiles to enable the Agency to focus its efforts on those who are unlikely to pay. The analytical model and operational procedures to support such a process are still under development. As such, it is not currently possible to say what criteria will be used to identify those non-resident parents most at risk of non-payment.

The Agency is exploring which of the data it holds and which other available information including Credit Reference data can be used to risk profile non-resident parents and predict the likelihood of compliance.

I hope you find this answer helpful.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many Jobcentre Plus staff he expects to work full time on manual processing of the £10 benefit disregard to cases on the original child maintenance scheme as described on page 35 of the White Paper ‘A new system of child maintenance’. (113544)

Ending the requirement that parents with care claiming benefits be treated as applying for child maintenance will free up resource in Jobcentre Plus, allowing Jobcentre Plus staff to apply the £10 disregard as an integral part of processing the benefit application, using the existing IT. We do not expect there to be full-time manual processing of the disregard.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many child maintenance applications were received by Jobcentre Plus in each year since 2001. (113545)

The administration of the Child Support Agency is the matter for the Chief Executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.

Letter from Stephen Geraghty, dated 24 January 2007:

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many child maintenance applications were received by Job Centre Plus in each year since 2001.

Child maintenance applications are received by the Child Support Agency, not by Jobcentre Plus. However, new applicants for Income Support and Jobseeker’s Allowance (income-based) where there is a child support interest are obliged to make a child maintenance application under section 6 of the current legislation and, as such, their details are referred by Jobcentre Plus to the Child Support Agency in order to facilitate this.

The number of applications that the Child Support Agency has received each month can be found in table 2.1 of the September 2006 Child Support Agency Quarterly Summary of Statistics (QSS), which shows all applications received by the Agency as well as those potential applications received directly from Jobcentre Plus. A copy of the QSS is publicly available, and can be found in the House of Commons Library, or on the internet via the following link: www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/child_support/csa__quarterly_sep06.asp.

This information is only available since March 2003 when the new scheme was introduced.

I hope you find this answer helpful.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how he plans to assess families on the current child support system in order to focus transitional arrangements on the poorest families first as described on page 53 of the White Paper ‘A new system of child maintenance’; (113547)

(2) whether legislation will be required to gather the information required to assess families on the current child support system in order to focus transitional arrangements on the poorest families first as described on p.53 of the White Paper ‘A new system of child maintenance’; and what the resource implications are of the carrying out of these assessments;

(3) if he will consider both families of parents with care and families of non-resident parents when considering the prioritisation of the poorest families as described on p.53 of the White Paper ‘A new system of child maintenance’.

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (C-MEC) will be responsible for developing the detailed proposals for the transition of existing cases to the new system for child maintenance. The principles guiding this, as set out in the White Paper, ‘A new system of child maintenance’ (Cm 6979), will be to ensure that the transition to the new regime is driven by child poverty considerations. This may mean focusing efforts initially on parents with care who have yet to receive a maintenance assessment to allow them opportunity to secure maintenance payments.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will estimate the funding which will be made available to support the Child Support Operational Improvement Plan discussed on page 54 of the White Paper, A new system of child maintenance, in each year from 2007-08 to 2013-14. (113549)

The administration of the Child Support Agency is the matter for the Chief Executive. He will write to the right hon. Member with the information requested.

Letter from Stephen Geraghty, dated 24 January 2007:

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will estimate the funding which will be made available to support the Child Support Operational Improvement Plan discussed on page 54 of the White Paper A new system of child maintenance in each year from 2007-08 to 2013-14.

On 9th February 2006, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, John Hutton announced that an additional £120 million could be made available to fund the three year Operational Improvement Plan.

The breakdown of the projected spend of this £120 million is included in the table below separated by year:

£ million

2006-07

5.9

2007-08

66.8

2008-09

47.3

Total

120

The Operational Improvement Plan concludes in the year 2008/09, and as such no further funding is expected to be available beyond this point.

I hope you find this answer helpful.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment he has made of the possibility of extending the proposal to use the latest available tax year information as the basis for calculating a child maintenance liability, made in the White Paper ‘A new system of child maintenance’ to (a) existing cases on the Child Support Agency (CSA) system and (b) new applications to the CSA with effect from a date in late 2007. (113557)

Latest tax year information can only be used in calculating the income of a non-resident parent if gross income is used, rather than net. The primary legislation currently in force for all child support cases requires that net income be used. Therefore the use of latest tax year information can only begin after primary legislation has altered the basis for calculating income and this has been followed by secondary legislation setting out detailed rules. In addition to these legislative issues, an effective operational system for the transfer of information will need to be developed, once Parliament has approved the use of gross income as the basis of liability. For all of these reasons, introduction by the end of 2007 is not possible.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment he has made of the impact on pension contributions of the decision to use gross rather than net weekly income as the basis for calculating maintenance liabilities as proposed in the White Paper ‘A new system of child maintenance’. (113558)

As stated at paragraph 4.18 of the White Paper ‘A new system of child maintenance’ (Cm 6979) published on 13 December, further detailed work is needed to determine how the new system of assessing liability will treat pension contributions, because the tax system handles different types of pension contributions differently.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment he has made of the compatibility of the proposal to explore the scope for legislation to enable the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission to authorise financial institutions to pay maintenance owed from a non-resident parent's account proposed on page 73 of the White Paper ‘A new system of child maintenance’ with UK and European human rights legislation. (113562)

As part of the policy development process, we will consider compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights of the proposals announced in the White Paper, ‘A new system of child maintenance’, including administrative Deduction Orders.