Skip to main content

Children: Maintenance

Volume 490: debated on Thursday 26 March 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in how many and what proportion of child maintenance cases in Birkenhead constituency payments were made correctly and on time in the latest year for which figures are available. (264776)

[holding answer 19 March 2009]: The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is responsible for the child maintenance system. I have therefore asked the Child Maintenance Commissioner to write to the right hon. Member with the information requested.

Letter from Stephen Geraghty:

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of child maintenance cases, in Birkenhead constituency, payments were made correctly and on time in the latest year for which figures are available. [264776].

Information on the accuracy of individual payments made is not available. Information on the accuracy of maintenance assessments at a national level only is available and is regularly published in Table 17 of the Child Support Agency Quarterly Summary of Statistics. The latest version of which is available in the House of Commons library or online at:

http://www.childmaintenance.org/publications/statistics.html

and shows that in the year ending December 2008, 83% of current scheme and 94% of old scheme assessments were accurate to the nearest penny.

The Agency aims to make maintenance payments to parents with care within a week of receiving the money from the non-resident parent. The Agency only holds information relating to the 70% of maintenance cases in the Birkenhead constituency maintained on the CS2 computer system. Of the 15,600 recorded payments made to parents with care on the CS2 computer system in the year ending December 2008, 94% were sent to the parent with care within seven days of the payment arriving in the Agency’s bank account.

I hope you find this answer helpful.