20. To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will bring forward proposals to require absentee fathers of the children of teenage mothers to make maintenance payments when they are in work; and if she will make a statement. (304081)

Under the current rules absentee fathers are obliged to pay £5 a week when they are on benefit and, as they enter work, their child maintenance calculation increases correspondingly as a proportion of their income.