Children: Maintenance

Chris Grayling
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of (a) the number of unrecovered child maintenance payments in each constituency in the UK, (b) the value of those payments and (c) the value of payments expected to be unrecovered.

Mr. Plaskitt
The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the chief executive. He will write to the hon. Member.

The table has been placed in the Library.

Letter from Stephen Geraghty, dated 23 January 2008:

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, what estimate he has made of (a) the number of unrecovered child maintenance payments in each constituency in the UK (b) the value of those payments and (c) how much is expected to be unrecovered in each case. [175647]

The Agency does not hold information in the format requested. Such information as is available is shown in the attached table which sets out the total amount of debt owed by non-resident parents in cases processed on the new system (CS2). The Agency is not able to estimate debt on old rules cases processed on the old system (CSCS) at Parliamentary Constituency level. Although the Agency does estimate the collectability of debt, this estimate is based on past performance and on an Agency wide sample exercise which does not take account of geographic or regional variation. Therefore the Agency is not able to provide a geographic analysis of the collectability of debt.

This debt is owed by non-resident parents as a result of their failure to meet their responsibilities to their children. Debt recovery is very much dependent on the willingness of non-resident parents to co-operate with the Agency. Some non-resident parents do their utmost to avoid their responsibilities, for example by moving house or changing jobs whenever the Agency tries to collect maintenance.

The Agency is working hard to collect more maintenance arrears and benefit more children. Measures introduced under the Agency’s Operational Improvement Plan, such as enabling credit and debit card payments and employing the services of external debt collection agencies are helping the Agency in this aim.

I hope you find this answer helpful.