A former minister has called for a full public enquiry into the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), with doubts growing over the legitimacy of £3.7 billion in inherited debt it is still collecting, as its methods in assessing paying parents are called into question.
Speaking to The Epoch Times, Ann Widdecombe, the former Conservative minister, said, “the accumulation of evidence of the CMS’s incompetence is overwhelming.”
Ms. Widdecombe added that the issue, “can only be solved by a full and thorough public enquiry.”
The CMS is responsible for ensuring financial support for children when parents live separately. It calculates and manages child maintenance payments and has gained notoriety in recent years, due to concerns over its effectiveness in assessing paying parents and assisting children’s primary carers in receiving funds.
It inherited a legacy of over £3.7 billion in uncollected arrears from its forerunner, the Child Support Agency (CSA), in 2012.
Calls for comprehensive reform and enhanced accountability within the child support system have come from various politicians, including Sir Alan Campbell, Labour’s chief whip, who called for a full public enquiry in May.
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Concerns over the well-being of paying parents have also been raised, with one parent telling The Epoch Times, “many have contemplated taking their own lives” over debts they simply cannot afford and which may never have existed.
In an ongoing case, one parent showed The Epoch Times that their salary had been incorrectly inflated by over 1,250 percent.
According to historical claims made by the former director general of Operations at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), during the turbulent history of child maintenance schemes in the UK, salaries used to calculate arrears have been systematically inflated.
These exaggerated assessments of salaries were, he claimed, used as a tool to coerce non-resident parents into providing information and making payments.
The assertions, made during oral hearings in 2011 and 2012, confirmed that arrears may have been inflated by up to 300 percent in Interim Maintenance Assessments.
The CSA’s tactics during this period, it was claimed, included deliberately inflating assessments, which were then leveraged to compel paying parents to establish proper maintenance agreements.
‘An Accumulation Of Ineptitude’
Ms Widdecombe, who now represents the political party Reform UK, told The Epoch Times that the issue boiled down to “an accumulation of ineptitude, which nobody feels obliged to take seriously.”She added that “the whole of the CMS and the CSA before it” were prone to the same issues, resulting in potential hardship for thousands of paying parents of both sexes.
In an oral hearing of the Work and Pensions Committee, in November of last year, Joshua Reddaway, Director for Fraud and Corruption at UK National Audit Office voiced his own concerns that the Child Maintenance Service is collecting historical Child Support Agency debts.
Mr. Reddaway said: “The National Audit Office and the Comptroller and Auditor General have qualified the accounts for what is essentially the CSA—the 1992 and 2002 accounts—ever since it was created, and there remains debt on that account that the Child Maintenance Service continues to pursue...”
While Mr. Reddaway, when pressed by the committee’s chair, would not describe the debts as “fictitious,” he noted that people are being pursued for debts where there isn’t sufficient evidence to support their validity.
The practice of artificially inflating arrears appears to have resulted in a significant portion of the alleged child support debt.
In fact, the admissions in 2011 and 2012, from the former director general of operations at the DWP, Noel Shanahan, indicated that around £1.2 billion (nearly one-third of the total arrears), may consist of these “inflated” figures.
Once the CSA managed to obtain the required information, the calculated arrears were routinely reduced by approximately 70 percent.
These statements from Mr. Shanahan himself—affirmed during his tenure at the DWP—lends credence to further evidence, shown to The Epoch Times, of both paying and receiving parents who have become embroiled in an often bewildering web of financial hardship.
Assessment Inflated By Over 1250 Percent
One paying parent, who wishes to remain anonymous as their case is still ongoing, showed documents and other evidence related to their case to The Epoch Times.This showed claims from the CMS demanding £50,000 in unsubstantiated arrears. The parent claims this figure simply does not exist.
The parent maintains they have completed all their required payments and were ignored by the CMS when submitting evidence as to their means, which are far more modest than the income used by the CMS to calculate the supposed liability.
The CMS incorrectly inflated their income by over 1250 percent across a three-year period, according to calculations by The Epoch Times.
This error was due to the CMS ignoring a submission of recent payslips and continuing to calculate based on the parent’s previous salary, from several years before.
A scathing 2017 report by the National Audit Office (NAO) raised significant questions about the accuracy of arrears calculations by both the CSA and CMS.
It disclosed that the DWP was seeking to recover arrears accumulated under Child Maintenance Schemes from 1993 and 2003 but had refrained from conducting retrospective corrections.
Consequently, doubts arose regarding the authenticity of the £3.7 billion debt the department was attempting to recover.
The NAO report indicated that the DWP’s inability to write off this debt could potentially lead to lingering outstanding arrears balances even after related cases had been resolved.
Furthermore, it raised concerns about inaccurate assessments and incorrect adjustments to arrears, resulting in parents facing both underpayment and overpayment scenarios.
The internal audit report, cited during hearings, highlighted that a lack of assurance over the accuracy of arrears balances on 1993 and 2003 scheme cases increased the risk of inaccuracies in transferred arrears on 2012 scheme accounts.
Evidence also suggests that the DWP transferred arrears supposedly accumulated under the 1993 and 2003 schemes, to accounts now managed under the 2012 scheme, muddying the waters of accurate arrears accounting.
The most alarming revelation from the NAO report was the acknowledgment by the DWP that approximately 75 percent of the alleged arrears were uncollectible. These arrears were classified as uncollectible when there had been no recent contact with the non-resident parent and no payments toward arrears in the previous six months.
‘Many Have Contemplated Taking Their Own Lives’
Speaking to The Epoch Times via text, Noel Willcox, a political candidate for Reform UK, claimed he was unfairly treated by the child maintenance services and mentioned his own encounters with other parents, after he decided to investigate.Mr. Willcox, a scaffolder by trade, said: “Many have contemplated taking their own lives due to the huge pressure the CMS is placing on them to collect money that is not owed."
According to data obtained by Brian Hudson via multiple Freedom of Information Requests (FoI), figures on the mortality of paying parents have emerged from sources including the CMS itself, the DWP, and the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
These reveal a concerning trend among parents who find themselves in arrears with the CMS.
Mr. Hudson’s comprehensive research, seen by The Epoch Times, covers a 34-month period from September 2017 to June 2020.
The data indicates that parents in arrears have a mortality rate a staggering 14.28 times higher than the national average.
Pressure from arrears has been associated with a profoundly elevated risk of death among paying parents. This group constitutes a significant 65.1 percent of all deaths within this demographic, despite representing only 12.3 percent of the total population.
An overwhelming 93.1 percent of deaths surpassing the national mortality rate (referred to as excess or unexplained deaths), among paying parents, occurred in individuals who were in arrears in the month leading up to their passing.
Questions Over The CMS’s Powers
Ms. Widdecombe also called into question the CMS’s ability to gain a court order without any scrutiny of its calculations, saying, “the court is not entitled to question a CMS assessment.”Under the Child Maintenance Support Act 1991, section 33(4), the power of making a calculation falls purely in the power of the CMS. The legislation states: “the sheriff shall not question the maintenance calculation under which the payments of child support maintenance fell to be made.”
The CMS gains enhanced enforcement powers with a court-issued liability order in England and Wales, including the deployment of bailiffs, asset sales, and the potential withholding of a passport, driver’s licence, or imprisonment.
In Scotland, a sheriff can impose a payment charge or freeze assets.
Mr. Willcox also expressed concern that the CMS wields excessive enforcement powers, saying, “The CMS have an armoury of enforcement powers which in my opinion are being abused with no checks and balances.”
Even without a court order, the CMS can employ methods like deducting from a salary or armed forces payouts, lump-sum or regular deductions from bank accounts, and reclaiming arrears from deceased parents’ estates.
Ms Widdecombe added that the system is “full of thorns” and said that she believed parents who wished to challenge the calculations of the CMS should be allowed “a route through the family courts.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the DWP and the Minister for Work and Pensions.
