Work and Pensions Committee
Oral evidence: Children in poverty: Child Maintenance Service, HC 272
Wednesday 18 January 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 18 January 2023.
Members present: Sir Stephen Timms (Chair); Debbie Abrahams; Shaun Bailey; Siobhan Baillie; David Linden; Steve McCabe; Nigel Mills; Selaine Saxby; Sir Desmond Swayne.
Public Accounts Committee member present: Mr Peter Grant.
Questions 162 - 255
Witnesses
I: Viscount Younger of Leckie, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Lords), Department for Work and Pensions; Arlene Sugden, Director, Child Maintenance Service, Department for Work and Pensions; Hilda Massey, Director, State Pensions, Child Maintenance and Devolution, DWP.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Department for Work and Pensions
Witnesses: Viscount Younger of Leckie, Arlene Sugden and Hilda Massey.
Q162 Chair: I welcome everybody to this meeting of the Work and Pensions Select Committee in our inquiry on “Children in poverty: Child Maintenance Service”. I bid a very warm welcome to the Minister, Lord Younger. We are grateful to you for coming to answer our questions this morning, quite early in your tenure at the DWP. Can I invite you to introduce the team you have brought with you this morning?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Thank you, Chair. I am very pleased to be here. I think that I am day eight into my role, so I am on a steep learning curve. Can I also say how pleased I am and how privileged I am to take on this position in this particular Department? I know already that there are some incredibly challenging issues that need to be dealt with and continue to be dealt with. I am very pleased to be here and to do whatever I can to make a small difference in whatever way.
For today, very briefly, you may know that I have been in the Lords for 12 years—
Chair: Can I just ask you to tell us who is with you?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Shall I just do the introductions first?
Chair: Yes, if you would.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: You probably know Arlene Sugden, who is in charge of the processing side, and Hilda Massey as well, who is in charge of the policy side. I am delighted to have them with me.
Q163 Chair: Thank you all for being here. Minister, can I put the first question to you? You did announce yesterday some quite significant changes to the operation of child maintenance, addressing some of the concerns raised in evidence to our inquiry. Could I ask you to summarise the main changes that you have announced for us and to indicate when you expect them to take effect? Can you also tell us whether primary legislation will be needed in order to deliver those changes?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I believe that what you are referring to is our response to the Callan report. We have taken that very seriously. We also of course take the issue of domestic abuse extremely seriously. We were very pleased with the report that Dr Callan produced.
From the report there were 10 recommendations and we have agreed to take through eight of those. I can certainly go through those at some particular point. The headlines, if I can say that, are that we want to be sure that those who are subject to domestic abuse are cared for in the best possible way and are given every chance to be looked after and to be taken out of domestic abuse. That is the overarching principle of it all.
There are other matters. I could go through the whole lot but, for example, training of caseworkers is one of the recommendations that I think is very important in relation to domestic abuse.
Q164 Chair: Can I take up your offer to run through the eight changes that you have announced, just so that the Committee has those in its mind as a background to our questions?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Yes. I will do my best to address those. As I say, there are eight. The first one that we are accepting, recommendation one, is to provide legislation to prevent direct pay being used as a form of coercion and control by perpetrators and that our service should consider accepting the same standards of evidence of abuse as would be accepted for legal aid in private family law disputes. We are accepting it, and I say in accepting it that further work needs to be done to assess the standards of evidence that can be accepted within the Child Maintenance Service operational capability.
Chair: Will legislation be required to deliver that change?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Yes, it will be. We will need to amend primary legislation for that.
Chair: Primary legislation, right.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: It may be that Hilda has something to add to that.
Hilda Massey: It may just be worth mentioning that there is a private Members’ Bill going through at the moment, sponsored by Sally-Ann Hart, which will enable us to move people from direct pay into collect and pay.
Q165 Chair: Thank you. In running through the other changes that you are about to run through with us, that private Member’s Bill is an opportunity. Will you require additional primary legislation other than the private Member’s Bill, do you think?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I don’t believe we do. I think that it is purely the private Member’s Bill that will do it. I have not been briefed that there is anything else that is required, unless Hilda can add to that.
Hilda Massey: It is possible we may require primary legislation. One of the recommendations was about the affordability of the calculation. As we mention in the review, we are looking at the calculation more broadly at the moment—all aspects of the calculation, not just the affordability. If Ministers choose then to make changes to the way the calculation operates in future, that would in all likelihood require a change to primary legislation.
Q166 Chair: Thank you. Minister, the other changes?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Absolutely, and I will try not to labour them too much. The second one is to ensure that the CMS has adequate legal powers to address financial coercion, which is an important point. The action point is that the CMS should explore how best to use new powers within the domestic abuse legislation to support the prosecution of cases of financial abuse, particularly in the context of maintenance or a maintenance arrangement. We are accepting that.
Third is the removal of the requirement to report domestic abuse to qualify for the application fee to be waived. It may be that the Committee want to explore that a bit further, but we are accepting this. It does not operate in line with statutory guidance. It is not always enforced, and our research shows that fewer than a fifth of survivors report domestic abuse, often due to fears for their own safety. We are accepting that.
Q167 Chair: Am I right that that means that you are dropping the £20, essentially? It will not be charged any more.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: The £20 of course is for the paying parent, so we are not. Having said all that, for the receiving parent, which is the 4%, it is something that we are going to look at. Although I cannot give any commitment today, it is something that we certainly will be looking at. Again, Hilda might be able to add to that.
Hilda Massey: It might help to clarify the point. The £20 application fee is paid by the receiving parent, but what we are looking at is that at the moment there is a waiver anyway for domestic abuse victims, but there is a requirement for them to have reported the domestic abuse to a relevant body, a charity or the police or whoever. What we are doing is removing that requirement to report. We will accept if somebody says that they have been a victim of domestic abuse that that is the case and waive the fee. It is not being dropped completely, it is only being dropped for those cases where domestic abuse is alleged.
At the moment, in quite a high proportion of cases the fee is waived. I think that 53% of all fees are waived anyway, primarily because of accusations of domestic abuse.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: The fourth recommendation is a pilot of single named caseworkers for complex domestic abuse cases. My understanding is that this is for continuity purposes. You have one single caseworker who can follow through on a complicated case. That to me makes sense and we have accepted that. The point should be made that if an individual who is going through a very difficult time has multiple caseworkers, then it can be quite traumatising.
Recommendation five is quite a major one, which is addressing the issue of affordability of the liabilities for low-income paying parents. The Callan review recommends legislative reform to address the issues previously raised by the Social Security Advisory Committee, which this Committee will be aware of. What I will say is that this is a big subject, and we are going to need time to do some analysis and research. We have accepted it, but the Committee might like to be aware that this is something that we want to put some effort into working on. It is a very good point.
The sixth recommendation is better cross-Government co-ordination of early intervention outside the CMS. The review recommends an early intervention system outside but still linked to the CMS, where parents are helped to resolve conflict. It is a conflict issue. This is via referrals to sites such as family hubs and separated parent information programmes. We know that family hubs and the household support fund are largely dealt with via what I think is called the levelling-up Department now. The message coming out is that we need to work better across Government on these very important issues, focusing on families. It is certainly something that I want to do as a new Minister in the Department. Yes, we have accepted that recommendation.
The seventh recommendation is the removal of the nil rate for child maintenance for convicted prisoners, which is an interesting one. We have accepted this in principle, the Committee may know. The requirement for prisoners to pay maintenance already exists in legislation, but it may be helpful for the Committee to know that we propose to explore what more can be done through administrative measures. There is some work to be done on that. It may be that the question of curfews comes up and we can perhaps talk about that later.
Recommendation eight was to update the maintenance calculation formula to include both parents’ income. The Committee may be aware that we have declined this at the present time, but—and there is a “but” here—we want to continue to explore the options. Our response to this is rather linked to what I have said on recommendation five, which is that quite a lot of work needs to be done in this area in terms of analysis and research. Our review of the affordability of child maintenance will include an assessment of the scope to include both parental incomes in a maintenance calculation. If I can leave it there, that is where we are. We have taken her recommendation very seriously, but rather than accept it we have said that we are definitely going to look at it.
Q168 Chair: Thank you very much. It is a major programme of changes that you have announced. How long do you expect it to take to deliver all those changes?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Out of the eight that we have accepted—and of course there is some work to do on the other two, one that we have declined, which I have not come to yet because I have the other final two—each one will take a longer or a shorter course. What we intend to do is to work at pace through each one and to do whatever we can on each particular one to take matters forward.
Chair: Are we talking two to three years? Is that the period that you envisage for this?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: If I said that, it would be rather a sweeping statement, but maybe I could ask Hilda and Arlene to help me on this. We have to break it down to the individual recommendations.
Hilda Massey: As the Minister said, it is very difficult at this point in time to put a specific timeline on it. As we have already discussed, some of these issues will require primary legislation, so obviously that is a constraining factor in how long it will take to implement some of these recommendations if changes are made. Other things we can do much more quickly, for example, trialling single caseworkers. I think that Arlene’s team is looking at doing that very quickly. There will be a programme of work that we need to scope out with timelines attached to deliver all these different initiatives. As you say, it is a fairly full programme of work.
Q169 Chair: When do you expect that programme to have been drawn up?
Hilda Massey: We are scoping things at the moment, so we should have a view of how long some of this is going to take fairly soon. Some of the things—
Q170 Chair: Could you write to the Committee once that programme has been drawn up, perhaps in a month or so—something like that?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Chair, I give my own reassurance as a new Minister in here that I will be looking at this very seriously in terms of the timeline and looking to see what I can do to speed up the recommendations or the actions relating to the recommendations.
Chair: Thank you very much.
Q171 Nigel Mills: Viscount Younger, you have been in the job eight days and you have made some changes and accepted 80% of the recommendations. I guess we hope that you can continue on that strike rate. It will make our reports a lot more meaningful, I suspect.
I want to look at the issue of the payment bands, which I think have not been updated since 1988. That is one of the action points that you have as your “will still look at”. I think that there has been a previous report by the PAC where you said you would look at that and update this Committee in due course. It feels like today is “due course”. Are you seriously looking at increasing those bands or are you seriously looking at seriously looking at it at some point in the future? Surely 34 years is enough, isn’t it?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: It is a very fair point. Following on from what I have alluded to in terms of our response to the review, which we have been talking about just now, it is our intention to look at the child maintenance calculation. On the banding, as you have alluded to, the system was first adopted in 2003 and was then subject to public consultation. I think that it is fair to say that the 2012 scheme rules introduced the use of gross income in the calculation and made other minor changes to the calculation, which were then consulted on as far back as 2006 and 2011.
It is fair to say on behalf of us all that we accept that the calculation formula used to determine child maintenance liabilities is now quite dated and therefore I think that there is merit in looking at it. I hope that gives an answer that chimes with your question. In other words, we need to determine whether the calculations are still fit for purpose, including the banding.
Q172 Nigel Mills: Those were different words, but the same answer you gave the Public Accounts Committee. It does not seem like you are any further on in the thinking of what you might change. A simple inflationary uprating is a mathematical calculation that would take five minutes. I guess picking a different structure completely would take a bit longer. What are you actually thinking of doing?
Hilda Massey: Would it be helpful if I came in? As the Minister says, we do appreciate that the bands were set some time ago in legislation. What we are doing is a slightly more fundamental review of the calculation as a whole. We are looking at banding. We have started to commission some research internally within the Department to look at how things have changed. What we want to do is to look across the board at the calculation as a whole, particularly because we are looking at changes to primary legislation, so it is important that we think about it in the round.
There have been a lot of changes since the calculation was originally worked through. What we want to look at is not just the banding itself and the amounts that apply to the different rates. The percentages were based on research that looked at the amount that people spend on their children. We want to refresh that research as well and understand now how much people are spending on their children in comparison to when the calculation was originally set. There have also been significant changes in people’s incomes and the way income is received, so we want to look at that, and the available sources of income. Things have transformed quite significantly since the original legislation was set around this.
There are a lot of things that we need to look at in the round to make sure that the calculations remain fit for purpose. There are different variables here. We also want to make sure that we are taking proper account of things like shared care and other children whom the paying parent might be responsible for. It is a fairly comprehensive look at the calculation.
Q173 Nigel Mills: That sounds sensible and chimes with evidence we have heard. It is not going to be easy because some paying parents say they cannot afford it and the receiving parents say they cannot live on what they get. No one is ever going to be happy, I suppose. That sounds like a pretty fundamental rework of the whole system. Surely that is not something that you can do with a bit of internal research. Is that going to be subject to a consultation or a White Paper? What is the actual process that you think you will go through for that?
Hilda Massey: At the moment we are scoping the work, as I say. We have started some of the internal work, but we are scoping what that programme looks like. It will require primary legislation if Ministers decide to make any changes, so I imagine that that would be subject to a consultation.
Q174 Nigel Mills: The danger with that is that you consult on what you have decided to do rather than gather what the sensible way to go is.
Hilda Massey: We will want to consult with bodies involved in this all the way through and talk to people about some of the issues that have been raised with this Committee as we go through. I am sure that the Minister would agree.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I think that is a very good point. It makes sense to run these processes concurrently. In other words, in moving quickly, if we can work out what ideas we might have, at the same time we need to work out what the process is in terms of consultation during the whole process. It should run concurrently rather than consequentially, as it were, if that makes sense.
Q175 Nigel Mills: I suppose the danger is that if I am a paying parent who is really struggling, you are offering me the prospect of maybe some jam in five years’ time, but that is no use to me when I cannot pay the bills now because you are calculating this based on figures that were appropriate in 1998. Are you tempted by a kind of, “Let’s get this thing up to date now and then we can take our time over the review” or is it literally just going to wait for God knows how long this process will take?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I am not sure that we can say any more. We have just given that confirmation and clarification that we are now going to look at it. The Committee will know, of course, that the banding system at the moment may not be perfect and it is a bit outdated, but the very lowest earners, who you were alluding to, pay a flat rate of £7 per week. Of course that is in effect £8.40 if you add in the fee. I realise that those with no income pay nothing, but that remains the case. There are other matters that I could go into to help those at the very lowest end who simply cannot afford it. This is one of the things that we will be looking at, among many other issues in the calculations.
Q176 Nigel Mills: Do you recognise the problem that has been raised with us, that for some people who are on Universal Credit the combination of having their benefit withdrawn, paying tax and having their maintenance increased means that by working more they are worse off, not better off? That puts some perverse incentives into the system that you do not want to work more, even though we want you to work more so that your kids have more money. It is like the whole thing has jumbled together and come up with a strange outcome, isn’t it?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: All I can say is that there is a balance to be struck. The whole aim of the maintenance system is to look after those who are the most vulnerable, but equally we want to maintain our main aim, which is to encourage more people to get into work, which means that it pays to be in work rather than not in work. There is a balance to be struck, but I will say that I have already learnt, having come in here—which I knew before I came in here—that it is very important to look after those who are struggling at the moment.
Q177 Selaine Saxby: Good morning. We have heard some quite harrowing evidence in here about how the whole child maintenance system is used as almost a weapon within domestic abuse. Within your response to the report yesterday, what do you think is the most important part of that in terms of tackling that issue where the actual service that is supposed to be helping is part of the problem?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Do you mean on domestic abuse particularly out of all the recommendations?
Selaine Saxby: Yes.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: The others may well have a view; this is my own personal view. I think that those who are suffering domestic abuse must know what the way out is. They must know how to get help. It is no good if they are in direct pay and they are caught by being in a domestic abuse situation. That is certainly some work that we are working on from the recommendations to be sure that they know who to contact so they can be taken out of that and taken as swiftly as possible into collect and pay. That is my take on it, but I am certain that Hilda and Arlene will be able to add to that.
Arlene Sugden: As operational delivery director, it is hard to pick one particular recommendation, to be quite honest, because I think quite a number of them, from an operational delivery perspective, will make a huge difference. Having your own case manager for a start, that is us responding to comments that customers have shared about how agonising it is to continue to repeat your situation. You will now have a dedicated caseworker, a case manager. I hope that goes some way to alleviating that, having to repeat the circumstances.
I also think additional training for our own colleagues. While we have updated that training and we engaged Women’s Aid when we did that the year before last, we must keep current in this environment in terms of making sure our colleagues are fully skilled to handle what are quite difficult calls and interactions with customers.
I also think it is the ability to move our customers straight on to collect and pay, obviously looking at whatever the evidence is that we will consider. We need to be clear that that process is quite clear for us to determine what evidence we look at. Assuming we get that, then I think that will help again alleviate the situation where a parent is brave enough to come forward and ask for us to help and intervene from a maintenance perspective and we can go straight to collect and pay.
As I say, it is hard to pick one particular thing that will make a difference, but certainly those three particularly for me operationally will help to change the service.
Selaine Saxby: Did you have anything to add, Hilda?
Hilda Massey: I think that Arlene is absolutely right. It is the combination of the recommendations that will help. I don’t think that there is any single one that we would pick out necessarily.
Q178 Selaine Saxby: With regards to timing, you are talking about a number of years, but given that some of this is within the private Member’s Bill—I was able to take part in the debate in the Chamber—will we be able to do that quicker because that Bill is already in Committee?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I hope so. This will depend of course on parliamentary time, which I don’t have a feel of. However, having said that, I will make sure that I will find out what the timetable is. Hilda, you may want to add to that.
Hilda Massey: There is also some further work to do, so we will need to bring forward measures that enable us to work out how we define evidence in relation to domestic abuse for the purposes of moving people directly into collect and pay. There is still some policy work and working together with operations to understand the operational implications of any measures that we bring forward. We are working on that at the moment.
Q179 Steve McCabe: Good morning. I want to ask a couple of questions about the maintenance fees and the incentives. As I understand it, the original policy purpose for the application fee and the fees for collect and pay was to encourage families to make their own arrangements. Given the period of time it has been in operation, is there evidence that that policy is being achieved?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I will start on this by saying—echoing your question—that the Government believe that the Child Maintenance Service should not be the default option. Parents should consider whether they can make their own child maintenance arrangements without state intervention, which I hope the Committee will agree is usually better for children and for their outcomes.
The fees and charges that you are referring to are key to that ambition and are designed to encourage parents to consider whether they really need to use the CMS at all, or where they do need the support of the CMS, whether they can arrange payments directly through a direct pay arrangement. We do think, as I said earlier, that having both the 20% and the 4% is the right approach. This is notwithstanding the issues that we are looking at over domestic abuse. We do think the basic principle is that both parents, whatever the relationship, should bear some of the pay, in other words 4% and 20%.
Q180 Steve McCabe: On that, I am curious. If the object was to try to take it out of the hands of the state for the vast majority, are there figures that show that that is exactly what does happen now?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Yes, I think we do have some figures.
Hilda Massey: We do. We have seen a significant increase in the number of family-based arrangements since the 2012 scheme was introduced. It has increased from 29% to 40% of the overall number of arrangements that are made. In that context, it has been highly successful in ensuring that families are encouraged to make their own arrangements. Interestingly, significant new research has been done since the changes were introduced that all points towards the fact that if parents can work together to come to an agreement it has significant impacts on the children’s outcomes.
Q181 Steve McCabe: An increase from 29% to 40%, does that mean that 60% are still being dealt with by the agency?
Hilda Massey: No. Roughly 19% go through the child maintenance agency and then 40% have no arrangement in place.
Q182 Steve McCabe: Thank you. I wanted to ask particularly about this situation where the receiving parent is moved to collect and pay because the non-resident parent, the parent who is supposed to be paying, is withholding the money. As I understand it, that attracts a 4% charge. What we have been told is that that is effectively a charge on the children, and it is a punishment because the paying parent is withholding the money. How do you justify that?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I think I alluded to this earlier. We do believe that the 4% fee is right and it is because it is important to have both sides buying into the process. Bear in mind it is 4% and not 20% for the paying parent.
Steve McCabe: It is 4% taken off money that the children should have. That is the point, Lord Younger.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Yes, and I do understand that, but the overarching principle, which was looked at very carefully at the time, is that if there was no fee payable whatsoever, that would mean, in our view, that the collaboration that is supposed to be between both, despite the complicated relationship, is too skewed. Nevertheless, I take the point that you have made on that. I should make the point, as you will know, that the collection charge for the receiving parent is deducted only when the maintenance is paid, but that is perhaps by the bye.
Q183 Steve McCabe: Do you have any plans to review this at all?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: In terms of domestic abuse, that has been covered and we are looking at that. As well as what was said earlier about looking at the whole calculation, it is something that we could look at, yes.
Q184 Steve McCabe: I ask that because I think it is a bit anomalous. I realise that you are just about to make some changes, but under the existing domestic abuse arrangements there is no application fee. There is an exemption there, but there is no exemption for the same person in the same circumstances under collect and pay.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I should just finish by saying that we do believe it is the right approach at the moment. I do not want to set a hare running. However, I take note of what you have said about that.
Q185 Steve McCabe: One other thing strikes me as a bit strange and maybe you can help me understand it. If the non-resident parent is not paying because they cannot afford to pay or they say they cannot afford to pay—we heard some evidence from Dr Davies on this—adding a charge to it does not seem to me the best way to help them to pay. How do you reconcile that?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: If that is the case, then that moves from a system that is in effect not working between the two, which leads down the route of looking ultimately to sanction. That is a long way down the line, but when you get to that point then other issues crop up. It may be that Hilda and particularly Arlene on the process side could explain how that works.
Arlene Sugden: There is always the option to move back to direct pay, which is not chargeable in that sense. The fees are designed—
Q186 Steve McCabe: If the problem is that I should pay a certain amount of maintenance and I am not paying it because I am claiming I cannot afford to pay it, it is really irrelevant and moving back to direct pay is not going to change that argument, is it?
Arlene Sugden: At the time the assessment is calculated it is based on income at that time. Aside from the conversation we have had earlier around the updating of the calculation, the calculation is deemed affordable because it is based on income at that time and the circumstances of that parent at that time. I fully accept that circumstances change and change very often for a lot of the parents in our service. Income changes regularly, care changes regularly, and the calculation is always being updated. We are always updating maintenance assessments, provided it is within the realms of the policy.
One of the aspects that we will look at as part of the revision of the calculation is the 25% tolerances currently in place. If your income changes by 25% either way, then we will revisit the calculation and the maintenance arrangement. If it is below that, then we wouldn’t, and it would be the annual review that we carry out routinely on all maintenance arrangements that would pick up that change in income.
That is where I consider perhaps the unaffordability aspect comes in. If your income has changed by 20%, as it did in Covid with the furlough scheme, that is a significant drop in income and I understand why a parent may say this is unaffordable, and we are going to wait until the annual review before we pick that up. If that was the case, we will work with that parent to consider what they can pay in the meantime, until such time as the annual review has been carried out, although I would say that what they do not pay goes into arrears and they will have to pay that back at some point in time.
Q187 Steve McCabe: Yes, arrears then. I have one last thing. Has the Department considered at all doing an estimate of what it would cost to have some kind of means testing over these fees? My experience of these difficulties is that there are some parents who can most certainly pay, but they spend all their energy trying to avoid making payments that they should make, and there are some people who quite legitimately are having enormous difficulty in making the payments. Have you considered having some kind of means testing as to who should pay fees and who maybe should be exempted?
Hilda Massey: It is not something that we have considered because the calculation is proportionate to somebody’s income. You would have some very perverse incentives, I think, if we means tested it.
Steve McCabe: The smaller your income, the bigger the impact the fee is having on you and the more adverse impact it is having on the children. I guess that is the point.
Hilda Massey: But it is proportionate to the income of the paying parent, so no matter what your income level, the fee should apply to the same proportion of the amount that you are expected to pay for your children.
Q188 Steve McCabe: No plans, then. Are you pretty confident that that is working as you intended?
Hilda Massey: Unless the Ministers wish to look at it.
Steve McCabe: We will maybe wait for that.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: We will look at that.
Steve McCabe: Thank you very much.
Q189 David Linden: I just want to ask a brief supplementary question, Minister, to some of the points that you were making earlier in response to Sir Stephen about the recommendations. Did I pick you up correctly when you said in respect of the 4% charge for collect and pay that you were willing to look at that again?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: This is for domestic abuse. Certainly we are looking at that. I have also, just to clarify, said that we think it is otherwise fine. It is set in stone, but it does not mean that we will not look at it as part of our overall review of the calculations. As I said earlier, I don’t want to set a hare running to say that we are definitely looking at that specific issue outside the domestic abuse matter.
Q190 David Linden: Presumably on that wider issue though you will take into account the rising cost of living. One Parent Families Scotland produced a report in September, “Living without a lifeline”, where it recommends ending that 4% charge. Is that a report that you are familiar with?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I don’t think I have it in front of me, no.
David Linden: Would you undertake to the Committee to go away and have a look at that in terms of how you look at the wider picture?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Of course, and that would help us with our deliberations.
David Linden: That would be helpful because the 4% charge is particularly problematic for parents. I know that One Parent Families Scotland would appreciate it if you could familiarise yourself with that. Thank you.
Q191 Sir Desmond Swayne: If the reduction cap has been already reached on a paying parent’s benefits, you are unable to make a reduction of the minimum £7 plus 20%. Even if there is headroom for some of that to be charged, would it be desirable therefore if the regulation enabled you to make that reduction for at least some of the £7 plus 20%?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: That is very much noted. I think that we should note that and be sure that we bring that into our review of the calculations. Hilda may want to say something about that.
Hilda Massey: You are referring to the deductions in UC, I assume.
Sir Desmond Swayne: Yes.
Hilda Massey: The position at the moment is that we do have legislative power to take partial deductions for ongoing maintenance. We don’t for arrears. We would need to make changes to the Universal Credit system, and we have discussed this with the Universal Credit team. At the moment it is prioritising the move to UC and initiatives around implementing fraud and error interventions. It is an issue we are aware of and that we have looked at and have ongoing discussions within the Department about when we might be able to prioritise changes to IT systems around that.
Q192 Sir Desmond Swayne: Is there any hierarchy or ought there to be a hierarchy in terms of the reductions that are made? Oughtn’t child maintenance be the first thing that ought to be reduced ahead of repayments?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: What I do know is there is a hierarchy involved. I have it in front of me here and it has obviously been thought out. As you may know, there are lots of priorities, are there not? There are fraud penalties, there are conditionality sanctions, short-term advances, budgeting advances and so on. Obviously deductions in this respect are very important but there is a hierarchy that is—
Q193 Sir Desmond Swayne: Where in the hierarchy is child maintenance?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: It is No. 12, I believe.
Sir Desmond Swayne: Not very high then.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: It is No. 12. All I can say is it will have been thought out very carefully in terms of other priorities, but again the others may well be able to help out here.
Hilda Massey: To add to what the Minister has said on this, some of the higher priorities are around things like council tax and rent arrears. We do need to balance quite carefully somebody’s ability to repay debts relating to things like where they are living because, for example, if someone were to lose their home, then they would not be able to work and then child maintenance would not be paid. It is quite a complex set of issues that are being looked at when we think about that priority list.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Given the importance of fraud, for example, I think it is fair to say that that should be pretty high up the list.
Q194 Sir Desmond Swayne: Very well. I would certainly have thought it would have a higher priority, but I accept what you say.
The receiving parents for direct pay complain that they do not have an easy and obvious channel for reporting underpayments or non-payment. It is difficult to get through. It does not appear that the Department and the organisation are monitoring the effectiveness of direct pay arrangements continuously. How do you make the decision—on what basis—for moving a case from direct pay to collect and pay?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: This is an important question. It comes back to what we were alluding to in the past about those who are in direct pay—we were talking more about domestic abuse—and what they do, what actions they can take to get out of the terrible situation that they may well be in, and yet the importance of full and on-time payments is emphasised in all cases.
The way it works is that the Child Maintenance Service sends messages, I think mainly by SMS, to all receiving parents using direct pay three months after they have set up their arrangements to remind them to contact the service if their arrangement is not working. This text is also sent at the point of the annual review. There is, as you probably know, a programme called “My child maintenance case”—the online portal that reminds parents to check the bank account for the receipt of direct payments and encourages digital reporting of any missed payments.
We mentioned earlier that around 3% of direct pay arrangements move to collect and pay each quarter. Your point is about the communication, I think. That is where we are. It may be that Arlene can add to that.
Arlene Sugden: You are quite right, Sir Desmond, we don’t monitor because it is a private arrangement, albeit we have helped the parents settle on what that arrangement is. The paying parent pays directly to the receiving parent, so we would be unaware if that arrangement was not working for them. As the Minister has already covered, we do a number of nudges throughout the course thereafter to encourage them to contact us. Receiving parents can record it online directly at their convenience, 24/7, on the online account that they all have, which we introduce them to at the outset of an application or they can telephone us and let us know that there is a missed payment. There are a number of ways that they can get in touch and then we will act on that at that point.
Q195 Sir Desmond Swayne: The criticism that there is not an easy way for receiving parents to report is unjustified. You are saying that there is an easy and obvious way in which they can make that communication.
Arlene Sugden: It depends on what the difficulty is. The reporting, in my mind, is quite simple to do, but whether I want to report I think is a different issue. A receiving parent may think, “Do I want to do this?” because that will result in going down the route of moving to collect and pay and more enforced action perhaps, and they may sometimes reconsider that. I am not trying to put words into a receiving parent’s mind, but some parents have told us that they do consider that before they report it. I consider being able to report that you have a missed payment to be quite a simple process.
Q196 Siobhan Baillie: Just to come in on Sir Desmond’s previous question, I do not accept that we have a “computer says no” situation on the being able to collect from Universal Credit and the interaction issue. It is a computer. It is a technical issue, isn’t it? It is a computer system. I completely accept what Hilda is saying about the child maintenance collection being No. 12 on the hierarchy, and prior to that you would have collections, which if they were not paid could end up in CCJs, which is no good for families, but this is a payment that goes directly to a family for the benefit of the child.
The reason I wanted to raise this is that, with the Chair’s permission, I would like to support the Department’s push to have that change. It would be helpful, I think, if the Department could work with the Universal Credit team to cost out what it would cost in terms of changing the technology or resources or manpower. I just think that it is fundamentally wrong that we have a computer system that is not up to date when we know the technology could be tweaked. I would be interested to know what you think about that.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: It is very much a technical question and again it is very much noted, in addition to Sir Desmond’s question. Arlene, do you want to have a go at that, with all your experience?
Arlene Sugden: As Hilda said, certainly, Ms Baillie, we can take it back and talk to the Universal Credit programme team. We knew that would be something that the Committee might want to have an update on. We sought recent advice from them and very much they say that their efforts are all going into the move to UC and fraud and error initiatives. They will continue to consider at regular intervals the capacity with which to introduce the better connection between Universal Credit and the child maintenance system.
Siobhan Baillie: I can help to pester Ministers if we have some information about what is needed. It just irritates me.
Chair: This may well be a point that features in our report at the end of our inquiry. Hilda, did you want to comment on this?
Hilda Massey: I think the point is that it is the capacity within the Universal Credit programme in order to take this on. It is something that as a Department we are very well aware of, and we do talk regularly to Universal Credit colleagues about it.
Chair: I think that Debbie Abrahams has some points to raise here as well.
Q197 Debbie Abrahams: Apologies for being slightly late. I wanted to pick up on some of the questions that other colleagues may have asked. I am sure it has been mentioned that we were in Manchester speaking to both paying parents and receiving parents.
Chair: We haven’t mentioned this, but I am glad that you have raised it.
Debbie Abrahams: Okay. We had different panels on Monday, first with a group of paying parents, predominantly men, but not exclusively, and receiving parents, again predominantly women, but not exclusively. I just wanted to pick up on some of the points that were raised by them.
First of all, in the paying parents group there was a very tragic case that was described of a man—it was his sister who was there—who had been inaccurately assessed in terms of the arrears that he owed his partner, and the frustration that he found ultimately led to him taking his life. Prior to this, not only had he but his mother had written to you—not directly to you, Lord Younger, but to the Department—expressing real concerns about mental health. There has been no reply, unfortunately. This is not the first time. We had a panel before Christmas that also provided data about the suicides of paying parents who were inaccurately assessed in terms of the arrears that they owed. This is tens of thousands of pounds that they said that they owe, leaving literally pounds for them to exist on.
Do you collect data on the suicides of paying parents? Do you also assess the proportion of your estimates that are found out to be inaccurate and, if so, do we have these data? Finally, in relation to the customer service element that we have already heard, again these are simple things to get right in how we treat people in our daily interaction with them. I am absolutely delighted with the recommendations in the report that came out yesterday, but the customer service element of it needs to get much better.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Perhaps I can start off. I don’t have the data to hand, but my colleagues may be able to help. Could I just say that, being new into the Department, I am already aware, having seen some of the correspondence that I have had to look at and sign off on, of some absolutely tragic cases? It is absolutely appalling that cases can lead to people taking their own lives. That is dreadful and we must look at all ways in which we can avoid that or have systems and processes that do not lead to that. I think you make a very good point.
Could I also, conversely, make the point that was made earlier by Hilda in particular? The old system from 1993 and the 2003 system did not really work. Since 2012 we have, I believe, got together a system that is perceived to be working with those who have a family-based arrangement but also those who are on direct pay. We do believe it is working and it is robust. Having said all that, as has come out from the Committee today, there are always improvements that we can make, particularly looking at these tragic cases. That is my overarching comment based upon your important question. In terms of the data and the customer service, maybe I can turn to Arlene.
Arlene Sugden: We do not gather data on parental suicide. We gather data on parental deaths or where we are notified of a paying parent’s death we obviously record that on our system. When that death is suicide, we do carry out a review of the case. We don’t gather the data, but as soon as we are aware that there was a suicide involved, we would immediately take that case off into a separate team and carry out a review of that case and our involvement, whether we were actively involved with that parent at that time. If we felt it was right, then the Department has an internal process review. I think that the case that you mentioned went through that process. I am aware of that particular case.
They are very tragic situations and I empathise with the families involved, but what you tend to find though is that there is a lot more in the situation and—
Q198 Debbie Abrahams: If you are doing an internal process review, why didn’t you contact the family? This was only last autumn so it may or may not be the case that you are talking about. I think that it was in October or November.
Chair: November, wasn’t it? Yes.
Debbie Abrahams: You may or may not have conducted it in that time. It may not be the case that you are referring to. They have had no response. Can you imagine dealing with the blow that your son or your brother has taken their own life and there has not even been any contact with the Department in relation to what they believe was, if not a causal relationship, an association with the reasons why he took his life?
Arlene Sugden: I would need to get the specifics of the case. We would at least reply. What we might not do is go into the details of a case because if that person is not the representative on our records, we would be breaching data protection by having a conversation with them about the circumstances of the case. I cannot believe we would completely ignore their messages or their telephone calls and not respond, but in some cases family members may come to us and we have to gently let them down and say, “You are not the representative in this case, and you are not the representative of the executorship or whatever and we cannot discuss the details of a case with someone”—
Debbie Abrahams: She has not had any contact at all.
Arlene Sugden: Let me look at that then and I am happy to take that away.
Q199 Debbie Abrahams: Thank you. As constituency MPs, we deal with this sort of thing. We often get third-party referrals and there is a process. It does not detract from us providing the support and service that our constituents need. I gently put back to you that that should not be an obstacle to you providing that care and service.
Arlene Sugden: Yes, absolutely. I will have a look at that.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I would very much like to take an interest in this particular case as part of my own understanding as to how it worked or should have worked.
Q200 Debbie Abrahams: Thank you. That was the paying parents. If I could move on to the receiving parents—the group that I was on was a mix—the anxiety and stress that they all felt as the process—one individual in particular had the experience of historical domestic abuse. Some of the recommendations from yesterday’s report will help that, but her experience was that there was gaming in the system and it was not being addressed. Some of the recommendations will help with that, but they all experienced that trauma. If there had not been domestic abuse—she had experienced physical abuse and now it was financial and coercive control through the finances that your agency provides—there were indications that if it had not been historical coercive control or financial abuse, it was becoming that because of the interactions with your agency.
Particularly in terms of the comment around the pilot of single named caseworkers, that has definitely helped but it was only introduced at enforcement stage. Is there something about doing something earlier on, where there is a single named caseworker, where each caseworker has access to the notes rather than them being so frustrated—I cannot express how frustrated they were—when they had not gone into enforcement, where it was a question of ringing up, sometimes waiting however long to get through and then the caseworker could not access their notes, could not respond adequately to the case? Is there anything that we could do to tighten up on those things?
Arlene Sugden: Can I just clarify that the recommendation from Dr Callan is not just in an enforcement situation? It will be a case manager for all cases where domestic abuse is prevalent in the situation.
It might help if I add as well that as part of the improvements to the service that are not linked to policy legislation, we are looking to redesign the way the service looks internally and to introduce case managers across the piece, beyond. We will start first of all with customers in abusive situations and progress that model to a full case management model as a whole, managing direct pay customers and collect and pay customers separately. All customers over the next 12 to 24 months, as our timeline, will start to have a dedicated—not just a one to one, a colleague will have a number of cases—named case manager who will be their case manager in the future.
Q201 Chair: Can I just pick up the point you were making, Arlene, that when you become aware that a client of the service has taken their life, you carry out an investigation? What comes out of that? There is an investigation report, I suppose. What do you do with that? Does anything get published? Talk us through the process.
Arlene Sugden: Nothing is published. The internal review process is more transparent. We very much just look at the case notes. A lot of the time we have had no contact with that parent for quite a considerable time. What we are looking for is any involvement of ourselves that could have had an impact. If we think that is the case, then that is when we would refer that to the Department’s internal review process. It is very much us looking at our own interaction with that parent’s contact history and determining if we could have done something that may have been the final straw.
What we do tend to find in a lot of cases is that that parent is in a lot of debt, and it possibly is the situation of debt as a whole. In a lot of the cases we can see that we have not had any contact with that parent for quite a long time so could assume it was not necessarily something that we had done that had led to that parent making that decision.
Q202 Chair: If you conclude that you had had something to do with that client—
Arlene Sugden: If we have had recent history and we think, “Let’s just push that through the internal review process” then we would refer that.
Chair: You hand it on to the Department, to that process?
Arlene Sugden: Yes.
Q203 Debbie Abrahams: I am not sure we can say that just not having a recent history would indicate that there is not an association with that.
Arlene Sugden: We may be having a conversation with whoever is notifying us as well of the situation, so we are trying to understand the facts from them too.
Chair: It will certainly be interesting to see what has happened in this particular case.
Q204 David Linden: Can I ask a supplementary to that? Doesn’t that therefore mean that the Department is, in essence, marking its own homework and is that appropriate?
Arlene Sugden: We carry out our own review. It is the leadership team that will carry out the review of what has gone on. The internal process review is not ourselves that would look at that.
Chair: That is sent on to the Department?
Arlene Sugden: Yes.
Q205 Shaun Bailey: Picking up on this thread, in terms of your internal assurance processes, particularly around customer service, can I get a little bit more clarity—perhaps, Arlene, you can pick this up—of what they are, the metrics you are using, and particularly how you are defining good customer service internally? I am keen to understand a little bit more what the Department’s definition of good customer service is.
Arlene Sugden: The Department has five drivers of customer service, which all parts of the Department use from an operational perspective. It is things like, “You treat me well, you keep me informed,” and ease of access. We all work to the same five customer service drivers. The Department runs a customer experience survey every quarter where it asks customers who have recently had interaction with the Department for their views on those five areas, and we are part of that departmental survey.
In addition to that, what we have done recently—I mentioned it when I was at the Public Accounts Committee earlier in the year—relates to the lag in the customer experience survey data. You are talking to customers who have interacted with the service quite some time ago. We have introduced or we piloted on behalf of DWP real-time customer feedback like you might see in private industry. You are contacted on the day that you have been in touch with us, and we seek your feedback there and then. We carried out that pilot last quarter. It proved successful and we are now hoping that we will introduce that across the service. The Department is looking at how it would introduce that across the Department.
The immediate feedback was very useful. Customers rated the service at 7.4 out of 10, and treatment nine out of 10. We were able to act on that, and where a customer had perhaps rated the service lower, then we would look at the case and understand why that was and perhaps even in some cases reach back out to a customer to understand why they had scored the service that way. That is how we gather formal feedback.
Q206 Shaun Bailey: On that then, in terms of how you are capturing trends, particularly for that real-time data, clearly you must be capturing trends in where you are weak and perhaps falling down from where you should be. I am curious then as to how you are capturing that and how then you are using that to inform or to streamline your improvements. Clearly if that pilot has been that successful, you can capture the fall points, but also surely then react quite quickly to improvements that are required in the system. Can you touch on that as well?
Arlene Sugden: Sometimes some of that improvement may be individual coaching for some of the things that came out of real-time customer feedback. We would get back in touch with the customer to understand why they felt they walked away not being clear perhaps on what the next step was. It may be that we can get stronger and be clearer around what the next step is and when it will happen.
We used the feedback to improve the digital service, to improve colleague guidance and to improve training. We have done a considerable number of training events over the last few years as well in response to that feedback. More predominantly, we have had a transformation and an organisational redesign programme going on, as I mentioned earlier, which is effectively picking up some of the broader organisational strategic issues that will help to improve the service as well.
Q207 Shaun Bailey: Within that organisational redesign, customer satisfaction as a driver, is that in your top priority?
Arlene Sugden: Absolutely.
Q208 Shaun Bailey: My line of questioning is obviously driven from the NAO report that highlighted that 46% of customers rated themselves satisfied with the service. From what I am hearing, from the new processes you have put in place, it sounds like, particularly with the real-time pilot, you are seeing an improvement. From what you have seen, what has driven that? If you say you are marked as 7.4 out of 10, as you have just given me the figure there, what are you finding has driven that improvement from the deep dive you would have done on that?
Arlene Sugden: I am not a data analyst, but it is different from the customer experience survey, which has a lag. It is a slightly different mechanism for asking a customer, “Are you satisfied?”
Shaun Bailey: Those customers would still have been on the same journey, wouldn’t they, just so I am clear?
Arlene Sugden: Yes. It is the fact perhaps that we are talking to a customer there and then on that day. We can look at the interaction and immediately learn if there is anything to learn.
I don’t know if it helps—I don’t offer this as an excuse, I offer it as context—but the service has been on a bumpy ride the last couple of years, to be honest with you. The Department had to respond to Covid. We lost a lot of our third-party partners that we heavily rely on to deliver the service. Company payroll departments were disrupted; banks were disrupted; enforcement agents were disrupted; courts were disrupted. The Department also had to upsize considerably. We lost a lot of colleagues in that upsizing to work coach recruitment. We recruited to backfill. We are training and we are trying to get the service back to where it was. We had recovered by the end of 2021, and then in 2022 we have seen a massive influx of demand on the service, which is fantastic that customers feel they can come to the service, but we have had a 50% increase in applications in the last 12 months. Without the extra resource to handle that, because we are working within the spending review of the Department, we are doing our best to continue to learn and become more efficient within the Department.
That sets a bit of context as to the demands that the service has been under. It is a difficult service to run, as you will no doubt know from what you see in your own inboxes. The colleagues I work with day to day do a fantastic job in what are very difficult circumstances. I just add that as a bit of context as to where we have been for the last couple of years. It has been quite a difficult journey to keep delivering the service in the context of what we have been handling.
Q209 Shaun Bailey: If I can slightly shift then to enforcement, between the period 2018 to 2022, in enforcement on collect and pay I think there was a 3% increase, if I am correct. Collect and pay went from 60% to 63%. What are your metrics for success on that in terms of enforcement and those increases? Again, to understand this contextually, how are you defining that in terms of effective enforcement? What are your metrics for success on that?
Arlene Sugden: We have lots of different metrics we use to measure the service internally. Ultimately we look at our compliance figure, which I think in the last published statistics was 64% of parents paying towards their maintenance arrangement. That is continuing to increase again as we are pushing and recovering the service.
We have done a number of things to improve the enforcement journey in terms of efficiency, looking at the steps within each of the enforcement measures that we would use. I would say that the enforcement journey that we use is the same as any debt collection agency. It takes time. It relies on enforcement agents, it relies on courts, and those things, as much as we have good relationships with third parties, the Government debt services are used by all Departments. Our enforcement agents work for many Departments and will tell us our service in some cases is—especially the outcomes we get with enforcement agents—as good as the industry standard is.
Q210 Shaun Bailey: I know that the National Audit Office highlighted this. You do not, from my understanding, retain data on how long each stage of the collection enforcement process takes from the customer’s perspective. Is that something that you are going to look to do?
Arlene Sugden: Yes.
Q211 Shaun Bailey: Yes, 100%. Has that started? Perhaps anecdotally, what are you finding from that?
Arlene Sugden: We don’t have that in particular but what we do measure is each step. What we do not have yet is the MI that will help us see from start to finish how long that has taken. What we are looking at is every single step within it, but we are looking to get that full picture through a new MI that we have through the child data analytical service.
Q212 Shaun Bailey: Going to that structural transformation programme you were on about before, to be clear, that will feed into the streamlining of the process?
Arlene Sugden: Yes, we will get that picture.
Shaun Bailey: Okay, that is fine.
Arlene Sugden: By having the metrics we have already, for example, we can see how long a liability order will take us and we question why we have to use that type of enforcement measure when some other Departments and industry do not use it. That is why we work with policy colleagues for the private Member’s Bill, which we are delighted is going through and will speed up enforcement, without a doubt. It will take weeks and weeks out of the process.
Shaun Bailey: That is great.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I will add very briefly, going back to customer service and service efficiency, which is a very good point, that as I am relatively new into the Department I realise that the bar has to be set very high within our Department because we are dealing with some enormously difficult cases. I don’t need to tell you that because you are the MPs, and you deal with a lot of these enormously difficult issues within your constituencies or when constituents come to you. Of course we are dealing with two people with two opposing views and therefore the training has to be very good. It is always right that we should review that and always right that we should select those who can be trained up to be the very best in dealing with these difficult situations. Just to finish off, speed of response and quality of service are incredibly important. That is one of the things I wanted to say.
Q213 Chair: Thank you very much. Arlene, can I pick up on a couple of points from what you have just told us? You talked about the real-time customer service scores. What is the sample size that you are using for that assessment?
Arlene Sugden: All customers are invited to participate on the day. From memory—I would need to confirm the exact figure—it was around 35% that participated. It is very much voluntary. It was every customer who interacted in an arrears situation. We piloted it in the situation where a payment had stopped and we were taking arrears action across the whole of the contact that team received over that month, and 35% of customers participated. I would need to clarify, Sir Stephen, exactly. I am happy to share that back.
Q214 Chair: Thank you, we would be grateful for that. You have just said that there has been a 50% increase in applications. Is that in the current financial year compared with the previous financial year?
Arlene Sugden: I am using the published data because that is what is in the public domain. From September 2021 to September 2022, a 58% increase in applications to the service.
Chair: How many per cent?
Arlene Sugden: It was 58%.
Q215 Chair: What is happening there, do you think? Is it a surge of relationship breakdowns?
Arlene Sugden: We used to see that in the January period, but it seems to be all the time now, to be honest. I think that there are two things driving that. That is the time that the cost of living crisis started to be talked about and that is perhaps when people started to think, “I need to take further steps.”
In April of this year, you will know—because I know it was mentioned in the Committee before—we replaced the child maintenance options service with a digital service, providing all the same information you would have received if you had contacted options, but allowing you to use that information at your own leisure when it suited you. I think that has simplified and made things easier for customers. Prior to that, you would contact child maintenance options, and it would generally be that it is only over the phone, although they did offer a webchat service. It was generally a 40-minute phone call and perhaps—again, I do not have the data—that was tougher to do than using data and using support systems that we have out there now at your own leisure and then making a choice yourself and making that journey from using the data we put out on getting help arranging child maintenance through to applying. We have made that much smoother for the customer, so I think that has made it easier.
It is hard to say what the main trigger is. We have certainly asked. We did a sample in the summer asking customers why they were now coming to us, and in many cases again our analytics showed us that it was customers who perhaps were working but were receiving benefit, perhaps a tax credit customer, where basically they had an arrangement or they did not have an arrangement and they felt the time was now right to address that.
Chair: Thank you. This morning we welcome as a guest Peter Grant, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, who has taken a close interest in this matter. Peter, you have some questions to raise.
Q216 Peter Grant: Thank you, Chair, for giving me the chance to attend today’s meeting. Minister, last year the National Audit Office said that it can take years before a receiving parent gets the money if the paying parent—or non-paying parent—refuses to pay. Can you explain why it sometimes takes that long and what you are doing to speed the process up?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Keeping the process going is very important. I mentioned earlier speed and efficiency. That is very important. We are looking at this the whole time. It obviously depends on a case-by-case basis in terms of why a payment process is not going as quickly as possible. It is something that we are always looking at.
Q217 Peter Grant: One of the issues that the NAO flagged up is that you have not been able to automate the process of deductions from Universal Credit, where that applies, because of IT issues. How much would it cost to put those IT issues right and do you have a target date to have that done?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I don’t have the answer to that, but my colleagues might be able to help you.
Hilda Massey: There is an issue with the connection when a paying parent has UC together with earnings and the Child Maintenance Service has to contact the UC service. However, again the IT issue is related to the capacity issue within the UC programme to take on more IT changes. It is something that we are aware of as a Department. As I said before in relation to other issues, it is something that we are keeping very close to UC colleagues on and will progress as and when we are able to do so.
Q218 Peter Grant: Thank you. Minister, in your answer to Steve McCabe, you referred to the Government’s view that where possible it is best just to let the separating partners sort things out for themselves; those were not your exact words. However, in your foreword yesterday to the response to the Callan report, in the third sentence you referred to the fact that the CMS was often involved in, “Intervening in the highly charged and emotive circumstances of relationship breakdown”. Further down on the same page, after you had mentioned the fact that domestic abuse very often is financial control and behaviour abuse and does not always involve violence, you go on to say, “Sadly, these forms of abuse are often prevalent within the context of parental separation and child maintenance arrangements”.
Don’t those two statements that you made yesterday contradict the assumption that the quickest and simplest and best way for separating partners to go is just to come to an amicable arrangement between themselves? That is not realistic, is it?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I said earlier that we do believe—going back to the previous schemes, 1993 and 2003, which did not work very well—that the process that we have in place now is broadly much better. It is not perfect, but it is much better. I also said that in referring to direct pay, the objective there is that, with our help, the two opposing partners have been able to collaborate, with our help, to come to some arrangement where you have direct pay. It is only when there is a breakdown, and we did discuss this earlier in terms of how we hear as quickly as possible about that breakdown, and hopefully we have given some reassurances to the Committee about the process of understanding what has gone wrong and where we can step in, particularly in terms of domestic abuse.
We do believe that overall it does work with direct pay. Where you do have the collaboration and you do have a high level of direct pay, that does work. We believe that this system is good. It is robust and it works through a process of working very closely with each opposing faction, if I can put it that way, for them to come to an equitable arrangement.
Q219 Peter Grant: In the Public Accounts Committee—Ms Sugden and Ms Massey were both witnesses to the Committee last year—one of the concerns that I had was that while there was clearly work being done to improve your ability to identify where an applicant was currently in an abusive relationship or had just escaped from an abusive relationship, I did not feel and a lot of my colleagues did not feel that you fully understood how often a relationship that was not necessarily abusive at the time becomes abusive through the way that the paying partner abuses the payment system. Can you tell me what you have done to make you and the rest of your organisation aware of the risk of that kind of abuse developing, where the abuse maybe did not exist at the time that an application came in?
Arlene Sugden: First, the recommendation in Dr Callan’s report is about us exploring further legal powers where we see financial pressure in place. We will work that through, which will address some of what you are raising, Mr Grant.
The other aspect is that on the back of the unfortunate circumstance of Emma Day we did commission further training for our colleagues. We used Women’s Aid, as I said earlier today, to revisit that training and we rolled that training out. Part of that training was about understanding how abuse identifies in different ways—it is not just physical abuse, it can be financial abuse, commercial control—and helping our colleagues understand those differences. Every colleague has undertaken that training. Another recommendation from Dr Callan is about continuing to revisit that training, keeping it up to date with what current thinking is, the Domestic Abuse Act and so on. We will be looking to work through that now as part of that recommendation to further upskill our colleagues in that area.
Q220 Peter Grant: To be clear, the kinds of cases that I have seen—and I expect most Members of Parliament have seen—where the paying partner, who very often is not paying, sometimes goes to extraordinary lengths to make their pattern of payment as complicated and unpredictable as possible, for no other reason than to make sure that she knows her place and she knows, “I’m still in charge even though she managed to throw me out of the house.” Are you giving us assurance that by implementing the recommendations in the Callan report, that will become much harder for somebody to get away with and that when it is identified it will be dealt with much more quickly and effectively?
Arlene Sugden: I would suggest that we would be looking at cases like that where we can look to see how we can better manage that situation, particularly in collect and pay, because that would be very evident to us. We would see that type of behaviour because we see when payments come in and so on. Then the changes that we will make to direct pay in response to Dr Callan’s recommendation will give us that opportunity to move that case to collect and pay anyway.
Q221 Peter Grant: One of the specific issues that I raised at the Public Accounts Committee last year is the situation where the receiving parent can tell that the paying parent is significantly under-declaring their income. In some cases that becomes a form of abuse. The non-paying parent makes a point of making sure that the former partner knows that he has a lot of assets or income that she is not getting a fair share of. At that time the situation was that you would only launch a formal investigation if a report was made by the receiving parent, which meant that as soon as you notified the paying parent that they were under investigation, they knew that their ex had shopped them. Very often the consequences for the ex could be quite serious. Since we raised that concern at the Public Accounts Committee last year, what have you done to rectify that situation?
Arlene Sugden: What have we done to address it is that we do not tell the paying parent the receiving parent has given us information and that it is because of the receiving parent that we are now investigating it. I have certainly seen instances where the receiving parent will put that on social media and that becomes very evident to the paying parent, but it is not necessarily something that we would routinely tell a paying parent where that has come from. We would generally approach that on a basis of, “We believe you have other income.” First, we would probably do an investigation of the data that we have already. We have lots of sources and access to a lot of information anyway that would help us understand bank account data and other sources of income.
The other thing that we are doing is to address how much we take into account in the calculation. As you will know when we talked at the Public Accounts Committee, 91% of the data sources we use for income come from Government sources anyway—HMRC data, DWP benefit data—but what we do not get in the self-assessment is unearned income. You will know that as part of a consultation last year we are looking at exploring how we can now bring in the legislation that allows us to take unearned income into account from the outset of the calculation. Therefore, a receiving parent does not have to raise that with us in the future when we bring that in. Right now they would have to do that through a variation.
Q222 Peter Grant: To be clear, are you saying that you can and in some cases do go through the full investigation and enforcement process even if the receiving parent has never raised an issue?
Arlene Sugden: Yes. Of the variations that we take into a financial investigation, 20% of them come from colleagues and 80% of them come from receiving parents, generally speaking. Twenty per cent. come from colleagues in conversations with parents and they will consider whether that is worth investigating and they will trigger that action to the financial investigation unit to look at. It is not always just down to a receiving parent; it can come in from evidence that we have already.
Q223 Peter Grant: Minister, in the Government’s response to the Callan report published yesterday, there are a lot of references to working with other public agencies. There are references to the Domestic Abuse Act, there are references to comparisons with the legal aid system and to working with the Crown Prosecution Service. What are you doing to adapt the response to recognise the fact that none of those agencies or legislation applies in Scotland? There is domestic abuse legislation in Scotland; it is not the same as in England. There is a legal aid system in Scotland. I do not know if anyone has checked whether the standard of evidence to be recognised as a domestic abuse case is same in Scotland as in England.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: That is a very good point. Hilda, perhaps you can answer that.
Hilda Massey: That is a good point and that is something that we will be looking at as we consider how to take forward the recommendations.
Q224 Peter Grant: The final question from me is simply: why is it taking so long? Certainly my colleague, Alison Thewliss, was raising concern within days or weeks of getting elected in 2015 that the Child Maintenance Service was being used as a vehicle for abuse. No doubt other members were raising similar concerns previously. We had the dreadful matter of Emma Day in 2017. We are now into 2023 and we have only just seen the publication of the Government’s response to that. Why has that taken so long to get to where we are now?
Hilda Massey: Minister, would you like me to pick that up?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Yes, if you could, that would be good.
Hilda Massey: Of course. One of the things in the Callan report that is worth highlighting is that she does recognise that the Child Maintenance Service is a reform-minded organisation and has made changes. We have not waited for the response to come through before we have made changes to try to respond to the circumstances, particularly around the Emma Day case.
However, as Arlene pointed out earlier, the service has been under considerable strain over the last few years. We did not complete the transfer from the CSA until December 2018, so the Child Maintenance Service was going through a huge implementation programme, shortly after which we had Covid. As Arlene has explained, there were big impacts on the service. However, we have sought to act as quickly as possible, particularly in relation to the evidence that we got following the Emma Day case.
Q225 Peter Grant: If you had a statutory duty of care, would you have moved more quickly?
Hilda Massey: The Department does not have a statutory duty of care.
Peter Grant: I know, but is that one of the issues? Is it something that we should look at? What difference would it make if the law was changed so that you did have a statutory duty of care, at least to the children that the service is supposed to be there for?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: That is difficult to say, to be honest. We are where we are. Having said all that, Hilda is absolutely right that there are some genuine reasons why this has taken so long. Obviously being new into the Department, I have noted that it was in autumn 2021 that the Department commissioned the independent review of the ways that the service supports survivors of domestic abuse, and here we are very early in 2023. We all might agree that this is too long too, but we are where we are.
The comments that Hilda has made are very fair in terms of the stresses and the issues that the Department has had to face, like many other Departments have had to face. That is a fair point. I wish that I could say that it could have been quicker.
Chair: Thank you. Debbie Abrahams wanted to raise a very quick point.
Q226 Debbie Abrahams: A quick one in terms of the evidence that you accept when you are going through financial investigations. It was suggested on Monday that it was quite narrow. For example, you mentioned, Arlene, about social media and whether that is routinely used as a source of evidence in terms of lifestyles and so on of some paying parents.
Arlene Sugden: What do you mean “the evidence”, just to clarify? The evidence that we would use before we would make the referral to financial investigation or the evidence that we use in the investigation?
Debbie Abrahams: Both.
Arlene Sugden: Both, okay. When we consider a referral, we are looking for sufficient evidence, not necessarily physical evidence. A lot of that can come from a conversation, in that sense. We gather and we have questioning techniques to get what we are looking for and we would make a determination as to whether there was enough there to push into an investigation.
About 50% of the variations that we get are vexatious when we look into them. There is an assumption, based on perhaps social media, that a nice flash car assumes I have more money, a nice new house assumes I have more money, but when we carry out the investigation, perhaps it is somebody living beyond their means or that someone else is paying for something. It is not necessarily that that person has more income that has been hidden somewhere.
In terms of the evidence that we take into account in an investigation, I cannot share it here publicly, but it is considerable. We have probably the broadest range of powers that any Department has in carrying out financial investigations. I would not want to share what those are in this Committee, but I am happy to do that off camera.
Chair: An intriguing point, thank you very much.
Q227 Siobhan Baillie: Welcome, Lord Younger, to your post. I want to put on record my thanks to Baroness Stedman-Scott, who I know cared deeply about this.
I think that Dr Callan was an excellent appointment for the report because of her experience with families and relationships and her research into that. To set the scene, there are few parts of Government work that have such a direct impact on families and relationships. It is reinforcing and underpinning the societal importance of shared parental responsibility. I hope that we never have another pandemic, but if there is another dramatic episode in our country, I do not want to see the Child Maintenance Service chopped up and moved around, because it is important that we nail down just how key this is for people in the system.
For the Committee’s benefit—and to Peter’s point because Arlene kindly alluded to a Bill that I am working on—I have a private Member’s Bill going through that was started by the right honourable member for East Surrey, which is seeking to effectively remove court involvement of obtaining liability orders to get swifter enforcement action. We will be giving respondent payers the right to appeal, so it is not removing that, but we can see quite clearly that the delays in enforcement are often down to courts and courts are so stressed. I have complete Government backing with this and I will make sure that the Committee has information. That will be a key part of speeding up enforcement action.
Chair: What is the second reading date for that?
Siobhan Baillie: I do not know but I will find out.
Chair: It is coming up, is it?
Q228 Siobhan Baillie: Yes. I basically live hour by hour, I am afraid, Chair. It is beyond my skillset to manage my diary, but it is coming up.
You are all working under the shadow of the Child Support Agency, which effectively went pop quite spectacularly. It was on the front pages of newspapers, and it had a big impact on families. My dad got into a complete muddle when we were growing up because my parents were separated. It is not a great legacy. I know that the Child Maintenance Service has vastly improved that and that we are not in the situation where you are getting negative publicity all the time.
However, the evidence from the National Audit Office report and the evidence that we have seen shows that the trajectory, particularly on arrears and non-payment that we are in at the moment, could quite quickly get back to Child Support Agency levels and problems. With £1 million a week additional arrears, what are you doing to make sure that that is a real focus? Because I agree with you, Arlene, that a 58% increase on applications is a positive thing. That shows that people are thinking about their own household incomes and where they can get money from and bringing the other parents in, but that quite quickly will go down if people think that there is no point because faith is lost in your ability to deliver and get the cash to families. What is happening on a day-to-day basis to bring down those arrears?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Can I start off first, just to pick up one or two points, and to also say that I am very aware of the private Member’s Bill that is being put forward? My understanding, having had a briefing on it, is that this is a good thing and that given the pressures—as you have said—on the courts, this is going to save around four months or so in terms of procedure in the application process. That is all to the good, which means that one could speed up, going from the administrative angle in terms of picking up on a particular issue over a paying parent, to the court process. That is all good and I am very aware of it.
Picking up what you were saying on child maintenance as a whole and going back to the CSA, which I alluded to earlier, is that what we are doing is very important work. Of course, what counts, as you mentioned, is the welfare of children. Child maintenance—this newish system going back to 2012—raises about 140,000 children, after housing costs, out of poverty every year. Of course, we must do more, but that is quite a significant figure to mention. As we have discussed today, there is always more that we can do and always more that we will do on the back of the Callan report as well.
On the NAO figure, we do not entirely agree with it, I have to say. Although I do not have my notes in front of me on this, my recollection is that it is based on a linear trajectory that goes up towards 2030. Our projections only go up to 2025 and we do not see the arrears going to £1 million. Having said all that, I might pass over to Arlene, who may be able to add to what I have been saying, which is that we think the picture is better than has been made out by the NAO, with great respect to the NAO.
Arlene Sugden: Thank you, Minister. I hope you do not mind indulging me, but we have the powers to enforce debt. We do not have the power if someone stops paying. We have no power to stop that behaviour. We can only enforce debt collection. Unless someone pays 10% of what we have assessed, debt incurs, so debt will always be there in the Child Maintenance Service. It is important to remind ourselves that we cannot stop the behaviour of not paying. There is nothing we can do.
Q229 Siobhan Baillie: No, but the enforcement system being effective is a deterrent in itself. That is what we have lost perhaps in the amazing amount of work that it has taken to get from CSA to CMS, and I do not think that there is a deterrent at the moment.
Arlene Sugden: We have the same debt collection measures and tools as any Department and as any private industry. We use the Government Debt Resolution Service and all the partners that are part of that service. I have said already that those steps can take considerable time. We will use administrative action to start off with, which is deductions from earnings and benefit, deductions from bank accounts. We will use that first and foremost because they are faster, but they still rely on a payroll department implementing that and on a bank responding with timely data so that we can look at that data and make a determination from it. We must do that before we go to court. Before we take any legal action, we need to have demonstrated that we have used our administrative powers first.
Going to court is exactly as you said, Ms Baillie, and we start with a liability order. The private Member’s Bill will seriously change the timescales on that, which we welcome. We tend to find that when we talk to a paying parent to say that this is what we are going to do, the threat is the deterrent and people start paying, or paying at least something towards it.
If we find that the paying parent does not have enough money to pay—and we will look at income and expenditure—it is very difficult for us to pursue that further. We will try an enforcement agent. An enforcement agent will visit a customer and make a determination around ability to pay. Again, an enforcement agent—traditionally a bailiff, if you do not know the terminology—is an effective measure. Both the liability order and the enforcement agents are effective measures to get payment there and then.
Only if the customer has the means to pay and is refusing to pay will we then pursue that through the sanctions route. We do use that regularly. I realise the published data only tells you the outcome of that rather than how many times we use it as a threat. Therefore we do use the full force of our powers, but they do take time because we are relying on a court. Sanctions rely on an individual judge hearing an individual case and it takes time to get that court date in the diary.
In terms of the debt, as I have said already, unless someone pays 100% there will always be debt. We currently have about £512 million-worth of debt on the books. That is about 8% of the total maintenance that we have arranged in the 10 years that we have been in operation. In 2015 that was 17%. The debt was 17% of the total money arranged; it is now 8%. We are slowing down that rate of growth of debt. When I look at Australia and New Zealand, they have the same levels, if not more. Australia has £1.6 billion of child maintenance debt. It says it has collected 92%, with 8% debt, similar to us. New Zealand has more. It is a feature of a child maintenance service that there will always be debt.
Q230 Siobhan Baillie: Are you not worried about it? It is quite shocking for parents, particularly when it is £1 million a week additional arrears. Regardless of what you say about the discrepancy on the trajectory figures, that is quite shocking. Is your answer to my question of what you are doing about trying to tighten up the enforcement measures, that is the main plan to try to bring it down?
Arlene Sugden: Absolutely. We are doing everything we can within the bounds of the legislation, and even now challenging some of the legislation, with your support, to make that process happen faster and to use those measures as best we can. Am I comfortable that there is debt? No, and absolutely, we will continue to do all we can. However, in some cases parents are paying back quite small amounts of debt over a long period of time, but they are paying and it is what they can afford to pay and eventually that debt will pay off.
Q231 David Linden: Lord Younger, congratulations on your appointment. You are the first viscount that I have come across that is not a biscuit.
The point was raised by Hilda earlier. As I understand it, the Department estimates that in the last financial year 44% of separated families had no child maintenance arrangement. Why is that?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Perhaps I can pass that over to you, Hilda.
Hilda Massey: The latest estimate is that 40% have no arrangement. There are a variety of reasons. We published some research last summer that we did with separated families where we asked the question of those who do not have arrangements why they do not have them. Fifty-two per cent. of those people without an arrangement do not want one. The reasons for that were many and varied. They ranged from not wanting to have contact with the former partner, to the location, to views about affordability. There was a range of different reasons why people did not want to put an arrangement in place. For some people it simply will not be appropriate. There may be reasons why it is not appropriate for them to have an arrangement.
For those who did express a view that they might want an arrangement, the reasons for not having one were quite similar—surprisingly similar—to those who did not. What we have seen, as Arlene has pointed out, is a significant increase recently in the number of applications to the Child Maintenance Service. As Arlene said, we think that one of the reasons for that is because of the improved service with “Get help arranging child maintenance”, where it is easier for people to engage in that digital environment and think about making an arrangement. We do think that that is having an impact in terms of people thinking about making a child maintenance arrangement.
Q232 David Linden: Would it be your view that that increase in the number of people who do not have an arrangement would have an impact on child poverty or an increase in child poverty?
Hilda Massey: It may do. We do not have any analysis that would necessarily point to any numbers around that. Obviously child maintenance is additional to benefit, so if somebody is receiving child maintenance, it is lifting their overall income. For somebody who is around that boundary of being in poverty, it is possible that it would lift more out of poverty. However, the one thing that it does do, without a shadow of a doubt, is benefit the receiving parent’s overall income. Whether or not that is taking them out of poverty, it is definitely having a positive impact on their income.
Q233 David Linden: The NAO reckons that there might be around 350,000 parents with care and 500,000 non-resident parents who do not have an arrangement but would like one. What work has the Department undertaken to support parents who want to make that arrangement? A supplement to that would be: is the Department resourced to be able to do that work?
Hilda Massey: As I said, one of the aspects is the new digital service that we have introduced. We have discussed already that we do think that that is having an impact, the availability of information. We also are training Universal Credit job coaches, as part of their induction training, about child maintenance to enable them to signpost people to the Child Maintenance Service where appropriate, or at least to signpost them to the help and advice on “Get help arranging child maintenance” so that they can make a choice about whether or not they want to make their own arrangement or use the service. There is activity going on with the Department within that space.
There are lots of other reasons why people may not have made an arrangement, and there are Government initiatives around things like family hubs and the Supporting Families initiative. The Department has 307 supporting family advisers within jobcentres, and they are trained to understand the Child Maintenance Service and signpost where appropriate. We are also working with other Departments and through our own Reducing Parental Conflict programme to help signpost people to the information that they need to make decisions around this.
One of the issues with some families is that they have very complex needs and sometimes chaotic lives. Some of the other initiatives that we are interfacing with are helping families to get into a more stable position, after which it might be more appropriate to then signpost them to child maintenance, but we are working with other Departments to see what more we can do to signpost, where appropriate.
Q234 David Linden: Quite rightly we have spent a lot of time this morning talking about domestic abuse and domestic violence. Viscount Younger, I understand that among your ministerial responsibilities is the Family Test, is that correct? The Family Test falls within your ministerial responsibilities?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Yes, indeed it does.
Q235 David Linden: In respect of the Family Test and being mindful of what was discussed this morning about domestic abuse and domestic violence, how compatible do you think the two-child policy and rape clause is with the Family Test?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: First, can I add to what Hilda was saying before we go on? An early action point for me would be to link up with my counterparts in other Departments, particularly the levelling-up Department, because it takes responsibility for family hubs and the supporting households programme, and also the DFE if we think about the education of children angle. I see this as being very important. It has been mentioned in the report in terms of having more cross-Government co-ordination, so that is very important.
On the two-child policy, there is no plan to change that. We believe that we have it right in terms of supporting up to two children. However, as was pointed out earlier, if there are issues in terms of affordability and in terms of families finding that they are in difficulties, there are many other initiatives that have been taken, particularly recently, in terms of helping those who are finding it extremely difficult, including those who do not quite know where their next meal will be.
Q236 David Linden: The Committee will note that in your answer to that you did not mention the Family Test. UK statute at the moment suggests that benefits can only be paid for up to two children. There are exemptions in place, that being the rape clause. Given what we have discussed this morning in terms of domestic abuse and domestic violence, do the Government think that it is appropriate that people should have to prove to the Government that they have been subject to domestic abuse simply to get state support? My question to you is how compatible is that with the Family Test that you, as Minister, are responsible for?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Hilda, you could help with this in terms of Family Test.
David Linden: With respect, that is a political question and as the Minister you should be responding to that.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Can I say that I do not have an answer to that? I will obviously need to look at that. The truth is that I have not had a brief on the Family Test. I know that it is part of my responsibilities but, forgive me, I will need to look in depth at how that works.
David Linden: I would be grateful if you could write to the Committee once you have had that briefing.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I can certainly write to you.
Chair: That would be very helpful, thank you very much.
Q237 Selaine Saxby: What role do you think that conflict plays in preventing parents from achieving effective maintenance arrangements?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Can you clarify what you mean by that? You are talking about conflict?
Selaine Saxby: Yes, conflict between parents. What role do you think that it plays in preventing parents from achieving effective maintenance arrangements?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I hope that I can answer this. I will have a go. Obviously there are all kinds of different types of conflict. It is up to us in the Child Maintenance Service to understand what that conflict is, to be sure that the caseworker involved understands either side. Their role therefore is to find a solution and find the best way in which there is a collaboration of sorts. That is probably the only way that I can answer that. It may be that Hilda can add to the process for this.
Hilda Massey: Yes, to add a little bit, research does show that if we support people to minimise conflict it could help people make better family-based arrangements or arrangements at all. Our services do signpost people to the help that they can get to help with resolving conflict. Within the Department, as I previously mentioned, we have the Reducing Parental Conflict programme. One of the things that we are doing there is looking at how that programme interfaces with the Child Maintenance Service and what the key touchpoints are and what interventions might help.
That is not necessarily just at the point that somebody first contacts either “Get help arranging child maintenance” or the service itself, but also looking at other steps in the process to see the points at which referring people to information and advice on resolving family conflict, and also helping them to understand the impact on their children and how it drives better outcomes if people can resolve the conflict between themselves, might drive people to make better arrangements.
For example, we are not, as I said, just looking at when people come into the service but also potentially when they are considering moving from direct pay to collect and pay or back the other way. That is work that is under way. It needs testing and piloting, and we need to understand what works best, but it is something that we are cognisant of in terms of understanding how we can use both those programmes together to drive better outcomes for the parents and children.
Siobhan Baillie: Very briefly, because we give the Department a very hard time, but you should be incredibly proud of the Reducing Parental Conflict work that you have done, because it is evidence-based and local authority after local authority want it. Given that we know that there is already conflict when parents go through CMS, I am pretty sure it can be used very well. You genuinely should be proud of that work.
Q238 Nigel Mills: Arlene, can I ask you a process question? If you write to me and tell me I have £3,000 in arrears and I ring and ask to see the calculation of that, how long should it take to send me that calculation?
Arlene Sugden: On current timelines it would be about seven weeks before we would respond to outline what the detail of that calculation is.
Q239 Nigel Mills: Is that not in the system? Presumably when you write to me and tell me that I owe £3,000, there has been a calculation that calculates £3,000. It is not just a guess, is it?
Arlene Sugden: A parent can access that information on their digital account. You would assume that a parent would know how we have calculated it because we explain the calculation in the calculation letter. However, if that query came in, we would reissue that calculation to the parent to explain how it had been derived. Again, online it explains how a calculation is created, using income, shared care and so on. However, if someone was challenging that calculation, we would outline a detailed response to say how it has come about.
Q240 Nigel Mills: I had a case recently where it took 18 months, even with my involvement, just to get the calculation. That is terrible, is it not? The paying parent is then not paying because they do not agree with the number, you cannot evidence the number and the whole thing just goes wrong. Should it take seven weeks to get that?
Arlene Sugden: I would be interested to look at that case. It is hard to give a response to that. I know that if it is a CSA calculation and we have the historical data, that could take longer if it is a complex calculation, but in a general sense someone asking for us to clarify or challenging the calculation would be part of our normal response rate.
Q241 Nigel Mills: Minister, in your earlier responses about the changes that you are making, there was a reference to the issue of shared care. We heard from people on Monday when we went to Manchester that the court orders shared care, so both parents have equal care of the child, yet because of bizarre quirks of your system you have to try to work out who has the child for 333 nights and who has the child for 332 nights. That then drives a maintenance calculation even though the whole intent of the court order was that it was 50:50. Is that something that you are looking at to see whether, in situations where you have shared care, you do not have a system that very arbitrarily decides who has to pay who, even though they are probably incurring half the costs each in that situation?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: There is a process in place, as you will know, in terms of looking at positions of cases of conflict in terms of the administrative side and trying to avoid the legal side. All I can say is that the caseworkers are the ones at the front end who have to make a decision at the end of the day. However, can I reconfirm again that we are looking at this? This is all part of looking at the recalculation. Looking at meanings is part of the review that has come out of the review.
Q242 Nigel Mills: One of the suggestions that we had from earlier evidence was the Australian model or somewhere—forgive me, I cannot remember where—where the system looks at the household income of the paying parent and the receiving parent and tries to come up with a fairer split to see who should be paying what to who. Is that something that you are thinking of as part of the review that you are looking at as well, not just to be solely focused on the position of the paying parent?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: It allows me to say, as you must expect, that we do look at what other countries do. We very recently have undertaken a study of many other countries. The Committee will be aware that some members have thought that the Australian model might be more akin to what we might look at. However, we take the view, having looked at it very carefully, that there is no best-in-class model or a like-for-like comparison. I am very aware of the point that you make about the two incomes being taken into account. However, we do not think that that is the right way forward.
Having said all that, we have not dismissed it. We will look at what other countries do as part of our review. We still say though that the UK system performs pretty well against any other child maintenance system and it also has some of the strongest enforcement powers internationally, taking account of the shared responsibility. I hope that that answers the question that we are not unaware of what other countries do. If there was a panacea, I would say so, but there is not.
Q243 Nigel Mills: As a final question from me, you have had eight days and obviously you have had quite a lot of briefing for this session. How well do you think that the agency performs? Do you think that it is an eight out of 10 and with a few tweaks it will be fine, or are you thinking, like most of the evidence that we have had, that this is a real mess and that something needs to be done? I accept that we do not tend to get evidence from people who are happy, so our sample can be skewed. What is your initial reaction from what you have heard so far?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I am going to be cautious in giving a response because, as you have pointed out, I am only eight days in. However, I am very impressed with what I have seen so far. This is not easy, and I have already pointed out that I have learnt that those who are trained and have worked in the frontline dealing with extremely difficult—and in many cases very challenging and tragic—cases have an enormously difficult job.
What I would say, which is repeating what I said before, is that what I understand from the previous schemes, going back to 1993 and 2003, the scheme that we have in place is basically robust and does its job. However, equally, as has come out today from the questions that have been raised, there is more work to be done. From the review and the response that we have given, I hope that we were able to reassure the Committee that we will push forward and undertake this work, in addition the general improving work that we would do naturally outside the recommendations that have come from this review.
I realise that there are issues to resolve but I think that it is a robust system. Obviously I have more work to do, particularly on the Family Test, which I was not able to answer from David Linden. I have more work to do but I hope that that answers the question.
Q244 Chair: Minister, can I press you a little bit further on the question of taking both parents’ income into account, which was recommended in the independent review published yesterday? Your response, as you have indicated, was that you have declined to agree to that recommendation. You have said, “Decline at the present time while we continue to explore options.” Can I press a little bit further on this? To quote what the independent review says about this, it says, “Both parents often have primary caring responsibilities towards the child as well as employment outside the home. This reality makes it hard to justify the current situation where only the non-resident parent’s income is included in child maintenance liability calculations”. That seems to me quite a strong argument. Do you accept that it is quite a strong argument?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I note what you say. All I can say is that from the recommendations that we have responded to, we are looking at the recalculation. I think that I should leave it at that. I do not want to lead the Committee down a path where I should not. It may be that Hilda has something more to say about this, but I hope that that does give some reassurance.
Chair: You have not shut the door.
Hilda Massey: To reflect a little bit on this, when you look at the incomes of paying and receiving parents, the income of receiving parents is much more skewed towards the bottom quintiles, where with paying parents you tend to get a much more even spread of income.
We have done this previously. In the 1993 scheme we took both parents’ income into account. It caused huge complexity and led to very large numbers of changes in circumstances. Australia introduced this in 2008 and it had a very similar experience when it first introduced it, where it did cause quite a lot of administrative difficulties, which have subsequently settled down. However, in terms of the outcomes, what Australia has not seen is any increase in compliance. One of the arguments made around this is fairness, but in the Australian experience the compliance levels have remained the same both before and after. It is quite a complex issue. The interaction with the calculation is an important one. It is something that Ministers will want to reflect on when we finish the work that we are doing on the calculation.
Q245 Chair: Picking up Nigel Mills’ point earlier, a woman we met on Monday has equal care of her son with his father. Both parents have similar financial and housing situations, but because the father had managed to become the child benefit recipient, the mother had to pay him maintenance. Given that it is completely equal care, it is hard to see how that demand is justified.
Hilda Massey: The policy at the moment is that if it is absolutely 50:50 shared care, there should not be a maintenance liability. We do take overnight care into account; we reduce by one-seventh the amount due for every night that a parent has care of the child. It could be in that particular circumstance that it was not how we define shared care in terms of overnight stays. However, that is something that we are looking at as part of the review of the calculation as well. It is something that will be considered.
Q246 Debbie Abrahams: Did Australia also evaluate the impact on child poverty with the change in arrangements?
Hilda Massey: That is a very good question. I do not know the direct answer to that, but it is something that I could see if we have information on.
Q247 Chair: On that, to what extent is the Child Maintenance Service aiming to alleviate child poverty? Is that one of the aims that you have set?
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Very much so. That is one of the key aims. The welfare of children is incredibly important. It is fair to say that the CMS was set up with that key purpose. What we are talking about here is resolving conflict; we have already gone through that. I have mentioned the figure of 140,000 children taken out of poverty. Obviously it depends on how you define poverty and that is challenging. It is a very fair point, and the answer is yes to that.
Q248 Siobhan Baillie: We had heard evidence previously that it was not a strategic aim, not a definitive strategic aim. That is my recollection of the evidence that we heard.
Hilda Massey: To clarify, alleviating poverty is not the primary purpose of the Child Maintenance Service or the child maintenance policy, because it is a policy that applies to all separated families. However, it is clearly something that can have an impact on child poverty, as we have discussed. It is important, but it was not one of the primary aims that was set out when the scheme was introduced in 2012. That was very much more about increasing effective arrangements across the board, encouraging more parents to take responsibility through family-based arrangements, and for the Child Maintenance Service itself not to be a default but to be there as a safety net should people be unable to make those arrangements for themselves. However, obviously paying maintenance does have a very positive impact for people on low incomes.
David Linden: A brief supplementary question to that. It would be very welcome if the DWP was looking to reduce child poverty via these means, but I would be intrigued to know how it would measure that. Perhaps the Department could furnish the Committee with the metrics by which it benchmarks the information.
Chair: You are asking for the data?
David Linden: Yes. If that is something that it works towards, it would be interesting for us to see how the Department monitors how it is getting towards that.
Q249 Chair: That would be interesting to see. Can I pick up a couple of operational points? One of the things that we were told on Monday is that when people ring up the Child Maintenance Service it is quite common for them to be holding on for an hour before they get through. Is that a common experience?
Arlene Sugden: The data that I have every day does not tell me that that is a common experience. In December’s data the average wait time to get through is between 10 to 15 minutes. There have been a few instances when our customer is transferred from one level to the next where we have seen some system issues and calls have got trapped. However, it is not the norm. We have seen a few instances, and we are investigating that with our telephony provider as to how that is able to happen because we have had that customer feedback, but I have no data to say that that is happening regularly. It seems to be a bit of a glitch in the system where some customers are waiting, caught between one level to the next. The vast majority of calls will go straight through to a colleague and bypass the first entry into the service. If we have marked the record as, “We want to speak to you,” their call will go straight through to a caseworker where that case is owned, largely in an arrears situation.
Q250 Chair: When you have a dedicated caseworker, you will ring up the number?
Arlene Sugden: It will go straight to that.
Chair: You will wait for 10 or 15 minutes, whatever the average time is, but your call will go direct to your own caseworker, or will it go to somebody who will then put you through to your caseworker?
Arlene Sugden: When we change the models, the call will go straight through to the case manager. We cannot assume that that colleague will always be there, but that team would pick that call up so that it stays within the case-owning team. That is the model that we are moving to. Currently it is a two-stage model. The majority of calls go through where we have marked the record that we want to speak to someone, largely in an arrears situation, so that that parent, whether it is a receiving or a paying, is not waiting to get in. They go straight through to a colleague who is dealing with that case. For customers where that is not the situation, they go through to what we say is a first tier. That is a 10 to 15-minute wait time. It is faster if you are going straight through to a colleague.
Q251 Chair: The system will recognise the number of the person calling, is that how it works, and will direct you accordingly?
Arlene Sugden: Yes, it recognises the customer account number. Not the telephone number, the customer account number that you would enter as you enter the service. It identifies the customer’s account number and says, “This is a customer who we want to speak to in an arrears situation,” and the call will go straight through to that colleague who is dealing with that case.
Q252 Chair: I have not tried calling, but if you ring you are asked to put in an account number, are you, with your phone?
Arlene Sugden: You are, yes.
Q253 Chair: I see, thank you. Last point. We were told, again on Monday, of some technical difficulties with the online portal. People said that they had put messages in, and they seemed to disappear and the order in which they appeared seem to vary. Have there been some technical problems with the portal along those lines?
Arlene Sugden: We do not have an online messaging service at the moment. It was a service that we introduced during Covid to help us protect getting on with casework. We were allowing customers to send us messages on the online portal. It was a temporary service. As you can imagine, when you make it that easy 24/7, customers message regularly. We could not handle that demand. Therefore, it was a temporary measure that we introduced, a self-service messaging service.
It proved very useful to customers and to us because we could message back, but it is not a service that we want to open up and just leave that there. We have shut that down for the time being and what we are looking at is in each different reason for contact, what is the right way to open up different contact measures. In some cases we may offer an online messaging service and in other cases we would say, “You need to contact us by phone.”
Q254 Chair: People cannot e-mail you, can they?
Arlene Sugden: No, not at the moment.
Q255 Chair: It seems quite difficult for people to get the information through. All they can do is ring typically, is it?
Arlene Sugden: Or write. Lots of people do write. You can send us mail, effectively, and we scan that on to your record. It is not to say that that is the permanent situation. We are constantly looking at modern technology and trials of contact. We are part of a broader modernisation programme within the Department. There is a lot of new technology coming down the track as part of that modernisation programme, which we will look into at that stage.
But as much as customers welcomed self-service messaging—and we did to some extent, that we could get messages back without having to contact each other by phone—it was introduced for the time when we had a minimum service in Covid. We could not handle that level of contact. As you can imagine, you have basically opened up your doors 24/7, 365, and customers are coming in all the time. We just could not manage the contact levels.
Chair: We will look forward to hearing about future improvements in due course. That concludes our questions for this morning. Minister, thank you very much indeed. Thank you to your colleagues for joining us as well. We are very grateful for all the information that you have given to us and we will be producing a report in due course. That concludes our meeting for today.