Dave Hawkey, Sam Morfey and Sarah Lambert.

Q16 The Chair: Welcome to this meeting of the Public Services Committee in our inquiry into child maintenance. We have three witnesses today. I will start by asking them to introduce themselves.

Sam Morfey: Good morning. I am the CEO of Both Parents Matter. We are a national separated parenting charity, and we have been going for 50 years. We work to allow children to have a relationship with both parents, post separation.

Sarah Lambert: I am the head of policy and campaigns at Gingerbread, the charity for single parents.

Dave Hawkey: I am a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research Scotland. I have been working on a collaborative project with One Parent Families Scotland and Fife Gingerbread, which is separate from Gingerbread, on the Child Maintenance Service.

The Chair: Thank you very much for joining us today. I will start with the first question. I am trying to get a sense of how you think things are going at the moment and how effective they are. How effective do you think that the support for parents is? We are thinking of both the family-based arrangements and when making an arrangement through the Child Maintenance Service. There is a risk in an inquiry such as this that we hear about only the problems. We are making the assumption that, for lots of cases, it goes perfectly well. What we are asking you in this question is: overall, how effectively do you think children are looked after when they find themselves in families where these situations arise?

Sam Morfey: Our experience is mixed. To give you some context, the dads whom we deal with—it is predominantly dads, although we help mums as well—are paying parents who want to be involved in their children’s lives. They come to us for support because they want to be involved. They are very much: “We want to be involved and we want to pay”. There are dads out there who are not paying; we recognise that.

The experience is very mixed. The big issue we have—I will probably be a bit of a stuck record on this—is the affordability of the maintenance payments. Our view is that this is the key problem, with the arrears building up and issues with enforcement in order to get the money to the children who need it most. Everything has to be looked at in that context. This does seem to dominate.

The dads who come to us—it is predominantly dads—are often in a bad state. The issues they have are that, if they are going through separation, they are struggling to hold down their job; they are struggling with their mental health; and they are not seeing their children. To deal then with a Child Maintenance Service that can often come across as quite austere and severe is sometimes the final straw, almost, in many cases. It has to be looked at in that context. The predominant issue is that they feel they are treated like pariahs. They are trying to do the best for their children. They want to be involved. Once they get involved with the Child Maintenance Service, they understand the reason behind it, but it is about the actual way it is dealt with.

More particularly—this comes back to the calculation—we recognise that family-based arrangements are the best and most sustainable way forward. The issue we find is that, often, when you go on to the child maintenance website, you are quickly directed to a calculation tool. In some ways, it is a useful tool to work out what your maintenance would be; the problem is that it sometimes sets unrealistic expectations, particularly with the receiving parent, because it does not take account of the variations that you can have in maintenance. It just gives you a very up-line figure. The danger, if we are trying to go down the path of amenable family-based arrangements, is that it often sets up unrealistic expectations about what the maintenance could be and sets parents into a conflict situation. I imagine that we will come on to—

The Chair: We have two questions looking at those issues so we will not go too far down that road at the moment.

Sam Morfey: I think that that tool does not work as well as it could do in terms of allowing parents to come to a family-based arrangement.

Sarah Lambert: From our perspective, the support available in getting a successful maintenance arrangement simply is not working right now. For those who use the collect and pay part of the CMS, the latest statistics around that were published yesterday; every quarter, these statistics are published. We see the same thing time and again: under half of the people using that service are getting over 90% of what they should be getting, and a third are consistently getting nothing at all.

Gingerbread recently published some new research where we talked to both paying and receiving parents. As part of that, we found that, of those who have either no arrangement at all or a private arrangement, the vast majority are not happy with the situation they are in or the arrangement that exists. That recent survey also showed that 57% of parents with care who had any sort of arrangement were consistently recovering the full amount that they should be recovering. Across the system, receiving parents are not getting the money they should be getting. As a result, we see significantly higher levels of poverty among single parents. We see that there is a priority for government here in looking at that as part of their forthcoming child poverty strategy.

I also want to mention support within the system; we will come on to that in a bit more detail, I think.

The Chair: We will come to that, yes—just hang on to that because I want to address that particular issue after we have done the first round, if that is okay with you. Dave, what are your initial reactions?

Dave Hawkey: Different parents have different circumstances and different routes through to child maintenance, and they face different levels of barriers. Part of our project in Fife has been to employ a caseworker who has been running a test and learn pilot, working with parents. She has found that, generally, there is a lack of confidence in signposting people towards child maintenance and a miasma of myths and misinformation around the system.

Thinking about the different circumstances that parents find themselves in, broadly, her work is broken down. Around 60% of parents are in what she describes as the primary category; this is parents who are supported with basic advice and signposting to help start their child maintenance journey. About 20% have more intermediate levels of need; this is the support that could be wrapped up into a broader package of financial inclusion. Then there is the final 20%, where the cases are quite complex with long-term needs; in the current system, they require dedicated casework support to help them navigate a confusing and difficult system.

Q17 The Chair: I want to come back to the question of other organisations. How easy is it to link into other support organisations, such as family hubs? The Government are doing lots of trials on that at the moment; it is quite an issue following various previous reports. I am not sure, from what we have heard so far, that there is any connection between what the Government are doing in child maintenance support and where they could get help in the statutory system. I realise that they come to organisations such as yours for help but they may sometimes miss out on that. Should it be more possible to connect people to structures in government-funded services that will help them in times like this? Sarah, do you want to start, because you were half way down this route to begin with?

Sarah Lambert: Yes. You heard from officials last week, I think, that the CMS is quite insular; it does not reach out and have those relationships. Those officials talked about having plans to talk to the family hubs, but it is not something that they are progressing with at the moment.

In the Fife Gingerbread pilot that Dave talked about, one of the interesting things in looking at some of it was the real lack of confidence in the wider system, whether that is statutory or non-statutory services. You may be used to advising people about their finances and social security but a lot of those people do not have the confidence to advise people about the CMS also. We recently had a meeting with the wider poverty and social security sector. This was something that they said had changed from the CSA, in that the way in which social security has been divorced from child maintenance—in some ways, rightly—has also meant that those services have been divorced. There is a real lack of confidence among both statutory and non-statutory services.

The Chair: Do you think that that is the cause of it, because, historically, there was a real problem in having linked the two?

Sarah Lambert: Potentially, but there was also that focus in the reform about trying to push people towards having their own private arrangements, the family-based arrangements. That has also meant that the CMS—again, the officials last week said that they do not go out and advertise themselves—does not say that it is there. Quite often, that is a real challenge.

Sam Morfey: There are definitely opportunities there with the reducing parental conflict programme, which is run through DWP; with family hubs, as you have already mentioned; and, possibly, with mediation as well. As I understand it, the mediation voucher is available only if it is connected to a family contact dispute. Whether or not there is the ability or feasibility to have mediation separately in child maintenance arrangements—normally, it is connected to a child contact dispute—if people can, through the Family Mediation Council and the other mediation bodies, be talking about maintenance much more and saying that a family-based arrangement is the way to go if it is at all possible, I think that there are other avenues where it can be promoted.

The Chair: Dave, do you want to add to anything?

Dave Hawkey: No, those responses cover it. There is a lot of scope for much better integration across services.

The Chair: Yes, that would be helpful.

Q18 Baroness Cass: I hardly need to talk data to you because you live and breathe it, obviously, but, as we know, 41% of families do not have any child maintenance arrangements; that is up 16% from 2011-12, before the 2012 reforms. It peaked in 2015 and is coming down, but that is still unacceptably high. Why do you think that has increased since the 2012 reforms, and what do you think the impact of that increase has been?

Sam Morfey: Sarah might be better placed to answer this as she does more data and research than we do. We just look at the actual experience of the parents we are dealing with; we collect data around that as well, of course.

It may well be—this is probably being optimistic—that more people are able to make their own amicable arrangements and, therefore, are not on the radar with CMS. That is probably unlikely, though. I think that it is mainly because we are often dealing with—certainly in the cases that we deal with—very soured and often toxic relationships. They may well not want to have contact with each other through the CMS, even though I understand that you can use the direct pay service without having that contact. It is mainly about hearing bad stories about the CMS, either from your own experience or from another party, in terms of the approach that it takes, which can often be quite austere, when you are at your lowest ebb. It could be hearing about the unaffordability of the calculations. I make the analogy that it is almost like a really bad tax system: if a tax system is going to work, it has to be affordable, be reasonable and be seen to be fair. The impression—quite rightly, in some circumstances—that this is a bad system to get into may well be putting people off.

Baroness Cass: Sarah, you touched on the fact that you felt that the 2012 reforms were supposed to drive more private arrangements. What do you think the experience is in reality?

Sarah Lambert: We asked separated parents this very question in our most recent research. What we found was a deep lack of trust in the CMS. Just 10% said that they were happy with it. Of those who had either a private arrangement or no arrangement at all, just 10% said that they were happy with that arrangement; 29% were concerned that, if they used the CMS, that would make the coercive or abusive behaviour of the other parent worse; 24% had heard negative things about the CMS; and 24% had used the CMS in the past and found that it had not worked for them, so they did not want anything to do with it any more.

Overall, in the more qualitative stuff—this repeats some of it a little—the fear of repercussions was a big thing that came through from the parents with care, as were the poor reputation of the CMS and, in some cases, insufficient financial support. They looked at what they thought they might get, particularly where the non-resident parent was on a lower income, and thought, “Do I want to deal with this government body that nobody seems to like very much if I’m going to get only an extra £7 a week?”, or whatever it was. Similarly, where the non-resident parent had a complex financial situation, whether that was because they had different assets or they were self-employed, again, they had heard or were aware that it can sometimes be quite complex to wade through what they would be entitled to, so that was putting them off as well. People are not proactively deciding to have a private arrangement or no arrangement at all, from our findings; it is more that they do not want to go through the CMS.

Baroness Cass: Thank you. Dave, did you want to chip in on that?

Dave Hawkey: That definitely echoes what we have heard from speaking with parents on both sides, with this sense that it is a complex system. It gets described as feeling like trying to navigate an under-resourced call centre or negotiating a phone contract, instead of trying to arrange something that is quite fundamental to your child’s well-being.

One thing I would encourage the committee to think about is what the intention of those 2012 reforms were and what that might mean for how the Government should approach child maintenance in future. Those reforms were intended to reduce the costs of running the Child Maintenance Service by encouraging more families into family-based arrangements. Some of that was justified by recognising that those families who set up family-based arrangements have better outcomes, but the logic there is arguably backwards: it is the parents who have the higher level of resource and more harmonious relationship to start with who are better able to set up a family-based arrangement.

We see that what has happened with the reforms is that the DWP case load has gone down and there are more families who have family-based arrangements, but, if you think about the reduction in the DWP case load and where that has gone, it has gone about twice as much into families having no arrangement as it has gone into families having a family-based arrangement. If you try to trace through what those reforms actually were and the things that were being done—reducing the signposting; creating the gatekeeping function of the direct pay system so that people would not be able to access collect and pay directly; and the introduction of fees—these are all parts of the system that have the effect, if not the purpose, of disincentivising parents from using the service. If you are thinking about that as trying to incentivise people to go into family-based arrangements, you must acknowledge that the flip side of that is that, for an incentive to work, it has to be aversive. This means that, by building those features into the way the system works, you create the risk of exacerbating and escalating tensions and conflict. When we have polled parents, we have definitely found that: about a third of the parents we spoke to who have engaged with the CMS reported that it increases conflict.

Setting up a system that is trying to push parents out into other arrangements may have pretty deleterious consequences, both for the parents who are using the service and in terms of putting more parents off from using the service.

Baroness Cass: Thank you; that is really clear.

Q19 Lord Laming: Can we pursue further this point that has just been made? We recognise that separation is almost always a very difficult time for families. Looking at the proportion of separated families with no child maintenance arrangement, I wonder whether, from your experience, you could begin to quantify for us how much the threat of abuse features in all these arrangements, or whether it is a marginal thing.

Sam Morfey: Obviously, I am looking at it from the paying parent’s perspective and from the perspective of the dads who come to us. A common thread is that they tend to be quite empathetic people who have just had a bad relationship. The reason they come to us is because they want to see their children. They have been involved with their children beforehand; it may well be that, in many cases, they have been in a toxic and abusive relationship. The concern they have is that they are now going into a situation where they cannot see their children. They are struggling to hold down a job. They have been kicked out of their home. They may be sofa-surfing, or they have moved in with their parents or into shared accommodation. In essence, this ongoing financial abuse is another form of abuse that is being held against them. There is an opportunity, through using the calculation tool, to come up with payments that are, in many cases—certainly for the lower paid—unaffordable because of the way they are calculated. This is almost like an ongoing form of domestic abuse that they are trying to grapple with. They are trying to deal with their main concern, which is being able to have a relationship with their children, and this is in essence another way for that coercive control to continue.

Having said that, they have to be involved, of course. They have responsibilities to pay for their children, and they recognise that. It is about trying to find a way where they can step up, fulfil their responsibility to be the parent they want to be and not feel that another form of abuse—one that is almost state-sanctioned through the CMS—is being directed at them. That is their perspective; that is how they feel. You have to understand that this is the mental state that many of them are in. With the way the CMS currently operates, with the way the calculations work and with the general approach that it takes towards paying parents, as Dave talked about, it is almost like paying a phone bill in terms of the lack of empathy from the CMS. It could be properly trained to have empathy for the situation that these paying parents are going through. There is just a collective feeling that the whole system is against them; that can only mean that they are more likely to withdraw, less likely to step up to their responsibilities and less likely to fulfil the role that I think we all want them to fulfil.

Sarah Lambert: As I said previously, our research showed that, of those who have a private arrangement or no arrangement at all, around a third made that choice not to use the CMS because they thought that it would make abusive or coercive behaviour worse. What we also know is that, increasingly, those cases that the CMS deals with have domestic abuse as part of what is going on. There is no way for them to have a private arrangement, which is why they end up with the CMS.

Previously, the CMS used to have a £20 fee to apply for it. One of the key reasons you could get that fee waived was because you were a survivor—a victim—of domestic abuse. We knew at that point that over half of cases, around 56%, were being waived for that reason. The 2012 changes have meant that the case loads increasingly involve domestic abuse. Where people are not using the CMS, it is the fear of repercussions that is a significant factor in that.

Dave Hawkey: On the point about the number of people who do not have an arrangement due to domestic abuse, there is evidence in the Family Resources Survey. Looking at the data in that survey, somewhere between 15% and 20% of parents who do not receive maintenance report that one of the reasons for that is that the other parent would be violent or abusive, or that pursuing maintenance would cause friction. This is something that we can look at through the Family Resources Survey. The DWP has a richer database of maintenance arrangements, so it could probably give you a more precise figure than that.

Q20 Lord Blencathra: Mr Morfey, you are suggesting that the CMS needs to have better interpersonal relationships—have better handling, be more sympathetic, and so on—but dealing with the public ain’t easy. You do not have to be an MP for very long before you become quite cynical about some of the people who come to you. We heard from the CMS last week that some people—men in particular—hate their partner so much that they would prefer to go to prison rather than pay the money they can afford to pay. How can you be empathetic in those situations? Do you not accept that, whatever other training you could give the CMS, it will be dealing with some people who just will not like what it is doing?

Sam Morfey: Of course I understand that; I can understand why it would need to take a more forthright approach with them. I have to say that this is not the experience of the dads we deal with. The dads who we deal with want to be involved, want to make a contribution and want to pay. These are the dads who we as a society surely want to have the ability and capacity to be able to step up to their responsibilities—not to find that, on top of everything else they are dealing with, they must deal with people who treat them like pariahs. You are suggesting that some people deserve to be treated that way—I would agree with you on that—but those are not the people we represent. The parents we represent want to be involved, and these are the dads we want to step up.

There has to be some understanding that they are often going through the court system; that they are often struggling to hold down a job; and that they have these massive lists of additional expenses that they did not have before. If they are in a low pay situation, they have lost their child-related benefits. They are in a pretty desperate situation. Just to let you know, we did a survey of our members; 40% of the people who come to us have suicidal thoughts. We help them through that and try to reduce that, but that is the situation of the population who, I think, make up the majority of people who want to pay child maintenance.

When you are dealing with all those issues, some training for the CMS to recognise that those people who want to pay—yes, they do have responsibilities, they do need to pay, and this is a statutory body—often need to be helped through and be encouraged to make that contribution would be helpful. They need to recognise that this is their opportunity with a fairer system. There are more fundamental issues than how you deal with someone on the phone—the calculation being the main one—but, ancillary to that, training in the way they deal with people, recognising that they are human beings going through very tough circumstances, would help in many cases.

Q21 Lord Mott: Thank you for everything you have said so far. I was struck, Sam, by your use of the word “affordability”. That has come through quite a bit. My first question is around the calculation. How far does the way in which the Child Maintenance Service calculates maintenance levels reflect the realities of modern family structures, such as co-parenting or multi-income families?

Sam Morfey: It is very much based on the traditional model where the dad goes out to work and has all the money and resources while the mum stays at home and has the main caring responsibilities. Since we have been in operation—it is 50 years—good things have happened. The father is stepping up and playing more of a caregiving role, and wants to be more involved in the raising of his children. The mother has more opportunity to go out to work and is not solely expected to be the main carer. That is a very positive thing that we are in favour of.

The problem is that the Child Maintenance Service does not reflect that. The big issue for those dads who want to stay involved and to continue those caregiving responsibilities post separation, say, is that the calculation does not take account of the additional costs they have in order to fulfil that responsibility. There is some recognition of additional travel and accommodation costs, if the child has been moved away to the other end of the country, but it is absolutely minimal. It does not even touch the surface of the additional costs that they have to deal with. Contact centre costs do not come into it. Then you add on the fact that it is based purely on the paying parent’s income when, in many cases, the receiving parent is earning more. You have probably all seen the Centre for Social Justice’s report. Young women are earning more than young men. The traditional idea that it is the man who earns all the money clearly—and thankfully—no longer applies.

There has to be recognition of the ability and assets of the receiving parent, and there has to be more recognition of the additional costs for those paying parents who want to stay in contact. Their costs go through the roof. They lose all their child benefit through social security. If you have a system that, in many cases, penalises them for wanting to stay in contact because the additional costs become too much, you can look at that and say, “This is a calculation that’s no longer fit for purpose where we have”—thankfully—“much more caregiving and sharing of the care between both parents”.

Sarah Lambert: I want to challenge a bit the idea that single parents have lots of money, given that we know that single parents are almost twice as likely to live in poverty as couple households. It is important to recognise that.

On the calculation, what we hear from parents with care is that there is a real challenge around the way in which assets and non-earned income is taken into account; we heard a bit about that from the officials last week. There have been some positive moves from the CMS. It had plans to be able to calculate unearned income as part of the initial assessment. At the moment, you have to go through a variation request. You have to go back to the CMS; given the levels of frustration that people have in terms of contacting the CMS and being on the phone for hours on end to try to get that to happen, it is important that that change does happen. This is a key thing that the CMS is ready to set out in terms of how it would happen; it is just that it has not taken that forward yet.

Self-employment is another area that we hear is often problematic in terms of the calculation. It is possible for the non-resident parent to use self-employment as a way to hide income or declare income in different ways, which means that the receiving parent will not get the full amount they should be getting. Those are the key challenges we hear from parents with care; in fact, almost half of parents with care reported that assets were not included in the maintenance calculation. Sometimes, the CMS’s rigid approach in calculating maintenance payments did not account for some complexities, and going backwards and forwards to the CMS can be challenging.

This morning, I had an email from somebody who was trying to get the assets of their ex taken into account. They had sent a screenshot through the digital system to show his limited company. It had been rejected on the basis that she had not given any evidence, when she had given the evidence. She rang up and was on the phone for hours; she was then told that she needed to raise something else through the digital system again. It is a complex system. It also goes against what some of the officials were saying last week about parents themselves not having to give evidence; there is a bit on the digital site where you can upload that evidence. We hear regularly that there is a focus and an ask from the CMS for those receiving parents to show evidence of extra income. When we have cases where there are significant levels of domestic abuse, it can be really challenging for the receiving parents.

Non-resident parents in our survey also showed challenges around where their salaries were not properly accounted for. Dave might have a bit more to say about that and the research that they have done around your income having to change by 25% before the calculation can be redone in-year. That is a challenge we hear about from receiving parents.

Dave Hawkey: To respond a bit to the framing of this question, in terms of the realities of the structure of income across families, what Sam said—that we have moved to greater gender equality—is true, but we have not gone all the way. If you look at couples who have children, it is characteristic to see that one parent, at the point when they have children, takes a step back from the labour market while the other increases their earnings. There is a real characteristic division of labour within families across the UK, where one parent is spending more of their time and energy caring for and nurturing the children while the other parent is spending more time out in the labour market earning money, which is what supports the family. Clearly, when parents separate and the children are predominantly with one of those parents, that need for care and nurture does not go away. You are left with a situation where, in a family with just one adult looking after the children, generally, that will be the lower income parent.

We have considered in our research the case for reforming the formula to try to take both parents’ incomes into account. The conclusion we are heading towards is that, clearly, there will be some cases where the parent with care has a higher income than the paying parent, but they are relatively rare. So the costs and complexity of creating this new system, where the net result of it would, in the vast majority of cases, continue to be the non-resident parent paying money over to the parent with care, probably does not justify reopening the formula in that way.

Q22 Lord Mott: Thank you for that. In terms of the calculation, and certainly the online tool, what changes would you look to make to that? It feels to me as though the online tool is quite rigid. There are certain things you put in; obviously, you can put salary in. I feel that a slightly more in-depth calculator, where you could put different salary types in, would help this, and perhaps that affordability check may not scare off non-resident parents when they are looking to set that.

I also wonder whether there is an argument or certainly a discussion to be had around a child maintenance payment being one thing and how much time you spend with your children as a non-resident parent being quite a different thing. Again, it feels to me as though the online tool tries to bolt those two together—whether my child spends one, two or five nights a week with me is the direction of the calculation. In fact, the calculation is one thing and the time you spend with your children as a parent is quite another. What changes would you like to see in the way that is calculated and the access that parents have to that system in the early days so that—and I think that a number of you have mentioned this—it does not scare parents off straight away and they say, “We will just completely disengage from this”?

Sarah Lambert: There was a proposal in the most recent consultation by the DWP to make that online tool a lot better and to look at the possibilities of matching it up with government-verified sources of income. On some of the challenges that Sam was highlighting around some of the other areas when you go through the calculation—whether it takes into account if you have other children to look after and that kind of thing—it was looking to make that tool more sophisticated and that would be something we would definitely support.

Sam Morfey: The problem is that the tool is dealing with the calculation as it is so the problems of the calculation will feed into the tool whichever way you design it. But the tool does not recognise the potential variation in the costs of having contact with your child. Maybe that could be built into the calculation.

The other thing it does not recognise is that there is this slight—and you would have to be an expert in this area to know about this—difference between 50/50 care and equal shared care. Under the child maintenance system we have something called equal shared care, where you are genuinely sharing all the decision-making and it is not just about time. In those circumstances, maintenance is not payable if it is genuine. The calculation tool does not recognise that. It goes straight into the 50/50 calculation, which means that if you are the non-resident parent you are still paying maintenance to the resident parent.

It is also the messaging around it. As I understand it, under the previous child maintenance options there were leaflets saying, “This might not be the best tool for you. This might not come up with the best realistic calculation in your particular circumstances”. Maybe there needs to be a caveat within the calculation tool which says, “This might not be appropriate in your circumstances”. I understand that there were these other leaflets that talked about sharing care not having to be financial. If it is financial, then those regular payments might not always be realistic. They have to be realistic and they have to be reasonable. Financial help can be provided through other means like paying off the mobile phone bill or buying the school uniform or the football kit. There are other ways that both parents can work together.

If there is that messaging together with those tweaks to the tool, then that will hopefully encourage more people to come to their own arrangements and to use the tool as part of that.

Sarah Lambert: Those two things should absolutely be separate. Contact with your children and the money you pay through child maintenance are entirely separate processes and should not be confused. I think that is sometimes where issues arise in conflict between separated parents as well.

Dave Hawkey: One of the issues that we have run into when speaking with parents is that the formula, although how it works is laid out, the reasoning behind it can be difficult to understand. That particularly applies where the lower income end protections against payments being unaffordable reside. Those have been set in legislation and they have not uprated with inflation. It means there are some quite peculiar dynamics. If you were to have uprated those by inflation, then some parents would be paying more and some parents would be paying less because of the strange way that that formula is implemented.

As part of the DWP review of the formula, one of the things that it should be doing is spelling out very clearly for each step of the formula what the rationale and reasoning is and keeping that live so that, as circumstances and the economy change, the formula updates to reflect that and remains a principles-based formula.

The Chair: Lord Bradley, you might want to declare your interests at the start of your comments.

Q23 Lord Bradley: I have no interests to declare. Apologies for having had to leave the meeting briefly. If you have already answered this question, just refer me to what you have already said.

There is a theme that runs through this about the increased use of technology making it more sensitive but still remote, particularly for domestic abuse cases. We have heard from officials that their drive is to increase and improve technology. Is there a case to look more carefully at the opportunities for more face-to-face interviews and discussions in appropriate settings for people who may be suffering from, say, domestic abuse, or even giving evidence of support on the calculation of the income, so that there is a more personal relationship with a caseworker rather than just being at the end of a telephone as has been described?

Sarah Lambert: It is not something that has come up necessarily from the parents we speak to. The idea of having a more personal relationship with a caseworker certainly has and the idea of being able to have a named caseworker who you speak to consistently is something we would definitely recommend. For lots of people, particularly when you are a victim survivor of domestic abuse, having to tell your story over and over again is retraumatising. It slows everything down as well. If someone is much more familiar with your case, they can understand what has happened before and where payments have not been made. Otherwise you are starting all over again and it delays enforcement issues and everything else.

The digital stuff is interesting, because we hear that it is not working very well at the moment. People are still having to use the phone in a lot of cases and waiting hours on the phone to get someone to speak to. Potentially, there is a case for more face-to-face support and I can definitely see the benefits of that, but there is a real need to improve what the digital service does. That came up consistently in our research. There was not necessarily a paper trail. You would speak to somebody on the phone, go on to your case online and there was not necessarily a recording of what was said. Then you get a letter that says something different to what you thought, and then you get another letter that is dated the same day that says something completely different. Trying to follow that trail through and understand what the current situation is without spending another two hours waiting on the phone is a real challenge.

There is a real case for proper improvements to the digital service. It is not something we have explored necessarily, but I can see the benefits of that face-to-face support as well.

Q24 Lord Shipley: This has been very interesting and helpful so far. I will move us on now to enforcement and the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service in enforcing child maintenance agreements. How do you think that could be improved? In the context of the current consultation—which is completed but on which we are expecting some forthcoming reforms, such as changes to the direct pay system or the introduction of administrative liability orders—what do you think of the CMS and enforcement?

Sam Morfey: A proper enforcement regime needs to be in place and we would support that. I can understand each of the proposals that have been put forward. I come back to this basic issue that, if there is a parent who can pay and will not and is evading their responsibilities, clearly the strongest enforcement must be possible in those circumstances.

The problem we have is that 40% of the people in the system are below the income tax threshold and 58% of the people on collect and pay are below the income tax threshold. The vast majority of people are in a position of desperate unaffordability with the calculations. I am not saying anything that has not already been said by the Public Accounts Committee in 2022 and the Social Security Advisory Committee a couple of years earlier. They are saying that the big problem here is that you can have all the enforcement in the world but, if you have a system where the vast majority of people just cannot afford to make the contribution and see the system as unfair and unaffordable, then all your attempts to improve enforcement, which is something we would support, will always be hitting the buffers the whole time. I am not trying to dismiss the importance of improving enforcement, but it goes hand in hand with and cannot be separated from the problems that are causing the arrears to go up in the first place.

I think that it is totally appropriate in circumstances where people can afford to pay. I would ask the CMS to look again at something that was done with the CSA where, if it is struggling with a parent who cannot make the entire payment, it looks at the possibility of part payment. Surely some money is better than no money, rather than going down this route where you just hit this buffer where the CMS is trying to do everything to enforce a difficult situation. If part payment could be brought back into the system and if it can get more money to the children and to those households, it surely has to be a good thing.

Sarah Lambert: What we hear from parents with care is a reluctance from the CMS to take forward some of the enforcement powers it does have. It has quite a wide-ranging level of enforcement powers, yet in our survey 61% of parents reported that the CMS was reluctant to use them.

One of the big challenges is that, when you are on direct pay, if there are missed payments you have to start reporting those to the CMS and then get the case moved to collect and pay. We support the reforms proposed in the recent consultation in principle, which would effectively mean that all cases are collect and pay. That would allow the CMS to properly monitor who is paying and who is not and then be able to put those enforcement measures in place where payments are not being made. At the moment, we see massive delays in the movement over to collect and pay. Quite often we see a bit of ping-pong backwards and forwards between the two. When they are on collect and pay, we are much more able to see who is paying and who is not.

We also see that arrears are growing but, for the last quarter that we saw the stats for, despite the fact that £27.5 million was unpaid there was only one prison sentence. There were no passport confiscations and one driving disqualification. Some of those harsher measures are not being used, and even some of the lower-down measures such as using deduction orders—taking money directly from bank accounts—are not used as widely as they could be.

Lord Shipley: If the harsher measures are not being used, are you advocating that they should be or do you think that it is a reflection of the fact that perhaps those who might serve the enforcement are doubtful about the grounds?

Sarah Lambert: I think that it is demonstrative of the fact that you have people who are persistently not paying. These powers have been put in place for the CMS to follow them up and, despite the persistent non-paying, it is still not using those powers.

Dave Hawkey: I would echo that from our experience. This relates to some of the things that we have been speaking about on the extent to which the CMS is adequately resourced. That feeds through to its capacity to take forward enforcement action.

In relation to liability orders, people have told us that, while that does mean that enforcement action can be taken and while those orders can be put in place quickly, it is generally not seen to be having much effect on the CMS taking enforcement action, with resident parents having to chase that up. I think that reflects a lack of resource within that system.

Lord Shipley: Thank you, that is helpful. In one sense, the evidence we are getting is quite negative. It is all the problems—which we asked you for, and we have received that. When you have a functional CMS arrangement, one that works, what does it look like and why does it work?

Sam Morfey: I come back to the analogy with the tax system. If it is seen to be reasonable, fair and affordable, then people are more likely to go along with it. The problem I find with our dads is that if there is any resistance to paying it is because, “I am not seeing the child. She has been so mean to me. She is stopping me seeing my child for absolutely no reason. Now they are asking me to pay money when I am paying all this other money towards the household, and child maintenance in a very brusque way is coming after me”. If they are functioning in an amicable relationship, both working together, making a positive contribution and recognising the role that both parents are playing, clearly that will be a better situation for child maintenance.

These things have to be seen in the round. I agree with Sarah. You do have to keep child maintenance and child arrangements separate, but inevitably they become intertwined and a bad situation on one hand will often toxify the other side.

Sarah Lambert: The key for the parents we talk to is being able to receive consistent payments that they can rely on. We know that single-parent households are more than twice as likely to be in poverty as couple households. Quite often we hear from parents that they will not necessarily incorporate the child maintenance into their monthly planning because they are not guaranteed to get it. They do not think that they will necessarily get it. The important thing for single parents is that they are consistently receiving it.

I did hear someone say that, during Covid when they got the automatic uplift in universal credit, that helped because there was an additional bit of money coming into the household. There was the £7 coming in and that was really helpful for getting some consistency. We believe that the non-resident parent should be paying their fair share and if they are high income they should be contributing in that way, but the consistency of payments is very important.

Dave Hawkey: One response to this is to think what a well-functioning child maintenance service would do, not necessarily what an effective arrangement would be. The goal here should be to recognise that there are parents who, when they are separating, go through a difficult period and there may well be conflict, and the Child Maintenance Service should be part of helping to defuse that conflict and reach an arrangement. At the moment what we see is that, because of the systems of incentives baked into it and the lack of care that Sarah has been talking about in the ways in which parents are treated, it can be an accelerant to conflict. Trying to think about a better child maintenance service to help the cases that might start off as difficult cases to become less difficult would be a priority.

On the role of child maintenance in alleviating poverty, I think that is an important consequence that child maintenance payments can have. It is clearly a reason, as the Government are developing their child poverty strategy, for why they should be thinking about how the Child Maintenance Service can be doing more to make sure that more parents manage to reach arrangements. Within that, we also need to be conscious of some of the things that Sam has been saying about affordability, particularly because the group of non-resident parents who are not paying maintenance do skew to the bottom end of the income distribution. We need to be clear-eyed that, if we are successful in expanding the number of families who have a successful arrangement in place, the anti-poverty impact will be important but it might be less than what we see with the parents who currently have an arrangement.

Baroness Cass: What is coming across to me is that, unsurprisingly, you are seeing very different cohorts of parents. There is a huge spectrum, from what Lord Blencathra described as those almost aggressively not wishing to pay in a punitive way, through to those who may be evasive about income and all those issues, through to intent to pay but inability to manage it or manage it in a consistent way. Then there are those who are happily paying and it is all working seamlessly. I get the impression, not wanting to put words in your mouth, that you feel that the system lacks nuance to manage in a differential way according to the intent of the non-resident paying parent. Is that a fair comment?

Sam Morfey: I totally accept that it is a difficult environment for the Government and for agencies to be working in. Of course, if resources are stretched, which they are, then having the resources to have that nuance will be stretched. There are fundamental things. I am sorry to keep coming back to this issue of affordability, but a lot of the problems come from that. In trying to grapple with these different circumstances, a lot of problems could be alleviated by having a system that both the paying parent and the receiving parent are happy with. Even within that, there will always be variations and that spectrum, but a large part of the problem of trying to deal with these terribly intractable and difficult situations would be alleviated to some extent if things that are within the control of the CMS were dealt with, and the calculation is one of them.

Sarah Lambert: What you say points to the importance of better-trained staff and the real need for a much more personalised caseworker system. If you had somebody who was regularly speaking to the same people, they would get that nuance of who they were speaking to and what is happening on both sides to be able to make those decisions more fairly.

Q25 Baroness Coffey: Mr Morfey, you mentioned how few people are paying income tax, so clearly that suggests they are not working, and that is a high proportion. I would be interested to hear from all three of you as to what you think would happen if they became an active cohort for DWP to put into intensive work search. Ultimately, this is about tackling children not having a lot of money to live on, so I want to get a sense of that.

My second question is a bit broader. What is your experience of ICE? Sixty per cent of the cases it investigated in terms of complaints against DWP were held up, but even then that is fewer than 500 cases. I wanted to get a feel for whether ICE is fit for purpose.

I do not think that I have any declarations of interest.

Sam Morfey: Sorry, I missed the first part. You said if the DWP put them into—

Baroness Coffey: The majority of people in difficulty do not seem to be working or are not working a lot. Should they proactively be put into the intensive work search programme by DWP to try to boost the amount of money or the affordability for the children? I am conscious that people fear that could lead to conflict, but I would be interested in your thoughts.

Sam Morfey: Philosophically, that is something that we would support. It is all part of being a responsible parent. If you want to be the good role model for your child, if you are contributing to society, having a job, going out to work and earning a salary, that is a good role model for any child. From that perspective, we would support it.

It would have to be looked at as to how it interacts with universal credit. At that lower-paid level, if you are on the basic rate—I think the Public Accounts Committee looked at this—or on a low salary of £200 a week, on the collect and pay system, which might always be relevant going forward, once you start working, because of the tapering off of universal credit combined with the loss of benefit when you are within the system and paying on the formula, you actually have a marginal tax rate of somewhere between 80% and 95%, which is far higher than the general population at that level.

Philosophically, I would support that, but how that interacts with the social security system has to be looked at. At the moment, there is a disincentive to work, which is even stronger if you are a separated parent. You are treated not as a parent but as a single adult like anyone else, with all the contact costs that I talked about. That loss of universal credit at the lower end means that work in those circumstances does not pay.

Sarah Lambert: It is not something that we have thought about a great deal. I can see the attractions of trying to encourage the non-resident parents who are not in work to find work. It is not something that we have really looked at or considered.

Dave Hawkey: I am not quite sure how the proposal would work and what the sanction would be, or whether this is about trying to provide more support for non-resident parents to overcome some of the barriers that they might face to work.

I would underscore that trying to integrate the thinking about how child maintenance works with the child poverty strategy and thinking about how social security works will be really important. We need to recognise that there are some cases where there may well be money within the separated family and where a better child maintenance arrangement would alleviate that child poverty or child poverty risk, but there are also many cases where that may well not be the case. If the strategy is recognising, as Sarah was saying, the high rates of child poverty where children live with one adult, there is a case for thinking more holistically and broadly about that, and for thinking about the role of universal credit and the levels that it has been set at as paying a contribution to reducing that rate of child poverty.

Baroness Coffey: Can I have your views on ICE?

Dave Hawkey: I am not familiar with it. I am not quite sure. Was it NICE or ICE?

Baroness Coffey: ICE, the Independent Case Examiner.

Dave Hawkey: Sorry, that is not something that I have looked at in my research.

Sarah Lambert: We might have some other things I can send through. I do not have anything immediate to mind.

The Chair: If you do find anything on reflection, we would be more than happy to receive it.

Q26 Lord Prentis of Leeds: My question comes from something that Lord Shipley was talking about. Throughout this morning you have made some very sobering comments about the service. Sarah, I think that you referred to it being insular and with a poor reputation. Sam, if I remember rightly, you said it was a bad system. Dave, you talked about it being a disincentive to pushing people into family-friendly arrangements. These are all things that we will look at as a committee, but we have to make recommendations. Pulling those threads together, what recommendations should this committee make to the Government?

The Chair: We might limit you to two each.

Lord Prentis of Leeds: Yes. What are the main ones?

Sarah Lambert: For parents with care, one of the real issues around that lack of trust is enforcement, so it would be any measures that would improve enforcement, whether that is an entire movement over to collect and pay—because that certainly would speed things up—or looking at other ways to make sure that the assessment is done initially.

The other key one that comes up time and time again for us is that named caseworker. Having someone you can talk to who you know knows your case so that you do not have to explain yourself over and over again would help with enforcement but it would also help with the overall experience of the service and increase that trust.

Sam Morfey: For me it would be to get on with the review of the calculation. I understand that is going on. It is fundamental that that review is properly done. It needs to be a system that is fair and affordable, for both the parents and the Government, and is seen to be fair as well. That calculation is at the heart of it. This is not just me saying this; it has been recognised for a number of years.

It also has to be part of a coherent cross-departmental look at how we deal with children of separated parents. It interacts with the social security system. It also interacts with the court system and we are in favour of a lot of the initiatives that are going through to try to keep people out of court. I think that is a good thing. It has to be seen as an holistic whole.

I am throwing this one out there: this is not for this committee, but it would be good if there was a Minister or an agency within the Government, whether that is cross-departmental or cross-agency, looking at the welfare of children of separated parents. At the moment, when parents separate, once they get into court they come under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice, but until that point there are a number of different ministries that are touched upon. If there was one agency or person—it could be cross-departmental—focused on looking at issues of welfare with separated parents and working across departments, that would aid this holistic policy that I think we all want to see.

Dave Hawkey: Those are all very good recommendations. One to add is something that we have circled around a few times in this discussion: the training and resource within the Child Maintenance Service and making sure that case handlers are able to deal with parents in an appropriate way and have full command of the system, particularly when it gets into complex cases, making sure that parents have the support they need in order to navigate that system.

Q27 Lord Blencathra: I hope you can be brief with this because it is a simple question. Have you any views on the formula? As you were talking, I have been looking through the latest regulations. There are about 50 sections, and when the civil servants have to take into account the historic income rate, the current income rate, the flat rate, the self-employed rate, and then apply a formula that makes Einstein’s look simple to my mind, how on earth can they be expected to operate that and families to understand it? Have you any views on simplification or is that just wishful thinking?

Sarah Lambert: The main thing that parents talk to us about is the additional assets being taken into account, and I guess that is a bit about having clarity on the different elements and things that are incorporated into the calculation. Where there is unearned income and where there is self-employment, that is usually the issue that comes up for us when we talk to parents about the calculation.

Lord Blencathra: There is possibly an error in the formula, or it needs to be tweaked to take that into account.

Sarah Lambert: Yes.

Sam Morfey: There are either tweaks or there is complete overhaul. In an ideal system, you would look at sharing of costs and sharing of income. You would set out to have a basic support allowance: what is the basic amount that each parent needs to have a dignified life and to be able to contribute to their child? Then you would have a set formula, a very basic rate, above that. That would be the ideal situation. You would also look at the costs of bringing up a child and each parent’s ability to pay and the amount of care that they are putting in to come up with a formula. That would be the ideal situation, but that is obviously longer term.

Short term, I would probably do away with the reduced rate. Those thresholds have not been changed since 1998 when they were put forward and they are no longer applicable. If you look at the rises in income, national minimum wage and social security benefits, they are completely outdated in terms of what the level is at the lower end. That can be done away with.

I would look at the situation of the resident parent, but my main thing is that it needs to be simplified by looking at what is a basic standard of living where both parents can live in dignity, and then looking at a simplified formula above that. If you are the non-resident parent, the costs of staying in contact need to be properly taken into account because we want to incentivise people to step up to their responsibilities. We want to incentivise them to be involved with their children. With the system at the moment, those costs, whether it is the additional legal costs, contact centre costs or additional costs of travel and accommodation, are not taken into account and it is acting as a disincentive. We surely want a different system.

Dave Hawkey: As I mentioned earlier, it would be making sure that the principles that underlie the formula are set out clearly, and it being kept up to date. As Sam was saying, those thresholds are very dated now.

Thinking about the income that families need to have a decent standard of living is important, but that should be there as a general principle across all the support that the Government give to families. That should also be something that informs how social security works, because not all single parents have the other parent available—they may have died, for example—so that question about a minimum standard that people should expect when they live in the UK through a combination of social security and work should inform more broadly the approach to child poverty.

Q28 The Chair: I hope that this will have a yes or no answer. Is there a difference of quality in the system depending on which office you go to and which area you are in? People have different experiences, so is that partly the office and the person they speak to? I was thinking of some sort of recommendation from us about supporting the staff within the agency in terms of development and enhancing their skills. Is there a difference in quality depending on who you get to speak to?

Sarah Lambert: People tell us that they get very different experiences.

The Chair: They do. So it might go all right if you get somebody but not if you go—

Sarah Lambert: Yes, and they get told different things by different people.

The Chair: Okay. I think that we will draw this meeting to a close. Thank you very much indeed. We are very grateful for the time you have given us, which is more than the time we asked. We appreciate that and you have certainly helped us to have a better understanding of the system. Thank you very much.