Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 26
26
We asked the Department what use it was making of its enforcement powers.54 Parliament granted...
Conclusion
We asked the Department what use it was making of its enforcement powers.54 Parliament granted the Department additional enforcement powers in December 2018 and July 2019. The Department accepted that it has “a set of enforcement powers that are probably among the strongest in the world”, including the power to suspend driving licenses and passports, and in the most extreme cases prison sentences.55 Between January 2020 and September 2021 in England and Wales, the Department secured six suspended disqualifications from driving, no (immediate or suspended) passport confiscations and five immediate prison sentences.56 The Department told us that to suspend passports or driving licences it had to demonstrate to a court that the customer could pay within six months. It explained that “all sanctions are deterrents” and that this was enough in a very large number of cases as “something like 80% of these cases get settled before they go to court”..57 The Department committed to supplying us with details of the number of cases that had been settled as a result of the threat of sanction rather than the sanction having to be used.58
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
6. PAC conclusion: The Department is too slow to take effective enforcement action, leaving children without maintenance for too long and allowing child maintenance arrears to grow. 6. PAC recommendation: The Department should, within one year: • conduct operational and user research to better understand how customers progress through its collection and enforcement process, to identify any operational or legislative barriers to reducing the overall time to getting payments; and • in consultation with stakeholders, develop a strategy to tackle rising unpaid maintenance debt on its 2012 scheme, drawing on lessons learned from its experience of reducing CSA arrears, considering key barriers to compliance, such as affordability, and whether a write-off of uncollectable debt would be appropriate. 6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 6.2 The department continues to complete extensive operational insight and analysis and utilises its existing user research. This provides insight into any barriers to compliance enabling the department to identify further opportunities for improvements for customers. 6.3 As reported by the National Audit Office, the department has improved its collection and enforcement activities and the amount it collects through Collect & Pay enforcing payments has increased. The department recognises the challenges it faces in removing some of the barriers to compliance and therefore continually reviews and evolves its compliance strategy. 6.4 Through its Transformation Programme the department will be developing its use of risk and intelligence within its business processes. This will involve improving the quality and the use of data to develop and deploy both tactical solutions for improving and accelerating day to day compliance and in helping to inform and develop a more efficient organisational and process design. This will link closely with embedding sustainable arrangements that take a balanced account of the customer’s circumstances. 6.5 The department is aware that the effectiveness of its compliance strategy is heavily influenced by existing legal processes and the current dependency on third parties (such as MoJ and Bailiffs). It is currently reviewing these dependencies and will provide an implementation approach for any changes by Summer 2023. 6.6 Through its Transformation Programme, the department is reviewing its internal processes and current organisational design structure to ensure cases can be transitioned through the customer journey more efficiently. 6.7 In addition, current policy work relating to ‘Transformation’ includes the drafting of regulations to extinguish low level debt (where appropriate) and expanding the list of organisations required to comply with requests from CMS for information or evidence.