Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee

Ninth Report - Child Maintenance

Public Accounts Committee HC 255 Published 22 June 2022

Report Status

Government responded

Conclusions & Recommendations

36 items (7 recs)

Source

View on Parliament website ↗

Government Response

AI assessment · 8 of 36 classified

Accepted 2

Deferred 1

Rejected 5

Recommendations

4 results

2 Rejected

The Department has displayed insufficient curiosity around the needs of some of the most vulnerable...

Recommendation

The Department has displayed insufficient curiosity around the needs of some of the most vulnerable separated families and their children. Take-up of the Department’s CMS scheme is substantially lower than it expected. An estimated 18% of separated families used the … Read more The Department has displayed insufficient curiosity around the needs of some of the most vulnerable separated families and their children. Take-up of the Department’s CMS scheme is substantially lower than it expected. An estimated 18% of separated families used the CMS scheme in 2019–20, compared to an expected 33%. As a result, there may be around 350,000 parents with caring responsibilities who do not have a child maintenance arrangement but would like one. The Department’s research shows that the lowest-income households are most likely to have no form of child maintenance arrangement. Some 39% of surveyed separated parents who were either not working or were economically inactive had no child maintenance arrangements in place, compared with only 21% of those who were working. Some ethnic groups, including Black parents, also appear less likely to use the statutory scheme but the Department has no plans to look into why this 6 Child Maintenance is the case. The Department’s customer satisfaction survey for the scheme excludes non-English speakers, meaning the views and experiences of this group are not represented. We welcome the Department’s commitment to raising awareness of its CMS scheme and other services, but we are disappointed that this had not happened sooner and are not convinced that its current approach focuses enough on why take- up is lower amongst specific groups. Recommendation: The Department should: • within one year, develop a clear action plan to assess, tackle and monitor the ‘take-up gap’ between the number of separated parents that would benefit from using its statutory CMS scheme (and other relevant support services) and those that actually use them; and • to support this, undertake more inclusive research to understand its customers and users of its service. It should ensure people who do not communicate in English are included in its research and establish why under-represented groups, such as some minority ethnic groups, seem less like Show less

Government Response Summary

The government disagrees with the recommendation, says it has improved diversity information collection, undertakes surveys in multiple languages, and sees no need for new research given the increase in demand for CMS.

HM Treasury

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4 Rejected

The Department has not taken responsibility for detecting child maintenance fraud, instead shifting this responsibility...

Recommendation

The Department has not taken responsibility for detecting child maintenance fraud, instead shifting this responsibility onto its customers. The Department asserts that it does not treat tackling child maintenance fraud, where children often suffer as the end user, with any … Read more The Department has not taken responsibility for detecting child maintenance fraud, instead shifting this responsibility onto its customers. The Department asserts that it does not treat tackling child maintenance fraud, where children often suffer as the end user, with any less enthusiasm than it does tackling fraud against the taxpayer. However, its approach does not appear to reflect this sentiment. It has not assessed the risk or actual level of fraud and error within child maintenance in the way that would be required if it was public expenditure, and its approach to fraud detection relies almost entirely on receiving parents challenging the value of maintenance assessments. This last point means that if a paying parent is notified that they are under investigation for allegedly understating their income there is a risk that they will know or suspect that their ex-partner has reported them. It would therefore be understandable that many receiving parents would be reluctant to come forward with such reports, particularly if it is not clear what the outcome will be. The Department says that, in 91% of cases, it can rely legally on historical earned- income data from HMRC and its own benefits data to assess people’s earned income and benefit status, and also plans to update legislation to include unearned income information held by HMRC in the initial calculation. Nonetheless, the Department accepts that child maintenance is still vulnerable to certain types of customer fraud and error, such as misdeclaration of personal circumstances that affect the award but are not related to income, or the 9% of cases where it cannot rely on historic tax or benefit records. Whilst we welcome a proportionate, iterative approach to tackling fraud and error, the Department’s current approach risks seriously underestimating its susceptibility to fraud and ignoring the various good reasons why parents may not raise concerns about fraud. Recommendation: The Department should take res Show less

Government Response Summary

The government disagrees with the recommendation to take responsibility for detecting child maintenance fraud, stating it already has proportionate and cost-effective controls and a fraud strategy in place.

HM Treasury

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5 Rejected

The Department is too willing to blame low levels of customer satisfaction on CMS customers...

Recommendation

The Department is too willing to blame low levels of customer satisfaction on CMS customers being difficult to please, despite its own systemic customer service failings. It is disheartening that customer satisfaction is no better now than it was under … Read more The Department is too willing to blame low levels of customer satisfaction on CMS customers being difficult to please, despite its own systemic customer service failings. It is disheartening that customer satisfaction is no better now than it was under the failed CSA and that less than half (46%) of customers report they are satisfied with the service they receive. Given that the CMS scheme was 8 Child Maintenance set-up to replace an agency whose customer service was generally considered to be diabolical, it is unacceptable that the Department has not put in place a robust method for objectively assessing whether it is providing a reasonable level of service. In explaining low levels of customer satisfaction, the Department emphasises the challenging nature of its caseload and areas where it has improved its performance, such as payment accuracy. However, CMG receives by far the most complaints, and the most upheld complaints per 1,000 customers (1.15), of any of the Department’s business areas, suggesting fundamental issues with the way it handles customers’ concerns. Despite the large number of complaints upheld, the Department is less likely to uphold complaints relating to child maintenance (around one in three are upheld) than it does for other service areas. It told us this is because of the nature of CMG’s caseload. However, child maintenance accounts for a disproportionately high share of all rejected complaints subsequently investigated and upheld (or partially upheld) by the Department’s Independent Case Examiner, suggesting that the Department may be incorrectly rejecting some complaints. Recommendation: The Department should use its digital transformation to develop performance indicators that enable it to fully understand why customer satisfaction is so low, and target improvement where data suggests there may be an underlying service issue, for example: where high numbers of complaints are upheld. The Department should also, within one year, review Ch Show less

Government Response Summary

The government disagrees, stating that the Customer Experience Directorate actively invests in reviewing cases upheld by the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) to identify and implement service improvements, and will continue to utilize existing ICE publications to inform lessons learned.

HM Treasury

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8 Rejected

The Department has repeatedly failed to achieve savings targets for the child maintenance scheme over...

Recommendation

The Department has repeatedly failed to achieve savings targets for the child maintenance scheme over the past decade and again risks overpromising on the benefits of its current transformation programme. The Department has reduced the cost to the taxpayer of … Read more

Government Response Summary

The government disagrees, stating their Transformation Programme introduces changes to improve efficiency and automation. They report performance in Annual Reports and Accounts, and regularly review services and programmes to ensure value for money.

HM Treasury

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Conclusions (1)

Observations and findings

1 Conclusion Rejected

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Department for Work & Pensions (the Department) about child maintenance in Great Britain.1 We also received and considered written evidence from individuals and organisations from within the sector.

Government Response Summary

The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation, stating that the Department for Work and Pensions (the department) has a clear interest in how child maintenance is integrated into wider government policy, and it intends to continue to discharge this working with other government departments.

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