Plans to start charging parents who need to use the new Child Maintenance Service have been passed by the UK Parliament, despite a warning from former Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay that the charges for single parents were ‘unjustified in principle’.
The new Child Maintenance Service for separated parents to support their children has opened to all new applicants.
Recent figures from the Department for Work and Pensions have shown that the vast majority of parents who use the Child Support Agency (CSA) are now paying for their children.
Following a public consultation last year, an order has been laid in Parliament to bring the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission back under direct Ministerial control as a business unit of the Department for Work and Pensions.
Plans to charge single parents to use the future CSA, including up to 12% of any maintenance collected by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission are set to be challenged by a senior Conservative Peer on the final day of the Welfare Reform Bill’s Report Stage.
The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has published findings from a 2010 survey of 2,009 separated parents using the Child Maintenance Options telephone service. The survey’s primary aim was to determine the number of children benefiting from a family-based child maintenance arrangement, following contact with the Child Maintenance Options telephone service, between July 2008 and the end of March 2010.
