Child Maintenance Service

[whatnet]

https://todaysfamilylawyer.co.uk/cms-judicial-review-hearing-of-persistent-failure-given-green-light/

I have been watching this with keen interest 🤞🏻. It doesn’t seem to be getting much (any!) media coverage.

I suppose I am asking, Is it unreasonable to think this should be at the top of the agenda, given the impact on our future generations (and mothers)

“A legal case challenging the persistent failure of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) to take “proper or effective steps” to recover maintenance payments from absent parents, has been given the green light to go ahead to a full judicial review hearing.
The Claimants in the case – single parents who complain of persistent inefficiencies in the system and of delays in investigation and enforcement against non-resident parents – argue that the significant problems with the CMS are causing them “significant and prolonged financial difficulties” and “pushing them into poverty”. They argue that a systemic review is required, as is effective enforcement against non-resident parents.
Gingerbread, which has provided evidence for the litigation, now intends to apply to “intervene” in the case to provide additional information to the Court. Day in, day out, we hear from single parents who are being seriously let down by the system. They tell us that they are owed thousands of pounds from their child’s other parent and that all too often the CMS is failing to put enforcement action in place to recover it.
Wider evidence shows that:

• A third (36%) of children covered by Collect and Pay arrangements are not receiving a penny of the maintenance they are legally entitled to[1]
• Since 2012, when the CMS began, £512.6 million in unpaid maintenance has accumulated[2]
• If child maintenance was paid in full to all children in separated families living in poverty who currently do not receive financial support from their other parent, it would have the potential to lift 60% of them out of poverty[3].

After permission for the judicial review case was initially refused, a High Court Judge granted permission for the case to proceed at a hearing last week. We wrote to the court ahead of last week’s hearing offering updated information about the continuing flaws in the CMS system. As a result of the Court’s decision to grant permission for judicial review, the court will now consider the lawfulness of how CMS is currently operating.”

Why on earth is this not front and centre? It is mind boggling that this is not a priority for every Politician. The CSA were never fit for purpose and women and children are still suffering from their ‘administrative’ inadequacies. The crazy thing is, the CMS are even worse!

What I can’t understand is the lack of ‘joined up powers’ CMS,FIU,HMRC,HMCTS. There is no joined up working. The premise of good professional practice (to safeguard the individual- the child)…is joined up working.

Does anyone have any experience of this? Did ‘joined up working’ ever happen? Or (as in my case) were you fighting on multiple fronts, for years!… for you and your children to be let down, time and time again. (A whole other thread is required on the lack of joined up working, and the devastation this causes, and the need for legal recourse for us and our children who have suffered). Perhaps a savvy legal team could look into this. I look forward to responses.

It’s a disgrace. There should be people in jail for failing to provide financial support for their children. It astounds me that so many get to walk away and refuse responsibility.

CMS are a waste of space. The rules about CM are crap, they don't seem to work for anyone.

I agree. I get sweet fuck all from my child's father. He has told them he isn't working and living off family... this was a year ago and they still listen. One look on his public Facebook page shows he works cash in hand. Told them this. Told me I had to report it to them officially. As it is, I'm not going to shop a man who was domestically abusive. I've had to sell belongings at times just to keep a roof over our heads, worn clothes until there are more holes than there is material etc. Absolute disgrace, and I know I am far from alone. Truly feel men should be imprisoned sooner for avoiding paying, that might teach them a lesson. Let's face it, at least they'd have a valid reason not to be paying for fucks sake.

YANBU.

The USA has many faults but they really come down hard on people who try to avoid paying maintenance. Those who don't pay are denied passports and even jailed in some circumstances. That should be adopted here.

So, it appears the lack of enforcement is a major issue? The CMS/FIU have ‘powers’ they just do not use them. I am failing to understand why this is not being treated the same as tax evasion, benefit fraud, or debt. There are many legal companies that have set up purely to tackle debt, legal malpractice, injuries, claims, etc… why are we, and our children left with no support or recourse? Surely there is a claim here for constant maladministration and not following legal frameworks? Just a thought.

Its shocking CMS came about in 1991 and then 1993. Its although we are still in that era! Why isn't the money coming straight off wages? Why aren't these men expected to send in bank statements at the very least.

The scary thing is, the CMS are actually worse than CSA. We have gone backwards not forwards! Surely there is some recourse for that! Where are the legal firms that have taken on the banks or other institutions or the relatively ‘quick’ enforcement actions of HMRC or DWP for tax evasion or fraud. Why are children and mothers not protected? The impact of not receiving child maintenance (economic abuse) is hugely damaging and has life long consequences.

Still not getting a penny out of me, Gingerbread are right.

Do you mean you are still not getting a penny @Gulikitti ?

I do receive child-support, so I suppose from that perspective, I’m lucky. However, apparently somebody who is in a senior sales job has not received a pay rise in seven years. Which is nothing short of a miracle because my pay has actually doubled so what’s the hundred percent increase and I’m not even trying. So I find it particularly hard to believe that he’s not had a penny in commission that whole time.
Additionally, he runs a side gig that produces a minimum of 20,000 a year. Needless to say we don’t see if any of that.

Yanbu
Any other public body collecting the same proportion as them would be shut down. They are useless and I am angry for every RP owed money. I bet that council tax or HMRC wouldn't allow a debt of thousands never mind tens of thousands linger then ask you to write it off because the child is over 18.

@whatnet the government are only concerned when it's money they can't tax and are missing out on. Because when it's fraud and drugs they pull out all the stops! Why because this is beneficial to them.

This is exactly correct. The government are not interested as they are set up in a short sighted outlook. Can we recover money directly to our purse? Check- we will go after that. What they fail to see is the negative impact to our working mothers and future workforce. No one performs well under stress and poverty. It is ridiculously short sighted. I wonder who are the policy makers? What are their objectives? Why are enforcement actions not implemented, why is this not top of any political agenda? I’m going to try and find an article that spoke volumes to me after ‘fighting’ in the dark. Going to look for it now. It really helped me make sense of things. 🤞🏻 I can find it.

They’d receive plenty of VAT on the goods bought with the money. But you are right, it comes out of pre taxed income so in theiry tgey miss out on two lots. Parents 1’s income and maybe Parent wouldn’t have to work if in receipt. Its almost as if its all planned.

https://www.centreforsocialinjustice.org/child-maintenance-doesnt-reduce-child-poverty

Since 2011, Conservative ministers have been consistently dismissive about the relationship between child poverty and non payment of child maintenance. They have made repeated claims that child maintenance has little or no positive effect on alleviating child poverty. And they have consistently omitted the subject of child maintenance from official reports on child poverty (which, as I show, they blame on single mothers).
In March 2007 the DWP published a Summary of Research Report 405 by Christine Skinner, Jonathan Bradshaw and Jacqueline Davidson of York University, titled Child Support Policy: An international perspective.

Of fourteen countries examined, in the United Kingdom:
“A smaller proportion of non-widowed lone parents received child maintenance than in any other country. However for those receiving child maintenance the level of payment was comparatively high. Child maintenance made a comparatively small contribution to the relief of child poverty overall but if lone parents actually received child maintenance the poverty reduction achieved was much more significant, producing child poverty rates which were less than half what they would have been without child maintenance (at least in 2000). The impact of child maintenance also varied according to whether the lone parent was or was not in employment. For lone parents in employment in the UK child maintenance in 2000 could reduce child poverty by over two thirds – more than any other country except Austria, France and the Netherlands. However it was not more effective overall because comparatively few non-widowed lone parents had employment and child maintenance.”
^In February 2010, towards the end of the Labour Government, the Work and Pensions Committee published its report into The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission and the Child Support Agency’s Operational Improvement Plan.^
68. The 2006 White Paper stated that one of the principles underpinning the child maintenance system redesign was the need to tackle child poverty.
72. Improving the operation of the child maintenance system is integral to the Government’s strategy for reducing levels of child poverty. We are unhappy that the Commission’s contribution to these cross-Government targets cannot be precisely quantified. We call on the Department to establish meaningful performance indicators for the Commission to measure its contribution to efforts to combat child poverty.
In January 2011 Iain Duncan Smith wrote a letter to Dame Anne Begg, then Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, concluding that:
“Child maintenance does not, on its own, make a statistically significant contribution to lifting children out of poverty.”

The lie that non payment of child maintenance is an important contributor to child poverty appears to have originated with Nick Woodall, fraudster, fathers’ rights extremist, and favourite of Maria Miller and Iain Duncan Smith, who told the Public Bill Committee on 24 March 2011:
“Child maintenance isn’t, as it’s often popularised, a poverty issue. Child maintenance is essentially a parenting issue.”
The Work and Pensions Committee report on the Government’s proposed child maintenance reforms, published on 3 July 2011, said:
“The lack of a child maintenance agreement or failure to make due payments have severe financial consequences for families producing a devastating impact on children’s wellbeing.” (Page 3)
“Our primary concern is that all parents should accept responsibility for their children's welfare, including financial responsibility. Parents with care should receive the agreed level of child maintenance in full, on a predictable and regular basis, because unpaid maintenance or late payments can have a devastating impact on parents with care and the wellbeing of their children.” (Page 8)

On 25 January 2012 Lord Freud told the House of Lords:

“Our view is that the [Social Mobility and Child Poverty] Commission should not be involved in developing policy, and that it follows that we don’t think it should develop policy on child maintenance… Where payments are reliable and regular, child maintenance provides parents with care with a separate income stream that may improve the lives and life chances of some children in or near poverty. We have concluded that child maintenance payments are estimated to have a small, non reportable impact on the number of families living in relative income poverty as currently measured and with current data sources.”

Yet three hours earlier, in the same chamber, with Lord Freud sitting directly behind him, Lord De Mauley had told Peers:

“When money is in payment, child maintenance averages around £32 per week, tax-free, under the CSA. This is a significant financial benefit to the most vulnerable mothers.”
At £32 per week, annual child maintenance would average £1,664. It is difficult to understand how Lord Freud could argue that this is trivial and insignificant, particularly for low income families. Over the nine year lifespan of the average case, this equates to just under £15,000 - enough, for example to pay for nearly two years’ university tuition fees. It is instructive that the people behind the sabotage of the Child Support Agency are the very same people shouting about social mobility and life chances. By framing the debate, and engineering poorer life chances, they look likely to prove their own claims that the children of single mothers have worse outcomes. In my own case, I am currently owed over £18,000 - enough for two years’ university tuition. Samantha Callan and Christian Guy will be pleased to hear that my extremely bright son has decided not to go to university because he fears getting into debt. Bingo.
In July 2012 Iain Duncan Smith presented to Parliament “Supporting separated families, securing children’s futures”, which revealed that CSA cases had an average liability of £33.40 per week.
An average CSA case lasts for nine years. This was established in the débâcle over the Government’s false claim about the cost of a typical CSA case.
So the amount of child maintenance payable over the lifetime of a CSA case is £15,631.
The British Religious Right is heavily involved in “research” to show how children raised by single mothers suffer adverse outcomes in adulthood compared to children brought up by married parents. The Child Poverty Act has been repealed, and single motherhood has replaced income as an official measure of child poverty. Christian Guy, CARE Leadership Programme graduate and former Director of the Centre for Social Justice, was a member of the Social Mobility Commission.
Annual tuition fees for university are £9,000. The £15,631 payable over the lifetime of an average CSA case equates to over half of the tuition fees payable on a three year degree course. My own son has already declared that he won’t be going to university because he has such a dread of the debt he would incur. The Government has deliberately deprived hundreds of thousands of children of single mothers from receiving an average of £15,631 in order to reduce their life chances and prove that “single mothers cause poverty”.
In October 2012 the Centre for Social Justice policy report, “Forgotten Families: The vanishing agenda”, , acknowledged that:
“After a marital split, the income of women with children falls on average by more than a tenth (12 per cent), while separating fathers’ available income actually increases – by around a third (31 per cent).”
On 24 June 2015 Christian Guy’s Centre for Social Justice paper, Reforming the Child Poverty Act, urging the Government to repeal the Child Poverty Act, made it explicit that a primary aim of the repeal was to avoid the Government being subjected to judicial review if it failed to meet the target set out by law to eradicate child poverty by 2020.
In July 2015 George Osborne announced that any family which had a third child born after April 2017 would not qualify for child tax credit, which amounted to up to £2,780 a year per child.

In October 2015 Iain Duncan Smith told the Conservative Party Conference: "That’s what the limit on child tax credit for more than two children is about – bringing home to parents the reality that children cost money and if you have more kids you have to make the choices others make and not assume taxpayers money lets you avoid the consequences of such choices. That’s taking responsibility, and that’s fair.”
It is inconsistent of Iain Duncan Smith to chide couples and single mothers about the costs to the tax payer of raising children, but to deliberately engineer a situation where separated fathers do not have to pay anything to mothers towards the costs of raising their children.
In 2016, the Welfare Reform and Work Act abolished the Child Poverty Act 2010, which had been passed under the Labour Government with cross-party support. The Act removed the measure of poverty based on family income.
Mortgages and child maintenanceSome mortgage lenders refuse to take child maintenance payments into account when assessing affordability, but those that do will generally demand that they are supported by a statutory child maintenance arrangement rather than a “family based arrangement”, and will demand proof of several months of regular and full payments. Of course, this is yet another way in which the Government deliberately constrains the options of separated and divorced mothers. If mothers “put their children first” and go with “family based arrangements”, they will be discriminated against by mortgage lenders, even if fathers pay in full and on time. If mothers use the Child Maintenance Service, and fathers do not pay in full or on time - and the CMS refuses to use its enforcement powers - any income they do receive as child maintenance will be disregarded by mortgage lenders.
By reducing separated mothers’ housing options, the Government ensures that they are more likely to move into or remain in rented housing, in turn reducing their children’s life chances and social mobility. All part of the dastardly plan, naturally, to prove that the children of separated and divorced parents suffer worse adult outcomes.
Telegraph
thisismoney.co.uk
savvywoman.co.uk

https://www.centreforsocialinjustice.org/family-based-arrangements-last-longer-and-are-best-for-children

Family based arrangements last longer and are best for children
Ministers from Maria Miller onwards have persisted with the pernicious lie that “family based arrangements” are best for children, and that mothers who apply to the statutory child support system are not acting in their children’s best interests because most fathers would pay if the arrangement was voluntary and, in Christine Skinner’s parlance, “reciprocal”.
It goes without saying that separated parents who are able to remain civil and cooperative are better for children than separated parents who despise each other or who have little or no contact. Of course, it is better for children if child maintenance is resolved amicably. But the Child Support Agency was introduced in 1993 precisely because over half of separated fathers have consistently refused to pay any contribution towards their children’s upbringing.
From 1993 to 2008, mothers in receipt of welfare benefits were compelled to apply to the Child Support Agency, whether they wanted to or not. But from October 2008, mothers on benefits were free to apply to the CSA, or make private arrangements with fathers if they could, or simply go without any financial support if they could not.
In 2008 the Labour Government published <a class="break-all" href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130314011107/research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2007-2008/rrep503.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DWP Research Report 503, Relationship separation and support study, which the Coalition Government would deliberately and repeatedly misrepresent three years later in 2011. Chapter 7, the crucial section, says: “51 per cent [of parents with care with CSA cases] said making a private arrangement would cause conflict or arguments.”
On 2 December 2009 the Child Maintenance Commissioner, Stephen Geraghty, told the Work and Pensions Committee that:
“Of people in the statutory scheme, currently about 27% do not pay in a quarter, about 20% do not pay in a year and about 8% do not pay anything, but most of those, the ones who are in the statutory scheme, we do get money and that is within the period and, eventually, if people have got assets or income, we do get it. Clearly, it would be much better if we got it when it was actually due, but with the people we are talking about, that gets very difficult. In the market as a whole only about 47% of people are paying.”
It was simply a lie that most mothers used the Child Support Agency as the “default option” without trying to resolve matters amicably with fathers first.
Patrick Parkinson is a marriage-obsessed academic heavily involved with the Religious Right Australian Christian Lobby, close to Iain Duncan Smith and Samantha Callan, who was a consultant for the 2009 Centre for Social Justice family law report, “Every Family Matters”. In January 2008 The Times reported that:
“The architect of Australia’s acclaimed child maintenance system is so alarmed at Britain’s plans to overhaul the Child Support Agency that he has flown to London to voice his concern. The new system, which encourages separating couples to reach their own arrangements voluntarily, leaving a pared-down agency to deal with “hard cases”, means that many children will get far less than they deserve from their absent father, he has said. Patrick Parkinson, who designed the Australian model, said that the decision to scrap the CSA and replace it with a much smaller operation was the result of a “nervous breakdown” among senior politicians after years of technological and administrative disasters, but it was highly flawed. “There is a great dangers that child maintenance in Britain will now be seen as voluntary, that nonresident parents can decide whether or not they want to support their children,” he told The Times. “The second danger is that the resident parent, usually the mother, ends up acquiescing to the first offer made [by the father] on the grounds that at least they will get it.”
So even that arch-conservative Christian, Patrick Parkinson, was warning the Labour Government back in 2008 that encouraging separated parents to make private arrangements would lead to less financial support going to children. And even that arch-conservative Christian, Lord Mackay, a former Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, led a revolt in the House of Lords in 2012 over the proposal to charge mothers to deter them from using the statutory system. Iain Duncan Smith, Samantha Callan and Maria Miller knew their proposals would make single mothers and their children poorer.
For the extreme Religious Right led by CARE, material poverty is far less important than spiritual poverty. Fatherlessness, the overriding obsession of the Centre for Social Justice, is an affront to God. By making a generation of children poorer, they hope to set an example for future mothers - marry and stay married, or you and your children be damned. Frank Field, the Labour MP, ardent Christian, member of the Centre for Social Justice Advisory Council, and useful idiot for the British Religious Right, played a crucial role in the repeal of the Child Poverty Act 2010, with his “<a class="break-all" href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110120090156/povertyreview.independent.gov.uk/news/101203-review-poverty-life-chances.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances”, commissioned by Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Ministers from Maria Miller onwards have persisted with the pernicious lie that “family based arrangements” are best for children, and that mothers who apply to the statutory child support system are not acting in their children’s best interests because most fathers would pay if the arrangement was voluntary and, in Christine Skinner’s parlance, “reciprocal”.
It goes without saying that separated parents who are able to remain civil and cooperative are better for children than separated parents who despise each other or who have little or no contact. Of course, it is better for children if child maintenance is resolved amicably. But the Child Support Agency was introduced in 1993 precisely because over half of separated fathers have consistently refused to pay any contribution towards their children’s upbringing.
From 1993 to 2008, mothers in receipt of welfare benefits were compelled to apply to the Child Support Agency, whether they wanted to or not. But from October 2008, mothers on benefits were free to apply to the CSA, or make private arrangements with fathers if they could, or simply go without any financial support if they could not.
On 2 December 2009 the Child Maintenance Commissioner, Stephen Geraghty, told the Work and Pensions Committee that:
“Of people in the statutory scheme, currently about 27% do not pay in a quarter, about 20% do not pay in a year and about 8% do not pay anything, but most of those, the ones who are in the statutory scheme, we do get money and that is within the period and, eventually, if people have got assets or income, we do get it. Clearly, it would be much better if we got it when it was actually due, but with the people we are talking about, that gets very difficult. In the market as a whole only about 47% of people are paying.”
It was simply a lie that most mothers used the Child Support Agency as the “default option” without trying to resolve matters amicably with fathers first.
Patrick Parkinson is a marriage-obsessed academic heavily involved with the Religious Right Australian Christian Lobby, close to Iain Duncan Smith and Samantha Callan, who was a consultant for the 2009 Centre for Social Justice family law report, “Every Family Matters”. In January 2008 The Times reported that:
“The architect of Australia’s acclaimed child maintenance system is so alarmed at Britain’s plans to overhaul the Child Support Agency that he has flown to London to voice his concern. The new system, which encourages separating couples to reach their own arrangements voluntarily, leaving a pared-down agency to deal with “hard cases”, means that many children will get far less than they deserve from their absent father, he has said. Patrick Parkinson, who designed the Australian model, said that the decision to scrap the CSA and replace it with a much smaller operation was the result of a “nervous breakdown” among senior politicians after years of technological and administrative disasters, but it was highly flawed. “There is a great dangers that child maintenance in Britain will now be seen as voluntary, that nonresident parents can decide whether or not they want to support their children,” he told The Times. “The second danger is that the resident parent, usually the mother, ends up acquiescing to the first offer made [by the father] on the grounds that at least they will get it.”
So even that arch-conservative Christian, Patrick Parkinson, was warning the Labour Government back in 2008 that encouraging separated parents to make private arrangements would lead to less financial support going to children. And even that arch-conservative Christian, Lord Mackay, a former Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, led a revolt in the House of Lords in 2012 over the proposal to charge mothers to deter them from using the statutory system. Iain Duncan Smith, Samantha Callan and Maria Miller knew their proposals would make single mothers and their children poorer.
For the extreme Religious Right led by CARE, material poverty is far less important than spiritual poverty. Fatherlessness, the overriding obsession of the Centre for Social Justice, is an affront to God. By making a generation of children poorer, they hope to set an example for future mothers - marry and stay married, or you and your children be damned. Frank Field, the Labour MP, ardent Christian, member of the Centre for Social Justice Advisory Council, and useful idiot for the British Religious Right, played a crucial role in the repeal of the Child Poverty Act 2010, with his “<a class="break-all" href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110120090156/povertyreview.independent.gov.uk/news/101203-review-poverty-life-chances.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances”, commissioned by Prime Minister, David Cameron.
On 2 December 2009 the Child Maintenance Commissioner, Stephen Geraghty, told the Work and Pensions Committee that:
“Of people in the statutory scheme, currently about 27% do not pay in a quarter, about 20% do not pay in a year and about 8% do not pay anything, but most of those, the ones who are in the statutory scheme, we do get money and that is within the period and, eventually, if people have got assets or income, we do get it. Clearly, it would be much better if we got it when it was actually due, but with the people we are talking about, that gets very difficult. In the market as a whole only about 47% of people are paying.”
It was simply a lie that most mothers used the Child Support Agency as the “default option” without trying to resolve matters amicably with fathers first.
Patrick Parkinson is a marriage-obsessed academic heavily involved with the Religious Right Australian Christian Lobby, close to Iain Duncan Smith and Samantha Callan, who was a consultant for the 2009 Centre for Social Justice family law report, “Every Family Matters”. In January 2008 The Times reported that:
“The architect of Australia’s acclaimed child maintenance system is so alarmed at Britain’s plans to overhaul the Child Support Agency that he has flown to London to voice his concern. The new system, which encourages separating couples to reach their own arrangements voluntarily, leaving a pared-down agency to deal with “hard cases”, means that many children will get far less than they deserve from their absent father, he has said. Patrick Parkinson, who designed the Australian model, said that the decision to scrap the CSA and replace it with a much smaller operation was the result of a “nervous breakdown” among senior politicians after years of technological and administrative disasters, but it was highly flawed. “There is a great dangers that child maintenance in Britain will now be seen as voluntary, that nonresident parents can decide whether or not they want to support their children,” he told The Times. “The second danger is that the resident parent, usually the mother, ends up acquiescing to the first offer made [by the father] on the grounds that at least they will get it.”
So even that arch-conservative Christian, Patrick Parkinson, was warning the Labour Government back in 2008 that encouraging separated parents to make private arrangements would lead to less financial support going to children. And even that arch-conservative Christian, Lord Mackay, a former Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, led a revolt in the House of Lords in 2012 over the proposal to charge mothers to deter them from using the statutory system. Iain Duncan Smith, Samantha Callan and Maria Miller knew their proposals would make single mothers and their children poorer.
For the extreme Religious Right led by CARE, material poverty is far less important than spiritual poverty. Fatherlessness, the overriding obsession of the Centre for Social Justice, is an affront to God. By making a generation of children poorer, they hope to set an example for future mothers - marry and stay married, or you and your children be damned. Frank Field, the Labour MP, ardent Christian, member of the Centre for Social Justice Advisory Council, and useful idiot for the British Religious Right, played a crucial role in the repeal of the Child Poverty Act 2010, with his “<a class="break-all" href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110120090156/povertyreview.independent.gov.uk/news/101203-review-poverty-life-chances.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances”, commissioned by Prime Minister, David Cameron.Karen Woodall
An insidious slur, rather than an empirically provable lie, the Government insists that “family based arrangements” are better for children and that mothers who “choose” to “depend on the state” or use the statutory system as “the default option” or as “a weapon” against fathers are failing to “take responsibility” and put their children’s emotional needs above their own petty vindictiveness and refusal to engage with fathers.
The claim originated with Karen and Nick Woodall, and arose from their bitterness over his obligation to pay child maintenance to his ex-wife in the 1990s, even though he looked after the children for half the week.

In fact, it was Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government that introduced the CSA in 1993 and forced mothers in receipt of welfare benefits to apply to it.

Even if separated parents had made amicable private child maintenance arrangements, whenever mothers found themselves having to claim Income Support - usually because they had small children and couldn’t afford childcare - they would be obliged to apply to the CSA or face a steep cut in their Income Support.

In 2008 the Labour Government removed this compulsion and switched tack, deciding to encourage separated parents to make voluntary child support agreements wherever possible.
Professor Patrick Parkinson, a British academic in Sydney, who designed the acclaimed Australian child support system, flew to Britain to warn the Government that this could lead to many more children receiving little or no maintenance as mothers would drop out of the system in order to placate fathers.
Patrick Parkinson is a member of the Australian Christian right, who was close to Iain Duncan Smith and Samantha Callan, He was a consultant to the Centre for Social Justice’s 2009 report, “Every Family Matters”, and Samantha Callan proof read his 2011 report, ““For Kids’ Sake: Repairing the Social Environment for Australian Children and Young People”. Iain Duncan Smith was even due to speak alongside him at the anti-LGBT World Congress of Families 2013 in Sydney, until the organisers withdrew his invitation after he voted in favour of same sex marriage, reneging on his earlier support for the notorious Section 28, which banned the “promotion” of homosexuality.
So it is bizarre that Iain Duncan Smith and Samantha Callan should choose to do precisely the opposite of what their friend advised the Labour Government to do. They knew - from another conservative and friend - that their reforms would lead to children receiving less child support. And yet they defiantly went ahead. Why? Because making children poorer was the point of the reforms.
In 2009 the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, under the Labour Government, commissioned a report, <a class="break-all" href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120716162148/www.childmaintenance.org/en/pdf/research/Main-Report-Vol-I.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Promotion of Child Maintenance: Research on Instigating Behaviour Change, to examine how to encourage separated parents to make child maintenance arrangements, whether privately or through the CSA. Of major concern was the failure, by a significant cohort of mothers, to approach the CSA if they were unable to make a private arrangement, or a tendency to accept inadequate, irregular payments in order to appease fathers and avoid jeopardising the father-child relationship. The report was published in March 2011, in the middle of the consultation period for the green paper on the proposed child maintenance reforms. Again, it is bizarre that a behaviour which the DWP wished to discourage in 2009 should have become a desirable behaviour to be promoted by 2011.
In a dramatic revolt in the House of Lords on 25 January 2012 against charging single mothers for using the statutory system, the aristocrat, Lord De Mauley, found only one ally among the phalanx of Peers, from all sides of the political spectrum, who were appalled and mystified by the proposal to charge mothers to use the “Collect and Pay” service and thus penalise them for fathers’ refusal to pay voluntarily.
Baroness Berridge, a fundamentalist evangelical Christian installed in the House of Lords by David Cameron six months after becoming Prime Minister (presumably at the request of multi millionaire Christian, Conservative Party Treasurer and major Tory Party donor, Michael (now Lord) Farmer), insisted that many mothers are themselves to blame for not receiving child maintenance. Channelling Karen Woodall’s parental alienation obsession, she gave a curiously petulant speech to Peers:

“I did briefly practise as a family barrister…
Although much has been said on behalf of mothers, who are in the majority in this situation, of course it is not as simple to say that just because the mother has the care of the children she is not sometimes at fault for the fact that maintenance is not paid. I would like to put on record before your Lordships the perspective of fathers, which I think is best described in the lyrics of Professor Green's "", one of the most popular downloads last year. He was referring to his mother when he said:
"After all, you were never kin to me. Family is something you have never been to me. In fact making it harder for me to see my father was the only thing you ever did for me".
It is a heart-rending rap about a child caught in the animosity of a break-up. As I am sure your Lordships will agree, avoiding conflict in the courts or in any other forum helps to limit such animosity, greatly to the benefit of the children.
Will there be rare cases where the lack of payment is entirely the mother's fault? Yes. Will there be cases where the lack of payment is entirely the father's fault? Yes. However, in the majority of cases it will be to some extent both people's fault.”

To watch the full debate, which lasted almost an hour and a half, click here.
In March 2012 Iain Duncan Smith presented to Parliament his paper “Social Justice: transforming lives”:
“Where parents are unable to resolve issues arising from conflict post-separation, we are making changes to the family justice and child maintenance systems to limit the damage and disruption which can prevent parents from putting the needs of their child first.”

On 4 February 2014 Lord Kirkwood reminded the House of Lords that:
“When it comes to the obligation to maintain a child, the parents’ obligation is absolute. It does not matter what sort of dispute they have had with the other party to the arrangements in the past. I accept immediately that there are many different types of squabble that can emerge, and it is by no means clear that the non-resident parent is always fully responsible. I entirely understand that for the question of the break-up of the arrangements, both parties usually have some degree of responsibility. When it comes to the payment of maintenance, though, that obligation is absolute and is not qualified by the fact that the other party to the arrangement has been terrible, difficult or whatever.”

On 9 July 2014 , Caroline Davey of Gingerbread, giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee Child Maintenance Scheme inquiry, highlighted the absurdity of asking mothers to make “family based arrangements” even when they had already tried and failed or when it was plain as day that fathers would refuse:
“It is instinctively logical, people who know full well that they cannot have that conversation with their child’s other parent or they have had a private arrangement and it has broken down, which is why they are applying to the statutory service in the first place, would have gone straight to the CSA. They would not have had to go through options. They would not have had to have the gateway conversation. Because those people are all now going through the gateway, there are an awful lot of people who may well be calling options and saying, “I’ve had a private arrangement for a few years.”—as James said, there is clear evidence that private arrangements break down over time—“It has now broken down. I now need some help.” Those people are being asked, “Would you consider a private, family-based arrangement?” That seems extraordinary. Similarly, those parents for whom a private arrangement was never likely, where there has been violence, hostility or unequal power arrangements, those people are saying, “We’ve split up. There is no way the ex will pay without support from the statutory service. I need to go through.” Again those people are being asked, “Have you considered a family-based arrangement?” That seems inappropriate, to be honest.”

On 7 December 2016 Caroline Nokes, Minister for child maintenance told the Work and Pensions Committee:
“What we have made the emphasis with Child Maintenance Service with some really important reforms is that we do not want to be dragging everybody into the statutory service.
We want them to think about what is best for their children. We want them to be able to co-operate and collaborate.”
Nokes, clearly winging it, was oblivious to the truth that nobody had been “dragged” into the statutory service since 2008, when the compulsion for single mothers on benefit was lifted. On the other hand, if she was referring to unwilling fathers being “dragged” into the Child Maintenance Service, she unwittingly revealed the whole point of the child maintenance reforms: to allow fathers not to pay child maintenance if they don’t want to.