Wednesday 15 July 2026,
09.30, Committee Room 6
Charities representing single and separated parents and domestic
abuse survivors will give evidence at a Work and Pensions
Committee session for its Child Maintenance Service
inquiry.
Witnesses are likely to be asked about the effectiveness and the
fairness of a system, the Government's decision to scrap a
planned consultation on payment calculations reform, and the
potential impact its wider proposals to reform the service would
have.
The shake-up announced last year involved making all cases
Collect and Pay where the CMS acts as a middleman in payments
between parents for a fee by default. In effort to boost
compliance, it said it will reduce fees on payments for compliant
paying parents to 2% while retaining the current steeper 20% rate
for those who break the rules.
The service in its current form has been criticised by some as
being used as a tool for abuse and others as unaffordable.
810,000 of the 1.1 million children in the Child Maintenance
Service system are cases that need to be mediated through Collect
and Pay after parents have been unable to agree on direct
payments between themselves.
Witnesses
From 09.30
- Abigail Wood, CEO, Gingerbread;
- Sam Morfey, CEO, Both Parents Matter; and
- Sara D'Arcy, Head of External Affairs, Surviving Economic
Abuse.
