Single mothers launch legal action against DWP over child maintenance ‘failings’

Families left in poverty due to government’s ‘persistent failure’ to obtain payments from absent parents, say women who have brought judicial review

The four women, who are behind the judicial review against the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) into unpaid money, condemned the 'persistent failure' to collect child maintenance payments from absent parents (Getty/iStock)

Four single mothers have launched legal action against the government over its “persistent failure” to collect child maintenance payments from absent parents.

The four women have brought a judicial review against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over alleged failings which they say pushed them into poverty and left them in debt.

Parents who do not live their with child are required to pay child maintenance to support their upbringing and fund essentials such as food, clothing and housing costs. The sum paid is determined by their income.

The women behind the judicial review said unpaid money had forced them to resort to food banks and accumulate debt on credit cards to ensure their children had food to eat.

Some £354m is owed by absent parents across the UK and less than 10 per cent of that has been recouped by the DWP, according to the latest figures.

The legal action comes after The Independent reported on an increase in fathers not paying child maintenance during the coronavirus pandemic. During the pandemic, the DWP has halted investigations into missing child maintenance payments.

Around 70 per cent of the 2 million single parents living in the UK are currently in work, but three out of 10 single parents who work are living in poverty. Some 90 per cent of single parents are women.

Gingerbread’s, a charity for single-parent families, said the DWP had been “so slow and negligent in cases of child maintenance” and had “failed to use their enforcement powers to make parents pay in order to provide for their children”.

Victoria Benson, the charity’s chief executive, said a parent only had to pay a fraction of the sum they owed for the DWP to deem them compliant.

She added: “It is a child’s legal right to be supported by both parents, and yet the service designed to protect this right is failing them. Even before Covid-19, there was £334m in unpaid arrears and over 100,000 children across the country were not receiving a penny in maintenance.

“Covid-19 has exacerbated these problems and even more single-parent families have lost out on maintenance payments which can make the difference between having food on the table or not.

“Despite a vast array of enforcement powers, the Child Maintenance Service has shown extreme negligence in actually using them and it has collected less than 10 per cent of what is actually owed. It simply cannot be right that a government service is responsible for leaving children of single parents in poverty.”

The charity warned parents not making child maintenance payments pushed many single-parent families into poverty. It noted research has demonstrated that 60 per cent of families who are owed maintenance and are living in poverty would be pulled out of the “poverty trap” if they received what they were owed.

Justine Roberts, founder and chief executive of Mumsnet, said: “Contributing towards the food on your child’s table and the roof over their head is surely the minimum basic standard for being a decent parent, which makes the low priority accorded to enforcing child maintenance payments close to inexplicable. As countless single parents on Mumsnet will attest, the effects on children’s physical and emotional wellbeing are profound. It’s long past time for the Child Maintenance Service to do its job.”

Jolyon Maugham, director of Good Law Project, which supporting the legal action, said that being a single parent was “just about the toughest job” in the UK.

He added: “What single parents really need is help from government. But what they’ve had is laws which remove their right to sue absent parents for financial support and an agency that fails to collect that money.

“The Child Maintenance Service – along with its predecessors – has failed single parents, usually mothers, for years. It is high time it was made fit for purpose.”

The DWP has been contacted for comment.