Justin Tomlinson corrected a written answer on Children: Maintenance

12 November 2018 · Commons written answer · Department for Work and Pensions

Thangam Debbonaire (Labour, Bristol West) asked written question 176376 on 8 October 2018. Justin Tomlinson answered on 16 October 2018 for the Department for Work and Pensions, and Justin Tomlinson corrected the answer on 12 November 2018. The corrected text no longer gives the figure £600. Altogether 140 words differ between the two versions.

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what information her Department holds on the level of successful collections of child maintenance for (a) employed payees and (b) self employed payees.

Original and corrected answer

Struck through: original only. Bold: correction only.

Original	Corrected
The Child Maintenance Service includes two service types: ‘Direct Pay’ where payments are arranged and agreed between parents, and ‘Collect & Pay’ where payments are collected and paid to the receiving parent by Child Maintenance Service. The Department does not record data for direct pay compliance. If the paying parent ~~don't~~ pay they can be moved onto the Collect and Pay at the discretion of the child maintenance service. The department does hold data on the compliance of Collect and Pay arrangements. Please refer to Table 7 of the Child Maintenance Service Statistics. Data on compliance is recorded separately to data on employment ~~status. Although the department does hold some of the data~~ to answer your question we estimate the cost of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate limit for central government, set by regulation at £600.This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3 and half working days in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting it. We believe it would take longer than 3 and half days to match the compliance of a paying parent with their employment status. As a result, under section 12 of the Freedom of information Act the department is not therefore obliged to comply with your request and we will not be processing it further. The Child Maintenance Service Statistics ~~which shows overall compliance n~~ be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-august-2013-to-june-2018-experimental	The Child Maintenance Service includes two service types: ‘Direct Pay’ where payments are arranged and agreed between parents, and ‘Collect & Pay’ where payments are collected and paid to the receiving parent by Child Maintenance Service. The Department does not record data for direct pay compliance. If the paying parent does not pay they can be moved onto the Collect and Pay at the discretion of the child maintenance service. The department does hold data on the compliance of Collect and Pay arrangements. Please refer to Table 7 of the Child Maintenance Service Statistics. Data on compliance is recorded separately to data on employment status and cannot be easily linked. The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost. The Child Maintenance Service Statistics can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-august-2013-to-june-2018-experimental

Original

Corrected

The Child Maintenance Service includes two service types: ‘Direct Pay’ where payments are arranged and agreed between parents, and ‘Collect & Pay’ where payments are collected and paid to the receiving parent by Child Maintenance Service.
The Department does not record data for direct pay compliance. If the paying parent ~~don't~~ pay they can be moved onto the Collect and Pay at the discretion of the child maintenance service. The department does hold data on the compliance of Collect and Pay arrangements. Please refer to Table 7 of the Child Maintenance Service Statistics.
Data on compliance is recorded separately to data on employment ~~status. Although the department does hold some of the data~~ to answer your question we estimate the cost of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate limit for central government, set by regulation at £600.This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3 and half working days in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting it. We believe it would take longer than 3 and half days to match the compliance of a paying parent with their employment status. As a result, under section 12 of the Freedom of information Act the department is not therefore obliged to comply with your request and we will not be processing it further.
The Child Maintenance Service Statistics ~~which shows overall compliance n~~ be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-august-2013-to-june-2018-experimental

The question and answer on the Parliament website.

Receipt

Read from	https://questions-statements-api.parliament.uk/api/writtenquestions/questions/983153?expandMember=true
Date read	15 October 2026
SHA-256	`50ba514d9de7d31cf33e3f9bfc50870d99e817eef07ea5fe5cfca4157152f11c`