The Tories haven’t changed: they still don’t respect lone parents

Child maintenance payments – perhaps £40 or £50 a week – might not seem like a lot to some people. But to many families, being left without child maintenance can be devastating.

For many lone parents, it’s the difference between being able to get their child a warm coat in the winter or not. Whether their child can have a decent pair of shoes. Whether they can go on a school trip.

Child maintenance payments lift one in five of the poorest families out of poverty.

The child maintenance system has always been difficult to administer, which is why two older systems are being replaced by the new CMS, introduced in 2012. But instead of using the opportunity to ensure that non-resident parent continue to contribute financially to the upbringing of their children, the government used the 2012 system to introduce charges that hit both parents and in the end, children.

What would Labour do?

Today I’m pleased to announce that Labour will bring forward the review into the child maintenance service if we win in May.

Originally scheduled for 2016, instead we would start the review process immediately. An effective child maintenance system will obtain the best results for the child. Our review will enable us to determine what is working and what is not.

Unfortunately, we are already hearing how many aspects of the new system are not working as they should.

What are the new charges and their effects?

1. The charges in the new system are designed to “encourage” parents to make ‘private arrangements’ rather than using a government collection service. The parent with care of the child must pay a £20 application fee to the Child Maintenance Service, with no guarantee of getting anything back.

The initial application fee of £20 is discouraging cash-strapped mums from applying for money they desperately need. We haven’t just heard this anecdotally – the assumption was built in to the government’s original impact assessment, which warned that at least 12% of single parents would be discouraged from applying.

2. Then, if the parents can’t come to a private arrangement (and there are many reasons why they may not be able to) and the parent with care decides to use the government collection service – both parties get charged. The non-resident parent pays a fee of 20% and the parent with care 4%. For example, if the child maintenance is £100, the non-resident parent pays £120 and the parent with care receives £96. The government collects a fee of £24 – money that could otherwise have gone to the child.

The collections fees for both parents are tipping the balance of power against the parent with care of the child. Parents with care may be forced to accept less money in private arrangements by non-resident parents to avoid fees. This risks making the situation more acrimonious and leads to children being left with less than they are entitled to.

Also, the government has no system for moving ‘live’ cases from the old to the new system.

Finally, the government has totally failed to get a grip on the shocking levels of maintenance arrears. A total of £3.8bn is owed in child maintenance arrears, £1bn of which is owed in “live” cases. In almost half of these cases no money is flowing and £2.9bn of which has been classified as “uncollectable”. But the government hasn’t got a target or a strategy in place for the collection of historic arrears.

Child poverty has risen by half a million under this government, yet it seems content to write off billions owed to children.

There is no inevitable link between lone parenthood and poverty or poor child wellbeing. Denmark has the highest level of lone parents and much higher levels of child wellbeing than the UK because they have good support systems in place.

Labour has already pledged to help parents and families by providing 25 hours free childcare for 3 and 4 year olds. By making sure everyone who works can afford to live –raising the minimum wage to £8 an hour before 2020, and giving tax breaks to companies that sign up to pay a living wage. We will cut income tax for 24 million people by bringing back the 10p income tax rate, and we’ll freeze household energy bills to 2017 while we reform the energy market.

Reviewing the child maintenance system is an important part of helping families. Unlike the Tories, we recognise that one-parent families are families too. We will undertake a review immediately, so that we make sure our child maintenance system contributes towards a healthy, happy childhood – which research shows gives kids the best chance of growing up to be healthy, happy adults.

Helen Goodman is standing to be re-selected as the Labour MP for Bishop Auckland