Question follow-through · 24547

Children: Maintenance

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the value of child maintenance arrears that the Child Maintenance Service has been unable to recover in each of the last five years; and what steps he is taking to improve r

answeredDepartment for Work and Pensions

About this written question

A written question asks a government minister for information in writing. Parliament publishes the question and any answer.

Answering body
Department for Work and Pensions
Tabled
28 Aug 2026
Target answer date
2 Sept 2026
Answer
9 Sept 2026 · 12 calendar days after tabling

Elapsed calendar days describe the record timeline, not whether Parliament considers an answer on time.

Recorded timeline

  1. 28 Aug 2026

    Question tabled

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the value of child maintenance arrears that the Child Maintenance Service has been unable to recover in each of the last five years; and what steps he is taking to improve r

  2. 2 Sept 2026

    Target answer date

    Date supplied by the official written-questions record.

  3. 9 Sept 2026

    Answer published

    DWP publishes Child Maintenance Service official statistics every three months. Table 4 of the latest national tables shows the amount of unpaid maintenance due through Collect and Pay in each quarter from January 2015 to March 2026, while table 5 shows t...

Open official record

Official data retrieved 28 Sept 2026.

Later records

Possible follow-up questions

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No later same-department questions indexed.

This is an absence in covered public data, not evidence that no follow-up occurred elsewhere.