UK's Child Maintenance Service is failing (Image: Getty)
The Child Maintenance Service is rotten and fails everyone. Not slightly flawed. Not in need of another review, another rebrand or another ministerial promise. It is built around assumptions from a Britain that no longer exists. The statutory system began with the Child Support Act 1991. The first Child Support Agency scheme followed in 1993. It has since been redesigned and rebranded, culminating in today's Child Maintenance Service, but one fundamental assumption remains: one parent is treated primarily as the carer and the other as the payer.
That may have reflected many separated families three decades ago. It simply does not reflect thousands of families today. Modern parenting has changed. Shared care is increasingly common. Both parents may work. Both may maintain homes for their children. Both buy food, clothes and school uniforms. Both pay mortgages or rent, heating bills, transport and childcare.
Yet the CMS calculation still focuses on the gross income of the "paying parent" only. The receiving parent's income is not included in the standard calculation. How can that possibly provide a complete picture?
One parent could earn £20,000 and the other £100,000, yet if the £20,000 parent isdesignated the paying parent, it is principally their income that CMS puts through its formula. Fairness demands something better.
The Great British PAC is campaigning for the financial circumstances of both parents to be considered. This isn't about helping parents escape their responsibilities. It's simply saying every parent should support their children.
It is about calculating the right contribution from the full financial picture. Then there is the absurd 25% rule. CMS generally won't alter the income figure used during the year unless the change is at least 25%.
Someone could suffer a 20% fall in income, an enormous financial shock for most families, and still have their maintenance calculated using income they are no longer earning.
In an age when government can obtain income information from HMRC, why are we operating with such a crude cliff edge?
And when it comes to sharing the care of the children, the system is not able to adapt and this exposes just how outdated the underlying philosophy has become.
A child can spend approaching half the year with one parent, who provides a bedroom, heating, food, clothes, transport and everything else that comes with raising a child, and that parent can still be required to transfer money to the other household.
At 175 nights, you're talking about a child spending almost half their life in each home. Yet we continue trying to force modern shared parenting into a system fundamentally designed around a "parent with care" and a "non-resident parent".
The Great British PAC believes that where genuine near-equal shared care exists, the system should recognise it. Our proposal is that where a child spends 156 nights or more with each parent, routine maintenance payments should ordinarily cease, subject to safeguards for exceptional circumstances.
Behind these formulas are real people. Parents have reported debt, severe financial hardship, mental health problems, losing their homes and in some cases suicide.
Who exactly thinks this is a system functioning well? We need a complete overhaul. Both parents' finances should be considered. The 25% rule should go. Income information should be accurate and current. Genuine shared care should be properly recognised.
Mistakes should be corrected quickly. And deliberate attempts by either parent to manipulate the system should face serious consequences.
Most importantly, the system should return to its actual purpose: supporting children, not creating another battlefield between their parents.
Westminster is reviewing child maintenance. This is precisely when pressure matters. Because we've seen how government works. A review takes place. A report appears. Ministers promise to "consider the findings". Then everything quietly disappears into Whitehall.
We cannot allow that to happen again. The Great British PAC are campaigning for fundamental reform of the Child Maintenance Service.
If you believe children deserve a system based on fairness, accuracy and modern family life, sign the petition.
The CMS was designed for another era.
It's time Westminster dragged it into the 21st century.
