Kate Green – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Green on 2016-02-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much child maintenance debt his Department has written off for (a) 1993 and (b) 2003 scheme cases since April 2015.

Priti Patel

£17.3m of Child Maintenance debt was written off between 1 April 2015 and 31 January 2016 following confirmation from the Parent With Care that they did not want the arrears to be collected.

£2.7m was written off where either the Non-Resident Parent or the Parent with Care had died.

A further £0.6m was written off for a variety of reasons including: amount being less than £65 due to the Secretary of State or situations where legislation does not permit recovery.