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£10.9m child maintenance owed across Aberdeenshire

Figures for missing child maintenance payments reveal £10.9 million owed in Aberdeenshire, £8.3 million owed in Aberdeen.

The report says Northern Ireland has a much higher rate of children being referred to social care services compared with the rest of the UK and the Republic of Ireland

Aberdeenshire children are being left worse off by parents across the city who are getting away with missing Child Maintenance payments of £10.9 million.

Figures obtained have revealed £8.3million is owed to parents by former partners across Aberdeen itself.

The UK Government has been accused of having a “soft-touch” by Aberdeen Central MSP Kevin Stewart who is urging them to grant the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) stronger powers to enforce payments owed.

Kevin Stewart MSP said: ''It is absurd that more than £8.3 million is owed to parents in Aberdeen and the UK Government are allowing the only agency that can chase the money up to be toothless, weak, and taken advantage of.

Child maintenance payment dodgers are getting away with this because they know the soft-touch CMS doesn’t have strong enough powers to chase after them and get the money owed to the parent caring for the children. Under the current system missed payments aren’t even automatically handed to enforcement – that is another task left to those folk left out of pocket to apply for.

Too often I have constituents telling me the same story; their former partner isn’t making payments and nothing is being done about it. These parents, who are often single and working mums, across Aberdeen are being let down by a UK Government agency that is letting folk away with not fulfilling their responsibilities.”

Current plans by the UK Government will see all child maintenance cases handled through CMS by the end of this year taking over from the Child Support Agency but arrears from cases with the CSA in Scotland were reported at £240,705,000 as of June 2017. The UK Parliament inquiry into CMS also noted concerns that former CSA cases which have not entered CMS may be “slipping through the safety net”

Mr Stewart said: ''The fact of the matter is the system is failing kids and the parent looking after them, whilst allowing irresponsible former partners to get away with nonsense. To add insult to injury there are well known ways to play the system, such as self-employed individuals who disguise their true earnings to HMRC so they can’t be chases through tax returns.

This really isn’t an issue that can be sat on, the UK Government has to respond and take action to give the Child Maintenance Service stronger resources to find that £8.3million in Aberdeen and get it to the families it’s owed to.”