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Stop child maintenance fees and charges

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gingerbread, child povertyGingerbread campaigns to stop single parents being charged to use the new Child Maintenance Service.

The Child Support Agency, which has been in place since 1993, is being phased out and will be replaced next year by the Child Maintenance Service.

It used to be free to get help from the Child Support Agency when a recalcitrant parent tried to not pay their child maintenance, but new plans will see charges introduced.

Government plans include a one-off fee of £20 when single parents first approach the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) for help, and a further 4 per cent charge on every payment collected through the Service.

Although those who have previously been in a violent or abusive relationship are exempt from the £20 fee, they will still see any payments collected through the service subject to a 4 per cent charge.

Single parents may only approach the Child Maintenance Service for help after the non-resident partner has been given the opportunity to set up a voluntary payment arrangement, but has failed to make regular payments.

These plans are part of a ‘shake up’ of the child support system based on an idea of individual responsibility and state retrenchment that has been characteristic of many of the Coalition government’s policies.

Pensions Minister Steve Webb recently claimed that through these reforms the government was attempting to ’empower parents to take control of their own lives and come to their own family-based arrangements to support their children’.

He also suggested that the charges would ‘provide a nudge’ to parents to come to private arrangements without state involvement.

‘Nudge’ politics has long been favoured by David Cameron and, put simply, involves making small changes in the way choices are presented, in order to ‘nudge’ people into living their lives in a ‘better’ way.

The point being that these ‘better’ lives involve less expenditure by the state.

Yet regardless of political ideology, the efficacy of ‘nudge politics’ and opinions regarding the role of the state, it is a simple fact that penalising single parents for using the Child Maintenance Service ultimately hurts children.

That is why, since the government’s proposals were announced, the single parent charity Gingerbread have been tirelessly campaigning against them.

Gingerbread has already made substantial headway, achieving a reduction in the one-off charge from £100 to £20 and a reduction in the collection charge from 7 per cent to 4 per cent.

However, Gingerbread is calling for the charges to be dropped completely, on the grounds that ‘the government will effectively be taking money away from children just because the other parent refuses to pay maintenance voluntarily’.

The charity estimates that the collection charges could see hundreds of children lose over £70 of child maintenance per year.

Children in single parent families are already twice as likely to live in relative poverty, and have been hit hardest by welfare reforms such as the Benefit Cap.

Adding to this burden by reducing the income due to children from non-resident parents is both patently unfair and incredibly short-sighted of a government already falling behind on its commitment to end child poverty by 2020.

Recent research has revealed that child maintenance, where it is paid, plays a ‘key role’ in alleviating child poverty yet 64 per cent of single parents on out-of-work benefits do not receive any maintenance.

The report suggested that for a ‘distinct group’ of single parents it is not feasible to come to a private maintenance arrangements and, as Gingerbread has trenchantly argued, the implications of ‘coming to private arrangements’ for victims of domestic violence are worrying.

No matter how far we feel we may have come as a society, the stigma facing single parents – particularly the single mothers who make up 92 per cent of all single-parent households – remains stubborn and their political, social and financial marginalisation shows little sign of abating.

For all of the shifting rhetoric, such as suggesting it should be absent fathers, not single mothers, who are stigmatised by society, placing hurdles in the way of those for whom maintenance payments are essential for the well being and life chances of their children is an unnecessarily punitive act.

Potentially reducing vital income for single parent households while giving privileges to marriage through the tax system speaks volumes about how ‘progressive’ government policy really is.

Children should not be made to suffer because of the actions of their non-resident parent, nor should they be made to suffer because of the ideological views of remote figures in Westminster.

The government thinks it can ‘nudge’ us into ‘better’ behaviour.

Together, perhaps we can nudge the government to do the same.

So, if you agree that charging single parents for help to recover money vital to their children’s well-being is wrong, please sign the Gingerbread petition.

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