1vLekuQG
type: Answer
type: WrittenAnswer
answer has question: 4lC6xcaA
answer has answering person: RbRrvzGa
answer text: The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is responsible for the child maintenance system. I have asked the child maintenance commissioner to write to my hon. Friend with the information requested and I have seen the response.Letter from Noel Shanahan:"In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Child Maintenance Commissioner as the Child Support Agency is now the responsibility of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission.""You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will take steps to encourage the Child Support Agency to impose stricter sanctions on parents who evade monetary responsibility for their children. [105556]""The Child Support Agency already has a wide range of enforcement powers for the purposes of securing child maintenance from non-resident parents, who would otherwise fail to pay. Money can be taken directly from a non-resident parent's earnings if the non-resident parent is employed, money can be taken directly from a non-resident parent's bank or building society account, or action can be taken through the courts.""The most serious forms of enforcement are commitment to prison or disqualification from driving. The decision whether to impose such measures, and the length of the order, is at the discretion of a Magistrates' Court (or Sheriff in Scotland) where they are satisfied that a non-resident parent has ““wilfully refused or culpably neglected”” to pay child maintenance—but this is not a criminal sanction.""We will continue to review our success in the exercise of these enforcement powers, and the Government may opt to introduce further measures contained in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 (subject to a public consultation where appropriate) if it is deemed in the public interest to do so."
answer given date: 2012-05-01+01:00
answer has answering body: XbTBTDMo
written answer has answering body: XbTBTDMo