The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is responsible for the child maintenance system. I have asked the Child Maintenance Commissioner to write to the hon. Member with the information requested and I have seen the response.Letter from Noel Shanahan:"In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Child Maintenance Commissioner.""You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in how many cases with outstanding child maintenance arrears has the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission taken a decision not to pursue collection of child maintenance arrears. [102646]""The discretion not to pursue a sum of arrears of child maintenance is contained in Section 29 of the Child Support Act 1991. This discretion is exercised in respect of arrears that it is decided will never be collected. This is only in exceptional cases where very particular sets of circumstances, which mean this is the most appropriate course of action available, apply. No precise figures are available for the number of instances where the power has been applied in this way.""The power is also exercised on a temporary basis in a much larger number of cases where circumstances mean that collection is not appropriate at a particular juncture. Whenever a decision is made not to collect, either on a temporary or permanent basis, the debt concerned is put into the category 'suspended' on our computer system. The number of suspended cases is not routinely collected and could be provided only at disproportionate cost."