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Child Maintenance & Other Payments Bill


Key Benefits

The Bill contains measures to reform both the policy and administration of child support. It also contains measures to improve the claims process for all people diagnosed with mesothelioma.

In summary these measures are:

Establish a new child maintenance delivery organisation, to be known as the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, to deliver child maintenance and replace the Child Support Agency.

End the requirement that parents with care who claim certain benefits are automatically treated as having applied for child maintenance, encourage parents to make their own child maintenance arrangements, and give them more choice as to how they do so.

Streamline and simplify how child maintenance is calculated enabling money to get to more children more quickly.

Introduce tougher enforcement powers to collect arrears of child maintenance from parents who fail to pay.

Introduce powers to reduce child maintenance debt more effectively

Introduce a new scheme to make lump sum payments to people suffering from mesothelioma who were previously ineligible for such payments, within 6 weeks of them making a claim.
Bill Text
Explanatory Notes
Additional Information

The child maintenance measures in the Bill will take forward a number of proposals set out in the Government's White Paper 'A new system of child maintenance' with the aim of helping to tackle child poverty by ensuring that more parents take responsibility for paying for their children, and that more children benefit from this. They follow an extended period of consultation including Sir David Henshaw's report to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions - Recovering child support: routes to responsibility.

The Department has also consulted widely on the measures to pay compensation to all people suffering from mesothelioma, which the Secretary of State announced on 13 March 2007.

The Bill is a carry-over Bill, and was introduced into Parliament in June 2007.

Comments

If you have any comments on the Bill you can e-mail them to:

Adelphi.Childmaintenancebillteam@dwp.gsi.gov.uk
Department for Work and Pensions

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