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A recent BBC report https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq8wjn98y85o highlights the iniquitous practices of the Child Maintenance Service, something to which I and others have been trying to draw attention for some time and something which has caused suicides and nervous breakdowns over several decades. I therefore print below an article I wrote last year which explains some of the impact.

There is a scandal waiting to explode which is even bigger than that of the Post Office and its defective computer programmes: a scandal which also involves suicides, imprisonment and wrecked lives; a scandal which has actually damaged our armed services; a scandal of which a succession of ministers has been fully aware and done nothing; a scandal which the law itself is unable to deal with because the law itself forbids it.

That scandal is the operation of the Child Maintenance Service, formerly the Child Support Agency. Its job is to make sure that, where family break up occurs or where a child is conceived as a result of casual sex and the mother turns to the benefits system, the absent parent pays towards the maintenance of the child. The CMS calculates what is owed on the basis of the absent parent’s income. So far so worthy.

Unfortunately, the practice has proved very different from the theory. In theory if the CMS calculates the wrong amount the paying parent can ask for a mandatory reconsideration. The word mandatory would suggest that the CMS has no choice in the matter but apparently it can and does refuse. There is an opportunity to go to a tribunal but once a liability order has been issued and from that point on, no matter how substantial the evidence, it becomes legally unchallengeable in a court of law with the judge or magistrate forced to uphold the order.

A parent can face bankruptcy, the forced sale of a house, homelessness and even imprisonment with absolutely no opportunity to present irrefutable evidence that the amount being demanded is wrong.

Staggeringly the National Audit Office can tell members of Parliament that the CMS collects money that is not owed and the CMS can admit to a Parliamentary Select Committee that it inflates demands for payments and still nothing is done. Yet when a paying parent (usually but not always the man) wants to contest the amount demanded, he cannot present his evidence before a court of law because the law actually states that once a liability order is issued a judge or magistrate has no power to consider its validity and must enforce it anyway.

I cannot think of any other circumstances in which a citizen cannot turn to the courts to right an injustice inflicted by the state or in which a court must simply rubber stamp a disputed decision but Section33(4) of the Child Support Act 1991 specifically prevents courts from questioning CMS calculations.

It is a bitter irony in all of this that according to the National Audit Office there is some £4m that has been collected but not even distributed to the parents ( usually mothers) who are looking after the child.

The human cost is terrible. Some have been driven to suicide by the ceaseless, bullying, unpayable demands based on non-existent income or the wrong HMRC year or completely false assumptions. Members of the armed forces are badly affected as they receive extra pay for particular missions, which can cause temporary increases in income, but those temporary increases can then become embedded in CMS calculations and be impossible to have removed.

One Wing Commander has said that he actually had to abort an operation because the systems operator was too stressed by a lengthy dispute with the CMS to perform his duties, while army welfare officers have stated that men have become suicidal and others have left because they cannot stand the strain.

Sadly, from all walks of life some have found refuge in death. Others have become mentally ill. Some are still fighting like tigers but nobody really wants to know.

One man denied paternity of the child and asked for a DNA test. It was refused on the laughable grounds of data protection and he was told to pay anyway. In another case the CMS took money alleged to be owed by the father from his child’s savings account. In yet another a man was suddenly told he owed money for an adult child. In too many cases the CMS will admit on the telephone that something is wrong, promise to sort it out and then issue the liability order anyway.

That is what happened to Noel Willcox who has been in a protracted fight with the CMS for some years. In 2017, the CMS used the wrong tax year to assess income resulting in a liability which was beyond his means of payment. Willcox therefore sent in all the correct information and asked for a mandatory reconsideration. He heard no more and by 2021 he was again asking for one, this time supported by a tribunal but still nothing happened. Along the way he had involved his MP, who wrote to the Minister, but in October 2021 the CMS issued a liability order and the following February tried to send him to prison. It took him till July 2023 to get confirmation from the Information Commissioner’s Office that the sums were incorrect and misleading.

So that was it, then? Nope. A couple of weeks later Willcox was threatened with enforcement action and in September they sent bailiffs.

He is now trying to get on the front foot with an injunction but it is a simple fact that if the courts had been allowed to look at his evidence instead of being compelled to accept the liability order as the final arbiter, Noel Willcox would have been exonerated years earlier. He is tough but men, women and marriages have crumbled under such state- sanctioned persecution.

Take the case of Johnny O’Neill who posted a message on Facebook to draw attention to his situation before taking his own life. The CMS, dear Heaven, actually chased the debt after his death and then wrote to thank him for his death certificate which had been sent by his mother! Officials have admitted that they took more than 40% of wages, itself unlawful.

Then there was the appalling case of Gavin Briggs who committed suicide after fourteen months of being pursued by the CMS. Officials there had inflated his income to £76,000 which was an exaggeration of £26,000! They also claimed unpaid maintenance sums of £16,000, which subsequently they admitted to be false.

Nor is it only the men who suffer. Stacey Harris is a mother, who when she and her husband broke up, was in a job which involved periods away from home while he was working from that home so it made sense for her to become the non- resident parent, a role overwhelmingly taken by men. Pursued by the CMS for £20,000 she turned up at court to find they were trying to increase it to £50,000.

There is a fightback. Craig Bulman is asking for a ruling from the courts that the justices’ inability to challenge the calculations at a liability order hearing is incompatible with Article 6 ECHR (the right to a fair trial/hearing) and is inconsistent with the separation of powers by making CMS judge, jury and executioner.

Reform UK, so far the only political party to take the matter seriously, is proposing to remove completely the prohibition on courts looking at the calculations but it needs to be in government to do it. Both the New Culture Forum and Reform for GB News have made documentaries on the subject. Yet in government itself there is apathy. Indeed when Mel Stride was the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions under the last Tory administration, he made life even easier for the CMS by allowing it to go to the County Courts as well for summary judgements, again with their being wholly unable to examine any case against .

Ian Briggs, the father of the Gavin mentioned above, is pressing the police, so far unsuccessfully , to bring fraud charges against CMS officials. Meanwhile campaigners are drawing up a list of all those who have taken their lives after being literally stressed to death by the Child Maintenance Service.

Of course this campaign lacks a hard-hitting TV drama but if Simon Hunter, the head of the CMS, does not get his act together soon he and especially his immediate predecessor, Arlene Sugden, could end up as vilified as Paula Vennells, CEO of the Post Office.

At the very least, we need a full Public Inquiry. And I do not often call for one of those.

As long ago as 2005 I published a novel, Father Figure, which dealt with the theme of a man pursued by the CMS and to this day I still get letters from readers to say how it reflects their own horrors.

Meanwhile there really is a course that could be adopted. Freeze all contested Liability Orders, together with any orders for enforcement already issued. Set up a special Court to examine them and the evidence on which they were based and, case by case, resolve the mess and give some hope to anyone who might be contemplating climbing Beachy Head.

Oh, and er…..what about actually paying the parents with care the £4m funds collected but undistributed or whatever the amount may be now?.