Gingerbread the charity for single parents has for many years been stating that there is £4 billion of unpaid child support arrears.
The truth about this is that the £3.8 billion of unpaid arrears was not owed to begin with and Gingerbread know this. Gingerbread rounded the £3.8 billion up to £4 billion how very nice of them!
Gingerbread are stakeholders of the Child Support Agency/Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission/Child Maintenance Service.
Gingerbread attended oral hearings with the Public Accounts Committee and if they did not attend the oral hearings they would have the minutes of the oral hearings. With that being said Janet Albeson attended the Public Accounts Committee oral hearing on the 5th March 2012
In this footage at the same hearing you will hear Noel Shanahan Director of the Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission say I think the £3.7 billion or £3.8 billion is really a legacy of the past.
The oral hearing on the 15th June 2011 he states that the £3.8 billion was created by Interim Maintenance Assessments inflated upto 300%
Here is the transcript of the Oral Hearing with the link
UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1874-i MONDAY 5 MARCH 2012 JANET ALLBESON, ROBERT DEVEREUX and NOEL SHANAHAN see Q31
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubacc/uc1874-i/uc187401.htm
Noel Shanahan: I think the £3.7 billion or £3.8 billion is really a legacy of the past. This is arrears going back over the last 19 years. About 50% of it is due to the Secretary of State, as well; it is not all due to parents. Through that time-10 or 15 years-a number of assessments were made incorrectly. There was a period of time when punitive maintenance agreements were put in place, frankly. If one parent disappeared and we tried to track them down but couldn’t get hold of them, we made an assessment of their income that was punitive to try to chase them down and frighten them into contacting us to put a proper maintenance agreement in place.
Official full hearing footage: https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/2e86a5dd-56b1-4022-a193-e4629d8e984c
As mentioned above on the 15th June 2011 Noel Shanahan gave oral evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee and stated that the £3.8 billion of unpaid child maintenance arrears had been created by Interim Maintenance assessments.
Gingerbread has continued to say that there is £4 billion of unpaid child support arrears.
This dishonesty continued up until 2020 where they were reported to the Charities Commission for publishing dishonest information, the complaint was upheld.
Not only have they been misleading the public with the media they have also been dishonest with gullible Members of Parliament.
Gingerbread has also been lobbying MPs to get more draconian powers of enforcement for the Child Maintenance Service to collect these arrears which are proven to be fictitious. Gingerbread are fully aware that the £3.8 billion is not collectable so why have they continued to publish this misinformation?
I believe that Gingerbread have lobbied Siobhan Bailie MP who has a very dangerous Bill which has had its 2nd reading in the House of Lords on the 19th May 2023
It is very well documented by the National Audit Office that most of the £3.8 billion of arrears is not owed, Gingerbread still proceeded to say that £4 billion was owed in unpaid child maintenance!
here is the evidence it was not owed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4GCysB6NAg&t=37s
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGHw9aeMOkE&t=24s
NAO confirms that the CMS has been collecting arrears that is not owed from Paying Parents NAO confirms Child Maintenance Service is collecting fictitious CSA arrears.
You will see by the links provided below Gingerbread has been consistently dishonest in the media
Why the silence on the scandal of unpaid child maintenance? Polly Toynbee
Many Single Parents are Owed Unpaid Child Maintenance - Unpaid child maintenance is a problem across Britain, with the national total coming close to £4 billion, according to single parent charity Gingerbread.
According to charity Gingerbread child maintenance alone lifts a fifth of low-income single parent families out of poverty.
But there are gaps - with £3.9billion currently owed to parents who, sometimes decades later, are still waiting for their former other half to cough up.
GINGERBREAD REPORT ON CHILD MAINTENANCE SERVICE
EDM (Early Day Motion)575: tabled on 19 October 2016
Responses Page 7
The single-parent charity Gingerbread argued that the write-off of debt
was an “injustice” for parents and a “sober reminder that the DWP
must up its game to avoid history repeating itself in the CMS”.
Unpaid child maintenance backlog in UK is £3.8bn
NO EXCUSE Single parents owed £4 BILLION in child maintenance due to official blunders – and £3bn of it is unlikely to ever be recovered
‘My ex is using the child maintenance system to continue to abuse me’
The Gingerbread group said almost £4 billion of unpaid money has built up over the 23 years of the Child Support Agency, which is being replaced by the Child Maintenance Service.
