A decade-old child maintenance reform has not actually helped more children get cash, a damning report finds today.
Tory ministers reformed the system of payments between separated partners in 2012.
There is now more focus on asking parents to agree payments - usually from men to women - privately with no state involvement.
This was meant to improve take-up of child maintenance payments, getting kids more cash.
Yet there has been “no clear change in the overall number of effective child maintenance arrangements”, the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed.
There has in fact been “an increase in the number of parents with no child maintenance arrangement at all.”
Britain has 2.4million separated families, 44% of which pay or receive no child maintenance.
Some 38% have a “family-based arrangement”, a private agreement between separated parents.
Only 18% use a statutory arrangement which is managed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
While family-based arrangements have risen from 29% of families since 2011, statutory arrangements have fallen more dramatically from 46%.
The NAO said the 2012 shake-up was meant to come with a wider reforms which are “yet to emerge as envisioned”.
The gross cost to taxpayers has fallen by £242m and enforcement and compliance have both improved.
But “it can still take years” before rogue parents pay arrears, the NAO said - with the average debt building up to £2,600 by the time enforcement is complete.
More than half of parents in the Collect & Pay system run by the DWP either don’t pay, pay less than they should, or pay late.
NAO chief Gareth Davies said: "Government has succeeded in its goal of reducing both its involvement in child maintenance and the cost to the taxpayer.
“But its reforms have not increased the number of effective maintenance arrangements across society.
“Many separated parents are still left without the maintenance payments they are due.
“Welfare and child maintenance rules need to align much better to support government's wider objectives of addressing poverty and helping people into work."
Public Accounts Committee chair Meg Hillier said: “Progress has been made in reducing costs to the taxpayer, with fewer parents using the government’s Child Maintenance Service and instead opting for private arrangements.
“However, the bottom line is that too many children are suffering by not getting the financial support they deserve.
“Across society, the number of families with effective child maintenance arrangements in place has remained stubbornly static.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “The CMS puts children first – in the last 12 months a record £1 billion was collected and arranged through the service.
“Child maintenance payments help lift around 120,000 children out of poverty each year.
“More than a third of separated parents make their own arrangements without any government support which is better for families and the taxpayer, allowing CMS to focus on supporting parents where that arrangement wouldn’t work or those who won’t pay.”
Chair of Families Need Fathers, Paul O’Callaghan, said: “Children need the love and care and financial support of both parents.
“The NAO report is a damning indictment on the failure of the Government to create legislation that does more good than harm.
“Tens of thousands of parents are falling behind with their child maintenance payments, not because they won’t pay, but because they can’t.”
