Work and Pensions Committee — hearing of 15 July 2026: transcript & video · Polyfact

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Work and Pensions Committee

15 July 2026

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Contents updated on 15 Jul 2026

The Chair opens the Work and Pensions Committee session on the Child Maintenance Service, introduces witnesses and immediately probes overall CMS performance, leading into evidence on how maintenance underpayment and economic abuse affect both paying and receiving parents.

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Hearing opening and overall CMS performance

16:58

Committee opening and initial CMS assessment

16:58

Committee opening and witness introductions

16:58

Chair question — CMS performance rating

18:15

Economic abuse and CMS impact on parents

19:58

Economic abuse — CMS weaponised post‑separation

19:58

Gingerbread — system failure and parental strain

22:14

CMS formula design, fairness and affordability

24:52

CMS formula fairness and enforcement concerns

24:52

Q — Peter Bedford: fairness and formula design

24:52

Abigail Wood — enforcement gaps and income assessment

29:27

CMS formula, affordability and hidden income

42:24

Q — Ms Twist: affordability and mental distress

42:24

Domestic abuse survivors — hidden income and enforcement failures

47:25

Gingerbread — overnight stays and hidden income

50:22

Safeguarding, domestic abuse and mental health harms

32:46

Safeguarding in CMS and domestic abuse impacts

32:46

Chair question — safeguarding within CMS

32:46

Safeguarding practice — survivor experiences and training gaps

38:03

Mental health harms and safeguarding evidence base

51:57

Q — MP: CMS distress and suicide risk

51:57

Chair — survey recency and safeguarding reforms

53:13

Operational reform, casework model and future collect-and-pay

55:33

System flexibility, casework model and international practice

55:33

Q — Patrick Hurley: injecting flexibility into CMS

55:33

Q — Steve Darling: international income‑shares models

58:55

Safeguarding culture, enforcement powers and single-tier collect and pay

01:00:07

Safeguarding failures — culture, training and enforcement reform

01:00:07

Q — Lee Baron: resourcing and portal for single-tier collect and pay

01:05:14

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Work and Pensions Committee

15 July 2026

Work and Pensions Committee Wed, 15 Jul 2026 Actual start 09:15 House of Commons

16:57 - 17:20

Speaker 2

Good morning everyone and a very warm welcome to this oral evidence session on the Child Maintenance Service. And we're very welcome to Abigail Wood, Sara D'Arcy, and Sam Morfey. And would you like to introduce yourself and your organisations before we kick off with questions? Who would like to start? Abigail, you kick off.

17:20 - 17:27

Speaker 1

So I'm Abigail Wood and I'm Chief Executive of Gingerbread, the charity for single parent families.

17:27 - 17:46

Speaker 3

I'm Sarah D'Arcy, I'm Head of External Affairs at the charity Surviving Economic Abuse. So we're a domestic abuse charity and we focus on economic abuse, which is a form of domestic abuse where abusers control survivors' money, but also their economic resources, including post-separation.

17:46 - 18:04

Speaker 4

Hello, I'm Sam Morfey, I'm CEO of Both Parents Matter. We're a national shared parenting charity, been going for 52 years now. We support separated parents who are having issues seeing their children. It's mainly dads, but it is mums as well. We welcome anyone who is a non-resident parent who seeks help.

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