The £4 Billion Lie
How the State and Gingerbread Framed Innocent Parents As Deadbeat Dads
UK Parliament – Palace of Westminster, home of the Work and Pensions Select Committee and the Public Accounts Committee that examined Child Support Agency arrears.
For more than thirty years, the British Government and its favoured charity partner, Gingerbread, have cast one group of citizens as villains: the Non Resident Parent.
Labelled “deadbeat dads,” they’ve been accused of failing their children.
Behind that slogan lies a manufactured scandal — a fictitious debt worth billions, created by the Child Support Agency (CSA) on the 1993 -2003 child support schemes and continues to be collected by the Child Maintenance Service (CMS).
The Henshaw Report (2006): The Warning They Ignored
In 2006, the Government commissioned Sir David Henshaw to review the failing Child Support Agency.
His report, Recovering Child Support – Routes to Responsibility, was blunt:
“The Agency has not delivered against its objectives and is failing parents, children, and taxpayers alike.
There has been too much emphasis on enforcement and not enough on supporting voluntary agreements.”
Henshaw warned that the Agency’s obsession with debt recovery was harming families and recommended encouraging private, cooperative arrangements.
He urged ministers to end the adversarial, state-driven model.
Instead, the Government created the Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission (CMEC) in 2008 — later re-branded as the Child Maintenance Service in 2012.
The same staff, IT systems, and enforcement culture were retained.
Three years later, Henshaw’s fears were confirmed.
The 2009 Admission: Interfering “for the benefit of the state”
On 2 December 2009, the Work & Pensions Select Committee heard sworn evidence from Stephen Geraghty, Chief Executive of CMEC.
He admitted that the Agency had:
“made estimates… deliberately big, in order to frighten people into providing data,”
and that the CSA was
“interfering in private arrangements not for the benefit of children, but for the benefit of the state.”
That single statement exposes the truth: the scheme’s purpose was never the welfare of children but the recovery of Treasury money through administrative coercion.
2011–2012: Parliament was told the truth — and ignored it.
On 15 June 2011, CMEC Chief Executive Noel Shanahan admitted to MPs that the Child Support Agency’s old arrears figures were artificially inflated by “interim assessments” — temporary calculations inflated by around 300 percent to pressure parents into making contact.
A year later, on 5 March 2012, he gave evidence to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee and revealed just how misleading the official arrears total really was. Of the £3.7 – £3.8 billion being claimed:
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Half (about £1.9 billion) wasn’t owed to families at all — it was owed to the Secretary of State.
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The other half, owed to parents with care, was built on punitive or incorrect maintenance assessments made years earlier.
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Out of the entire total, only around £1 billion (27 %) was thought possibly collectable.
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And even of that, the agency expected to recover less than £500 million — around 13 percent of the total “arrears.”
In plain terms, nearly nine out of ten pounds of the debt recorded by the CSA/CMEC could never be collected and should never have been counted as real arrears in the first place.
The False Narrative
In 2016, Gingerbread published Children Deserve More, claiming that £4 billion in unpaid child maintenance was owed to single parents.
MP Marion Fellows repeated the figure in Parliament (EDM 575, 19 Oct 2016).
The same number appeared across the BBC, Guardian, Mirror, and Sun.
Britain was told that “absent fathers” owed billions.
But by then, the Government already knew this was false.
Between 2009 and 2012, officials told parliamentary committees that arrears were largely fictitious — inflated by up to 300 percent through “interim maintenance assessments.”
The National Audit Office confirmed that three-quarters of arrears were uncollectable and that half the balance was owed to the Secretary of State, not to families.
Propaganda Becomes Policy
Despite those admissions, Gingerbread and its parliamentary allies used the false £4 billion claim to lobby for harsher enforcement.
Their pressure shaped laws that stripped courts of oversight and introduced Collect & Pay — a scheme that charges the paying parent 20 percent extra and deducts 4 percent from the receiving parent.
Internal CMS leadership minutes set targets to move 35 percent of cases from Direct Pay to Collect & Pay by 2019 — because every switch increased revenue.
The Human Cost
A 2021 Freedom-of-Information disclosure (FOI 2021/88500) revealed 35 suicides in six months, 24 of them parents on Collect & Pay.
Families have since come forward describing identical patterns: false arrears, wage deductions, and intimidation leading to breakdown and death.
Yet in 2023, rather than call a public inquiry, Parliament passed Siobhan Baillie MP’s Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023.
The new law grants the CMS power to issue Administrative Liability Orders without judicial approval — expanding the very powers that have already destroyed lives.
Regulatory Proof of Misinformation
In July 2020, the Charity Commission upheld a complaint confirming that Gingerbread had misled the public with its “£4 billion unpaid” claim and formally reminded its trustees of their legal duties.
Despite this regulatory warning, Gingerbread remains a principal witness to parliamentary inquiries and continues to call for the abolition of Direct Pay and tougher enforcement — echoing the same rhetoric used to justify policy that kills.
What This Means
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A debt crisis that never existed was manufactured to justify revenue-driven enforcement.
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A state agency admitted harming families “for the benefit of the state.”
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Lives have been lost, yet Parliament continues to empower the system responsible.
This is not about refusing to support children.
It is about a government that invented debt, turned charity into propaganda, and profited from tragedy.
Gingerbread’s Misrepresentation of Child-Maintenance Arrears
Findings Summary:
Between 2016 and 2024, the charity Gingerbread (No. 230750) repeatedly asserted in media articles, parliamentary briefings, and reports that £3.8 – £4 billion in unpaid child-maintenance arrears was owed to single parents.
This figure appeared in The Guardian, BBC News, The Mirror, The Sun, Raeside Chisholm Solicitors, iNews, and Early Day Motion 575 (19 October 2016) — all explicitly citing Gingerbread as the source.
However, official findings from the National Audit Office (NAO), Work and Pensions Committee, and Public Accounts Committee (2009 – 2024) confirmed that the overwhelming majority of this debt was fictitious, inflated, or owed to the Secretary of State, not to parents with care.
The House of Commons Library Briefing Paper CBP-7776 (2021) recorded that, of the £3.7 billion in legacy CSA arrears, only £0.1 – £0.6 billion was realistically recoverable.
On 7 July 2020, the Charity Commission for England and Wales upheld a public complaint (Ref. CRM: 0189535) that Gingerbread had provided false or misleading information.
Senior Triage Officer Cathy Tymms confirmed the Commission had contacted the charity to advise and remind the trustees of their duties, retaining the matter on record for possible future regulatory action.
In 2025, after criticism of its campaigning tactics, Gingerbread issued a public statement denying that it endorses “divisive narratives such as ‘deadbeat dads’ or parental alienation,” asserting that its work is grounded in “research, lived experience, and fairness.”
This denial implicitly acknowledges the reputational and factual issues created by the earlier £4 billion narrative.
Taken together, the evidence shows that Gingerbread misled both Parliament and the public by promoting an inflated arrears figure long after official audits proved it inaccurate.
The Charity Commission’s intervention demonstrates that these concerns were legitimate and of regulatory significance.
References (with direct links)
- House of Commons Library Briefing Paper CBP-7776 (2021) – Child Maintenance: The Write-Off of Arrears on Child Support Agency Cases
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7776/CBP-7776.pdf - National Audit Office (2022) – Child Maintenance Summary
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Child-Maintenance-Summary.pdf - Early Day Motion 575 (19 Oct 2016) – Gingerbread Report on Child Maintenance Service
https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/49828/gingerbread-report-on-child-maintenance-service - The Guardian – Polly Toynbee (16 June 2016): “Why the silence on the scandal of unpaid child maintenance?”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/16/silence-scandal-unpaid-child-maintenance - BBC News (17 March 2017): “Unpaid child maintenance backlog in UK is £3.8 bn”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39293209 - The Sun (28 March 2017): “Single parents owed £4 BILLION in child maintenance due to official blunders”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3191235/single-parents-owed-4-billion-in-child-maintenance-due-to-official-blunders-and-3bn-of-it-is-unlikely-to-ever-be-recovered - The Mirror (2019): “Mum owed £91,000 in child maintenance after ex stopped paying”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/mum-owed-91000-child-maintenance-16252973 - iNews (2019): “My ex is using the child maintenance system to continue to abuse me”
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/child-maintenance-system-economic-abuse-410613 - AOL News (15 June 2016): “Billions of pounds in child maintenance left unpaid”
https://www.aol.co.uk/2016/06/15/billions-of-pounds-in-child-maintenance-left-unpaid - Sunday Post (2018): “Exclusive – Deadbeat Dads will not be chased for £3 billion as Ministers write off CSA debts”
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/exclusive-runaway-parents-escape-child-support-payments-to-end-csa-fiascodeadbeat-dads-will-not-be-chased-for-3bn-as-ministers-write-off-bad-debts - The Guardian (30 Jan 2009): “Conflicts over deadbeat dads”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/jan/30/welfare-reform-bill - ResearchGate (2020): “Barriers to Meeting Formal Child Support Obligations – Non-Custodial Father Perspectives”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338554399_Barriers_to_Meeting_Formal_Child_Support_Obligations_Noncustodial_Father_Perspectives - Charity Commission for England and Wales (Letter – 7 July 2020)
“We have considered your concerns and, as a result, contacted the charity to provide advice and to remind the trustees of their duties.”
(Charity Commission correspondence (Ref CRM 0189535)
- Gingerbread Public Statement (2025)
“We do not endorse or support divisive narratives such as ‘deadbeat dads’ or parental alienation.”
Call to Action
If you or someone you know has been harmed by the Child Maintenance Service, share your story.
Contact your MP.
Demand a public inquiry into the CSA/CMS
Only transparency can end the injustice that began when the state chose revenue over families.
Watch Parliament TV footage exposing the £4 billion Lie - The Dishonesty of Gingerbread
Verification note: All content on this site is factual and evidenced. Every claim is backed by primary sources — National Audit Office (NAO) reports and Client Funds Accounts, Hansard (select committee oral evidence and debates), Freedom of Information disclosures, official DWP/CMS documents (including OLT minutes), and Charity Commission correspondence (Ref CRM 0189535). Where media reports are referenced, they are used only to show public messaging; the underlying facts are taken from official records.
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