About The £4 Billion Lie

 

Purpose of This Website

This website provides structured, evidence-based analysis of the UK Child Maintenance Service (CMS), with a focus on enforcement, arrears, legal process, and public policy.

It brings together publicly available information, documented correspondence, and published material to examine how the system operates in practice.

The aim is to improve understanding of complex issues affecting paying parents, resident parents, and wider stakeholders.

Scope of the Content

The site covers key areas including:

  • CMS arrears and how they are calculated
  • Liability orders and court processes
  • Enforcement methods, including Collect and Pay
  • Safeguarding, accountability, and transparency
  • The role of policy, media, and stakeholder organisations

Content is organised to allow readers to explore specific issues through linked articles and supporting material.

Approach

All content is written with a focus on:

  • clarity of explanation
  • structured presentation of information
  • reference to publicly available sources where possible

Topics are explored through analysis of:

  • official publications
  • parliamentary material
  • policy discussions
  • documented correspondence

Where issues are identified, they are presented as matters that raise questions about process, consistency, and accountability.

Independence

This website is independently produced and is not affiliated with any government department, agency, or organisation.

It represents an individual effort to document and examine issues relating to the CMS and its operation.

Important Information

This website is intended for informational and research purposes only.

It does not provide legal advice.
Readers should seek professional advice where appropriate.

Contact

For enquiries relating to the content of this website, please use the Contact page.



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The £4 Billion Lie

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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 agai...
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Gingerbread’s Misrepresentation of Child-Maintenance Arrears

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  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 comp...
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Is the Child Maintenance Service Value for Money?

 Public services are not judged on cost alone. They are judged on whether they deliver value. Under the framework used by the National Audit Office, public spending must be assessed against three key principles: Economy – is money being spent carefully? Efficiency – are resources being used well? Effectiveness – is the system achieving its intended outcomes? These are the standards applied across Government. The question is whether the Child Maintenance Service meets them. The Cost of the System The Child Maintenance Service costs approximately: £116 million per year to operate This is public money, funded by taxpayers, and justified on the basis that it supports children by ensuring financial maintenance is paid. The Cost of the Outcomes Recent analysis based on Freedom of Information data has identified: 35 suicides among paying parents in a six-month period Using Parliament’s estimate of £1.67 million per suicide , this equates to: ~£117 million per year That is broadly equi...
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