Cambridge Dictionary definition of “default”: Happening or done because no formal choice or decision has been made.

Ministers repeated, ad nauseam, the lie that mothers used the Child Support Agency as the default. This was a lie. The default option, if there was one, was to go without child support and to not make an application to the Child Support Agency.

The source of the lie appears to have been Samantha Callan’s protégés, Karen and Nick Woodall of the Centre for Separated Families.

Ministers preferred to heed the advice of a couple of fraudsters and fathers’ rights fanatics in preference to the Department for Work and Pensions’ own research.

From the beginning, Iain Duncan Smith and Maria Miller parroted Karen and Nick Woodall’s mantra that most mothers used the Child Support Agency as “the default option”. The implication was that mothers were so bovinely passive and dependent upon the state that they couldn’t be bothered to even try making “family based arrangements” with ex-husbands or partners. As Maria Miller thundered on Conservative Home, the CSA was “yet another example of embedded state dependency”. There was a continual conflation of child support with welfare benefits, to deliberately paint single mothers as bleeding the state dry through their feckless life choices.

Like everything else connected with the child maintenance reforms, this was a cruel and shameless lie. Firstly, it was Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government, which passed the Child Support Act in 1991 and set up the Child Support Agency in 1993, cutting off mothers’ right to seek child maintenance individually through the courts. That was tested in the Keogh case which went through all the courts in the land and finally to Strasbourg in 2007 - and the present Government has confirmed that this prohibition will continue. Secondly, the changes to allow, and even encourage, private arrangements had already come into force from October 2008 with the passage of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act. And thirdly, the Government’s own research and civil servants told Maria Miller that mothers only resorted to the CSA as a last resort after attempts to resolve financial support privately had failed.

In June 1999 the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Family Policy Studies Centre published Making child maintenance regimes work by Anne Corden of York University’s Social Policy Research Unit.  Christine Skinner was mentioned in the acknowledgments:

The CSA has developed elaborate procedures for encouraging women to identify to the Agency the fathers of their children. Failure to do so 'without good cause’ can lead to a benefit penalty for mothers claiming income-related benefits. From October 1996 this penalty was a reduction from benefit of an amount equal to 40 per cent of the adult personal allowance component in income support (social assistance). The Agency intervenes actively in paternity disputes, and in the year ending March 1997, had referred nearly 16,000 cases to court for paternity determinations.

The government believed that by 1998 some 70 per cent of lone mothers claiming income support were initially seeking to avoid making a child maintenance application (Department of Social Security, 1998a). The women concerned were influenced by a number of factors, but for some these included the fear of violence or retribution from their children's father (Provan et al., 1996). The Secretary of State issues wide-ranging guidelines to CSA staff who must decide whether the requirement to co-operate must be imposed. In some cases, this involves decisions about the 'risk of harm or undue distress' that would be caused to children if the resident parent authorised action to recover child maintenance. This aspect of policy in the UK is problematic and controversial.

DWP Research Report 232, published in 2005:

“It is clear from speaking to clients that the CSA is not the first port of call when separated couples make financial arrangements. Clients often turn to the Agency when voluntary arrangements fail to meet their needs. This is an important finding, in that it indicates that there may already be a history of problems trying to obtain regular payments from the NRP. Indeed PWCs may be best placed to advise on suitable strategies to ensure early and continuing compliance in relation to their own ex-partner. Furthermore, the fact that many of these parents have tried other ways of organising their finances suggests that setting up voluntary payments through the Agency may not provide a long-term solution.”

In December 2006 the Labour Government published “A New System of Maintenance” (page 34):

“Under existing rules, when a parent with care makes a claim for Income Support or income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, or if it is claimed in respect of them, they are also treated as applying for child maintenance via the Child Support Agency. This means that any maintenance arrangements that are already in place, for instance a Consent Order –an order made by the court with the written agreement of both parties – or a written maintenance agreement, are automatically overturned. This is not what parents say they want from the child maintenance system. Many would instead prefer to make their own arrangements and can often do so amicably. Even more would probably want to do so if they were given the necessary information. In a research study commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions*, the message from parents was that they want to be given the option of sorting out their child maintenance arrangements, rather than having one system that is imposed on everyone.

Ending this rule would carry significant benefits for parents. It would:

• give them more choice about making child maintenance arrangements that meet their own needs in a way that has not existed before;

• help to overcome the sometimes negative impact that the involvement of an administrative organisation is perceived to have on the parents’ relationship. Evidence suggests that around 30 per cent of parents with care claiming benefit felt that the involvement of the Child Support Agency caused upset in their relationship with the other parent; and

• help to facilitate more consensual and stable child maintenance arrangements, in view of the fact that, where parents agree maintenance between themselves, arrangements are more likely to be complied with.

It would also mean that clients who do not want and do not need to use the administrative organisation would no longer be required to do so. Resources and efforts could then be focused on providing a better service to a smaller number of parents who find that arranging maintenance without support is not a realistic option and so are most in need of help. “

*DWP Research Report No 380, Future policy options for child support: The views of parents

In 2008 the Labour Government published DWP Research Report 503, “Relationship separation and child support study”, which would later be deliberately misrepresented by the Coalition Government in order to push through its controversial child maintenance reforms. Page 129

In July 2008 the Labour Government passed the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act, and announced the establishment of a new crown non-departmental body called the Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission (C-MEC), which would take over responsibility from the Department for Work and Pensions for administering the Child Support Agency.

From October 2008 mothers receiving Income Support were no longer compelled to use the Child Support Agency. In December 2009 the National Audit Office published a Memorandum for the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee: Performance of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission:

“The end of the compulsion for all parents with care claiming benefits to seek child maintenance through the CSA and the introduction of the Child Maintenance Options service have led to a dramatic reduction in the number of new applications to the CSA. In March 2009, the CSA received 8,200 applications, a 76 per cent reduction from the 34,700 applications received in March 2006.”

On 2 December 2009 Stephen Geraghty, the Child Maintenance Commissioner, gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, explaining:

“The people who were forced by the law to come to us, the benefit claimants, in the past, not that many of them actually ended up with a satisfactory arrangement, because a lot of them, as soon as they were off benefit, left again, and quite often we were interrupting a private arrangement that they had got and most of that money now comes to the state, so a lot of the people who were pulled in by section six did not end up with anything. Where there is a private arrangement, the research that we have is that people are more likely to pay than they are through a statutory scheme or a court order because, clearly, there is willingness on both sides to do it.

So we provide the choices to people, we target those who would previously have had a section six compulsory claim, the benefit claimants: they all get a referral to Options. Unless they actively say, “I do not want to talk about it”, they get outgoing calls from Options and then the Child Maintenance Options Service which then talks them through their choices, and roughly half of those who make arrangements make them privately and about half actually do come to the CSA; and if the private arrangement does not work, they always have the choice of coming to, currently, the CSA in the future, the future scheme, at any time.”

On 12 January 2011 Iain Duncan Smith presented to Parliament his Green Paper, “Strengthening families, promoting parental responsibility: the future of child maintenance”, which claimed that:

“Until now, the CSA may have been viewed as the default option for parents seeking support to make child maintenance arrangements following separation.”

On 13 January 2011 Children and Young People Now magazine reported on the publication of Iain Duncan Smith’s Green Paper:

“Karen Woodall, director of the Centre for Separated Families, commented: "We would support the principle of charging for the services of the statutory maintenance scheme. The Henshaw Report in 2006 flagged this up as something that may well incentivise parents to make private agreements. With the safeguards for vulnerable people that are contained in the proposals, we would agree that charging may encourage parents to recognise that child maintenance is an ongoing shared responsibility and not something that automatically requires government intervention."

On 7 March 2011, slap bang in the middle of the consultation period on the green paper, the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commissioned published a report called “Promotion of Child Maintenance: Research on Instigating Behaviour Change”, which unambiguously stated that parents only used the CSA “as a last resort”. The report was commissioned in 2009 by the preceding Labour Government, concerned about the high proportion of mothers who received no child maintenance privately but did not approach the CSA for help, and explored how those mothers could be encouraged to pursue maintenance through the statutory system. Christine Skinner was one of five co-authors.

The report identified not seeking child maintenance, or resigning oneself to an inadequate child maintenance arrangement, as a “negative behaviour”: “Accepting child maintenance contributed by the NRP, where PWCs are unhappy with arrangements and accept the status quo due to a desire not to upset/worsen co-parent relationships.” (Page 3)

“Emotional exhaustion can lead some parents to exhibit accepting behaviour due to constant arguing and frustration with NRP promises never coming to fruition.” (Page 4)

“There are many PWCs who expressed positive intentions to put in place a more structured, reliable child maintenance arrangement but intentions were thwarted by fear of consequences; such as the fear of how the NRP would react to such requests and whether their reaction would impact on the NRP-child relationship. The negative legacy of the CSA, fuelled by many negative stories reported by friends, family and work colleagues lead most separated parents in the study to believe that the CSA should only be used as a last resort.  In most cases, these negative views hampered intentions to seek/provide child maintenance.” (Page 4)

“There is a role for communications to …demonstrate what positive child maintenance looks like and the benefits of formalised arrangements.” (Page 6)

Chapter 7 suggested a “statutory policy to ensure NRPs set up an arrangement” as a “potential intervention to combat PWC emotional exhaustion”. (Page 83) This, of course, is the diametric opposite of what Iain Duncan Smith and Maria Miller proposed.

*PWC = parent with care = 97% mothers

NRP = non resident parent = 97% fathers

Stephen Geraghty was the Chief Executive of the Child Support Agency from April 2005, and then headed the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission from 2008 until 2011.

He had recently handed over the reins to Noel Shanahan when he gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee on 16 May 2011, confirming that “People come to us only as a last resort.”

However, Maria Miller, Iain Duncan Smith and other ministers preferred to take the word of fraudsters and fathers’ rights extremists over that of one of the Government’s most senior civil servants. The narrative of the slovenly, feckless, passive single mother who went to the CSA as “the default option” instead of “taking responsibility” fitted the desired narrative.

On 15 June 2011 Maria Miller acknowledged when giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee that: “Too often, people leave it for many years before they even approach the Child Support Agency.” It is difficult to square this admission with her numerous claims that mothers approached the CSA as “the default option”.

In March 2007 Barnardo’s response to the Labour Government’s White Paper, “A New System of Child Maintenance”, said (page 9): “The white paper proposes a number of reforms aimed at encouraging families to reach voluntary agreements – many of which we welcome. In particular we believe the decision to bring forward legislation ending the presumption that parents with care claiming benefits will be applying for maintenance is the right one. We know from our experience of working with families that this rule has in the past upset many voluntary maintenance agreements to the detriment of the children. It also causes great hardship to families where making a claim for maintenance is just not realistic, due to a violent, absent ex-partner for example. Such parents have previously often suffered great stress having to make their case that they have “good cause” to not claim maintenance or face a reduced benefit decision.”

On 13 January 2011 Maria Miller issued a press release, “Child maintenance reforms will put children first”,  in which she claimed: “Too often in the past the Child Support Agency has been used as a threat that can make the difficult time at separation worse instead of encouraging people to work together and take responsibility for their child.”

On 23 March 2011 Maria Miller took part in a live web chat on NetMums, in which a mother called Holly asked:  “In the consultation document it states: Until now, the CSA may have been viewed as the default option for parents seeking support to make child maintenance arrangements following separation. We want to change this culture so that parents are supported to reach arrangements between themselves before conflict and disharmony have set in.  Is this really true that using the CSA is the default option? Is it not truer that for many it is a last resort? It is all very well if you can arrange things privately but why should you be fined if you can’t?  Don't many single parents use the CSA through necessity not choice? For many 'disharmony and conflict' have already set in at the time of separation. In this case the CSA (or the new CMEC) would be the only option so why should they be charged? Have you got facts and figures to prove it is a 'default option' rather than simply a last resort?”

Maria Miller blithely ignored Holly, assured mothers that “We are working with organisations like the Centre for Separated Families to ensure there is effective support for the thousands of families who would like to be able to come to their own financial arrangements but feel they can't at the moment”, and disregarded most of the other mothers’ questions as well, before gaily dashing off to more important matters.

On 24 March 2011 Nick Woodall gave oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee scrutinising the Welfare Reform Bill, which included the child maintenance reforms, claiming that:

“Henshaw saw that you needed to change the environment that caused the statutory system to be seen as the default option for parents. When parents were separated and there were high levels of distress and anxiety, they often initially looked around for what they could turn to. The child maintenance system, the statutory system—the Child Support Agency—was seen as that default option, and in many ways, it still is.”

On 12 July 2011 Maria Miller issued a press release: “Government publishes response on the future of child maintenance”, in which she claimed:  “Too often the current child maintenance system pushes families down the statutory route by default and takes responsibility away from parents, causing conflict and hostility.”

On 14 July 2011 Maria Miller gave her response to Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, parroting Karen Woodall:  “Not every parent claiming maintenance is the stereotypical abandoned single mother.  A few clearly use the agency as a weapon against their former partners.”

On 28 November 2011 Lord De Mauley told Peers:

“The commission will continue to work to produce the cultural change outlined in the Green Paper so that the statutory service is the last resort rather than the default option.”

“We are seeking to promote collaboration between parents and to encourage them to consider their child maintenance options instead of taking the statutory service as the default.”

On 22 December 2011 the Government’s response to the report of the Work and Pensions Committee (HC 1727) was published. Maria Miller wrote: “The Government wants to move away from a system where the Child Support Agency is seen as the default option, with many people trapped inside an adversarial statutory service because they have been unable to access sufficient support to help them make their own family-based arrangements.” (Page 1)

She repeated:  “The adversarial statutory child maintenance service is too often seen as the default option for parents entrenching conflict rather than encouraging collaboration…  As part of the Government’s approach to encourage parents to work together in the best interests of their children, we want to change the culture which has led to an over-reliance on the state system.” (Page 4)

On 25 January 2012 Iain Duncan Smith and Maria Miller issued a press release featuring Karen Woodall of the Centre for Separated Families.  Maria Miller proclaimed: “We need to rebalance our spending so more families can access the support they need to work out their own arrangements rather than default into the statutory scheme.”

At the end of the debate, during which there was nearly unanimous opposition to the Government’s proposal to charge mothers fees to use the replacement statutory maintenance service, Lord De Mauley repeated: “We no longer require parents to use the CSA. We do not want it to be the default option.”

Lord McKenzie countered: 

“We legislated [in 2008] to remove the requirement for benefit claimants compulsorily to use the statutory system and provide what has become the option service. Our strong concern in doing so was not that thousands would rush to use the free statutory service, but that parents with care would drift out of the system and fail to make arrangements at all.”

Many of the peers pointed out that by charging fees to mothers, the Government would cause fewer children to receive child maintenance - the opposite of what it said it wanted.  They were unable to believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears and accept that the Government’s real intention was for fewer children to receive child maintenance and to increase poverty in single mother families.

Lord De Mauley repeatedly insisted that the Henshaw report (Recovering child maintenance: Routes to responsibility) recommended charging fees to every parent with care applying to the statutory service.

On 29 January 2012 Iain Duncan Smith told Andrew Marr on BBC1 that “[Lord Mackay] wants all the charge to be on the parent without care. And of course the problem with that is immediately you have no charge on the parent with care, even if there's a slight difficulty they'll go straight into the system because it's almost as though they could punish the individual twice.”

On 1 February 2012 Maria Miller told MPs:

“Half the parents using the Child Support Agency tell us they would like to make their own arrangements, with the right support, which clearly demonstrates that the CSA has come to be seen very much as the default option.”

In March 2012 Iain Duncan Smith presented to Parliament “Social Justice: Transforming Lives”.

“An antagonistic child maintenance system that does not encourage people to make family-based arrangements: The current system is not working – only around half of children in separated families benefit from an effective child maintenance arrangement.45 Too often the system pushes families down the inefficient and expensive statutory route by default, which takes responsibility away from parents and can cause conflict and hostility.”

On 25 April 2012 Maria Miller told the Work and Pensions Committee: “I can absolutely assure the Committee that it is our intention to continue to maximise the number of children with effective maintenance arrangements in place but to do that in a way that encourages more families to be able to work together outside of a statutory system and not have the state taking that role as the default option.”

In July 2012 Iain Duncan Smith presented to Parliament the consultation document “Strengthening separated families; securing children’s futures”:

“A system, which by default pushes families down an expensive statutory route, is not good for children, families, or society. It takes responsibility away from parents and can lead to hostility.”

“The Government’s strategy is to support parents to take as much responsibility as possible for arranging  support for their children, rather than defaulting into the statutory system. The charges that we detail in this paper reflect the rationale and  suggestions of the Henshaw report, with the application fee encouraging  parents to think carefully about their options before defaulting into the  statutory service, while collection fees will provide an ongoing financial  incentive for both parents to collaborate and agree to pay and receive  maintenance direct.”

“In our view, too many parents have come to see the CSA as the default option for arranging maintenance.”

“The current system gives the parent with care no incentive or encouragement to make a family-based arrangement outside of the state service. Child maintenance must cease to be a weapon of control or revenge among former partners.”

On 24 October 2013 the Department for Work and Pensions submitted written evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into progress with child maintenance reforms:

“We continue to implement our vision for the future of child maintenance: a system where separated parents are given support to work together on the range of issues that affect their children, rather than defaulting to state intervention which takes responsibility away from them and can entrench an adversarial position.”

“At the point of making an application to the Child Maintenance Service, an application fee of £20 will be payable. We have listened carefully to feedback on the level of this application fee and lowered it significantly from the £100 which was initially proposed. We believe this fee strikes the right balance between ensuring parents think twice before defaulting into the statutory scheme, without placing an unreasonable financial burden on them.”

“When the Child Maintenance Service is opened up to all new applicants, everyone wishing to make an application to the Child Maintenance Service will be required to go through the Gateway. The Gateway will be flexible and personalised to each individual. It will ensure that parents consider the full range of options before making an application to the Child Maintenance Service so the statutory service no longer remains the default option.”

On 4 February 2014 Lord Freud explained to the House of Lords the Government’s false rationale for charging separated parents to use the new Child Maintenance Service :

“We are incentivising them to think twice about whether they could set up a more collaborative family based child maintenance agreement without automatically turning to the statutory scheme.”

On 21 May 2014 Steve Webb told John Humphrys on Radio 4’s Today programme: “So the goal here is to get more child maintenance for more children, and to make the default for parents, even though they’ve separated, sort things out for themselves rather than using a sort of state bureaucracy. And what we’ve found, when we’ve sampled the people in the current system, is, over half of them have said, actually, with a bit of help, with a bit of support, we could probably have sorted things out for ourselves.”

This was reported in The Guardian and The Telegraph.

On 11 August 2014 a press release from Steve Webb and the Department for Work and Pensions, “New child maintenance system fit for the 21st century starts today", said:  “Parents are encouraged and now fully incentivised to co-operate in the best interests of their own children.  But a vastly improved, efficient statutory service remains in place for separated families who choose to continue to rely on the state… new ongoing collection charges will apply from today to discourage its use when parents could instead work together.”

In October 2014 the Public Accounts Committee published its report, “Child maintenance 2012 scheme: early progress”:

“The 2.5 million separated families in the UK have several options for arranging child support. Around 1.1 million rely on statutory government-run schemes that assess, collect and make payments. Other families set up their own (family-based) arrangements or use the court system. Around 600,000 families have no arrangements at all. In December 2012, the Department introduced the first phase of the child maintenance 2012 scheme.”

So by 2014, 44 per cent of separated families used the statutory schemes (the CSA and the new Child Maintenance Service), 24 per cent had no private arrangement but did not try to get help from the statutory schemes, and the remaining 32 per cent had private arrangements. The fact that under half of all separated parents used the statutory schemes, and that a quarter avoided the statutory schemes, resigning themselves to no child maintenance at all, shows that the Child Support Agency was never “the default option for all families”, as Esther McVey falsely claimed. Esther McVey, of course, is famous for lying.

On 21 October 2014 Esther McVey told Parliament:  “Central to our reforms of the child maintenance system is our belief that turning to the statutory system need not be the default position for all families.”

On 8 May 2015 the Government published an update on its Policy paper on child maintenance reform:  “The government has also introduced fees for using the Child Maintenance Service. This is intended to encourage separated parents to work together in the best interests of their children and to remove the perception that using the Child Maintenance Service is the default option for separating parents.”