Noel Willcox: Child Maintenance Service Used Artificially Inflated Salary Figures to Chase Parents for Money They Do Not Owe

Noel Willcox, campaigner and political candidate for Reform UK, at an interview with NTD's "British Thought Leaders" programme. (NTD)

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is using extreme powers to force parents to pay billions in “fabricated debts” they do not owe, according to a parents’ rights advocate.

Speaking to NTD’s Lee Hall for the “British Thought Leaders” programme, Noel Willcox explained how the CMS had inherited an inflated figure of £3.8 billion in fabricated debts from its predecessor, the Child Support Agency (CSA), and is still using methods to inflate figures today. The agency then uses its massive enforcement powers to get parents to pay money they do not owe.

The campaigner and political candidate for Reform UK said the CSA figures had been inflated by around 300 percent, with the agency using the “inflation technique” as a “lever” to “force a paying parent to come to them with whatever information that they wanted.”

“So once that parent had come forward and started making the payments—or they were in some form of dialogue with the Child Maintenance Service, or the CSA—if they were paying £100 a week and they'd been estimated at £300 a week, that £200 a week would accrue in that arrears balance, which then built that debt up to £3.798 billion,” Mr. Willcox said.

A clip from a 2011 Department for Work and Pensions Select Committee aired on “British Thought Leaders” revealed Noel Shanahan, the then-commissioner and CEO of the Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission, admitting the department had created something called an “interim maintenance arrangement” which was “actually used as a bit of a lever” to force parents to come forward with payment information.

“It seems to be inflated by about 300 percent,” Mr. Shanahan had told the committee in 2011, adding, “So the truth is, actually those arrears are somewhat inflated because of the tools that were used up to 18 years ago.”

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Mr. Willcox became involved in exposing the scandal when the CMS, which is administered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), became involved in his life “and I quickly established that they were plucking figures out of thin air.”

“The system isn’t working. And thousands of paying parents are taking their own lives. It’s a very, very serious problem. And nobody’s talking about it,” he said.

CMS ‘Cherry Picking’ Months with Higher Earnings

Mr. Willcox said that now, the CMS is using “a very complex technique or system to inflate incomes.” The campaigner said he is in contact with a lot of parents who claim that if they receive a bonus, dividend, or commission, the CMS will “cherry pick” the months with the higher earnings and use the figures to forecast their salaries for the next 12 months—as well as backdating it to last year—rather than using income based on the actual tax year.

This means parents are told they owe much more than they actually do.

The paying parents campaigner also said that parents can’t challenge the liability order to pay the massive amount, because under the Child Support Act (1991), Section 33, Subsection 4, justices, magistrates, or sheriffs “shall not question the maintenance assessment under which the payments of child support maintenance fell to be made.”

“How on earth was that legislation passed through Parliament, I have no idea whatsoever. That goes against all mechanisms of natural justice, that goes against the right to a fair trial, and it violates all human rights,” Mr. Willcox said.

Parents Being Treated Like Criminals

Mr. Willcox also criticised the agency’s “draconian” enforcement powers, leaving mothers and fathers “absolutely petrified” of the CMS.

“They have extreme enforcement powers,” the campaigner said, explaining that the CMS can take lump sums from a person’s bank account and up to 40 percent of their net income from their salary, as well as apply to have the parent disqualified from driving or holding a passport.

Mr. Willcox said that paying parents’ liberties are being removed from them and they are being treated like criminals.

“Parents are not criminals, but they’ve been treated like criminals. In fact, criminals get a right to a fair trial. Terrorists get a right to a fair trial. But if you’re a paying parent, you have absolutely no mechanism to challenge what the state is saying that you owe,” Mr. Willcox said.

The Reform UK candidate said that the CMS can also force the sale of a parent’s property. Last month, The Epoch Times reported that a judge had overturned a liability order from the CMS which had given them the power to seize and sell the home of military veteran Mark Pryce, 62, who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2021.

Despite providing evidence proving that he could not work, the CMS had continued to demand payments toward child maintenance at the same rate as before his diagnosis.

‘Thousands’ of CMS Victims Committed Suicide

“And because of the financial pressures, it’s being reported, and it’s been alleged, that there are thousands of suicides that are attributed to the child maintenance service,” Mr. Willcox said.

Brian Hudson, a businessman and campaigner for the rights of paying parents, obtained data via multiple freedom of information requests from the CMS, DWP, and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and found that the mortality rate for these paying parents is over 14 times the national average, constituting an elevated risk of death among the group.

Mr. Willcox detailed he had known of cases of suicides, detailing two where fathers had taken their own lives because they could not afford to pay.

Post Office Scandal Was ‘Warm Up’ to CMS Scandal

Mr. Willcox said he believed the CMS scandal would end up being a bigger scandal than that of the Post Office, where hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted for stealing money from their branches based on evidence from a faulty computer system called Horizon. The scandal saw the Post Office going after sub-postmasters for debts they did not owe, with at least one person committing suicide as a result of being falsely accused.

“I think the Post Office scandal, in relation to this, is the warm-up. This scandal is of epic proportions,” Mr. Willcox said.

He continued: “I’m not saying that anything that happened to these Posties was in any way not as important as what is going on, because I do believe that there were suicides with the Post Office scandal, and the fact that the state was coming after people for fictitious debts. So we know it goes on. And we know that there’s no recourse for people to deal with this.

“Exactly the same is happening, but on a much larger scale.”

‘People Need to Be Sent to Prison’

Asked what he hoped to see happen next, Mr. Willcox said he wanted an inquiry and prison for those found to have engaged in criminal conduct.

“I believe that there needs to be an independent inquiry. And I would like to see the immediate suspension of the Child Maintenance Service,” the campaigner said.

He added, “If there has been any criminal conduct or misconduct in a public office, then I believe that people need to be sent to prison.”

In October 2023, former Conservative minister Ann Widdecombe joined Labour’s chief whip Sir Alan Campbell, in calling for a full public enquiry into the CMS.

Ms. Widdecombe, who now represents Reform UK, had told The Epoch Times that “the accumulation of evidence of the CMS’s incompetence is overwhelming” and that the issue “can only be solved by a full and thorough public enquiry.”