Parents who don’t pay any child maintenance fees will be tagged and surveilled ahead of a jail sentence, under new planning powers at the Child Maintenance Service (CMS).
The curfew orders plans announced on Saturday would be another method of enforcement, alongside current powers which include passport and driving license confiscation and earnings deduction orders, to tackle parents who continually refuse to pay maintenance owed, the government said.
It added that child support payments help lift around 140,000 children out of poverty each year.
As an alternative sanction to prison, the CMS, which is part of the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), said that it is proposing curfews that would be monitored by an electronic tag with an electronic monitoring service….