Written questions by Taylor.

What steps she is taking to support young people into work in Hertfordshire.

I thank the honourable Gentlemen for his question. Mr Speaker, as well as building our new Jobs and Careers service, which will help young people in Hertfordshire have access to better opportunities, DWP have now signed a Grant Funding Agreement of up to £19.7 million with Hertfordshire County Council for the delivery of their local Connect to Work programme, which will open for participants - including young people - at the beginning of July.

What steps she is taking to ensure that the Child Maintenance Service takes action against people who are in arrears.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) will do everything within its powers to make sure parents comply and has made significant improvements to the process to speed up action when payments first break down and to target enforcement action more effectively.Where parents fail to take responsibility for paying for their children, the CMS will not hesitate to use the full range of strong enforcement powers available. These include, using Enforcement Agents (previously known as bailiffs) to take control of goods, forcing the sale of property, removal of driving license or UK passport, deductions directly from earnings and bank accounts or even commitment to prison.8% (£682.1 million) of the total maintenance due to be paid since the CMS began, remains to be collected through Collect & Pay but this is falling.In the past year to September 2024, the CMS collected £16.8 million from paying parents with civil enforcement actions in process and an additional £5.4 million from paying parents with our most serious enforcement action in process.In the twelve months to September 2024, there were 2,857 applications to the courts in England, Wales and Scotland for our most serious enforcement powers. Of these the courts issued two immediate prison sentences and 316 suspended prison sentences.

What steps she is taking to ensure that the Child Maintenance Service takes action against people committing fraud by hiding assets in order to avoid paying child maintenance.

Most parents pay some or all their maintenance liability without issue however, the Child Maintenance Service is aware of a small number of parents whose maintenance liability is inconsistent with their financial resources, usually because they can choose to support themselves via a complex arrangement of assets instead of, or in addition to, taking a salary.Cases involving complex income or suspected fraudulent behaviour can be looked into by the FIU. This is a specialist team which can request information from financial institutions to check the accuracy of information the CMS is given.In the quarter ending September 2024, 300 financial investigation cases were referred to the Financial Investigations Unit (FIU) in addition to 875 ongoing cases from previous quarters. In the same quarter, 340 financial investigations were completed of which 210 resulted in a maintenance assessment change.