Today, STOPS wrote to DWP/CMS Minister, Baroness Sherlock OBE, to let her know that DWP’s own disclosed mortality rates show that even being conservative 4600 parents have died, in just 5 years, who normally would not while being under the control of the UK’s Child Maintenance Service.
Subject: DWP’s own figures show thousands of excess deaths among CMS paying parents
Dear Baroness Sherlock OBE,
The Department for Work and Pensions has disclosed, under FOI2025/78063, the total number of paying parents who died while using the Child Maintenance Service between 2020 and 2024.
The Department’s own figures show:
- 2020: 1,823 deaths
- 2021: 1,789 deaths
- 2022: 1,857 deaths
- 2023: 1,955 deaths
- 2024: 1,834 deaths
That is 9,258 deaths in five years — all individuals actively subject to CMS at the time of death.
Analysis published by Disability News Service, using DWP data and ONS national mortality rates, reports that paying parents in working-age groups were dying at approximately twice the national mortality rate, and in some younger cohorts at up to three times the national rate.
Using only the most conservative assumption — a 2× mortality rate — simple arithmetic follows:
If a population is dying at twice the national rate, then approximately half of those deaths are above what would be expected if they died at the same rate as the general population.
Applied to the Department’s own figures:
- Of 9,258 deaths between 2020 and 2024,
- Approximately 4,600 deaths represent mortality above national expectation.
This is not modelling.
This is not speculation.
This is arithmetic applied to DWP’s own disclosed totals.
Even if one rejects any discussion of causation, the statistical reality remains:
Thousands of excess deaths have occurred within a defined administrative population under direct departmental control.
Given the scale of these figures, it is no longer credible to maintain that there is “no evidence” of systemic harm without commissioning an independent examination of mortality within the CMS population.
These numbers require explanation for that is a lot of children losing a parent far too soon in their lives; and parents who clearly and very sadly can longer pay to support their children.
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