Sourced Investigation · NAO · Parliamentary Record · Judicial Findings · Parent Testimony

Fictitious Debts.
Admitted. Documented.
Still Uncorrected.

Hundreds of parents across multiple platforms report debts that do not exist. The NAO has confirmed material calculation errors for over 30 consecutive years. The calculation platform runs on judicially confirmed stolen code. No court is permitted to check whether the debt is correct. CMS has put no independent verification mechanism in place. This page documents it all — in primary sources.

✓ All claims sourced to primary evidence — all source references documented in each intelligence volume. Christina Little is a researcher compiling evidence from multiple independent sources.

The Investigation's Three Core Questions — None Yet Answered

Question 1: Is the TCS BaNCS platform — judicially confirmed as built on stolen intellectual property — generating incorrect debt calculations through software errors?

Question 2: Are CMS case workers or supervisors manually manipulating calculation inputs to inflate arrears — whether deliberately or through systemic procedural failures?

Question 3: Does CMS have any published, audited, independent mechanism to detect, correct, or prevent fictitious debts before enforcement is taken? The evidence says: No.

The Stolen Code Question

The 5th Circuit confirmed TCS BaNCS was built on wilfully misappropriated source code (No.24-10749, November 2025). The same platform has been calculating every CMS debt since 2013. If the foundational code was stolen and corrupted, what guarantee exists that the calculations it produces are accurate? None has been provided by DWP.

5th Circuit No.24-10749 · NAO HC 104 · DWP Client Funds Account 2024–25

The Human Manipulation Question

CMS case managers have discretion over which income figures are submitted, how variations are applied, and how arrears are computed. Hundreds of parents across dad.info, Mumsnet, Facebook groups, and formal complaint forums report arrears appearing without explanation, debts reappearing after payment, and income assessments that do not reflect their actual earnings.

Parliamentary records · Parent testimony platforms · CMS complaints data

The No-Prevention Question

CMS has published no independent calculation audit mechanism. No external body verifies CMS debt figures before enforcement. The NAO cannot audit individual cases. Courts are barred from examining the calculation (s.33(4) CSA 1991). The ICO regulates data, not mathematical accuracy. There is no ombudsman with power to correct individual debt figures. The gap is total.

s.33(4) CSA 1991 · Farley v CSA [2006] UKHL 31 · NAO reports 1994–2026

NAO — 30 Years of Qualified and Adverse Opinions · All Primary Sources

The Auditors Have Been
Saying This for 30 Years

The National Audit Office has issued qualified or adverse audit opinions on CMS and CSA accounts continuously since the early 1990s. This is not a recent concern. It has never been corrected. The table below represents the documented audit failures on record — all verifiable at nao.org.uk and gov.uk.

30+Consecutive years of NAO qualified / adverse audit opinionsNAO annual CMS/CSA accounts 1994–2026

75%Of the £4 billion arrears balance confirmed uncollectable by NAONAO — cited Barker Gotelee / NAO 2017

£29.7mIn incorrectly calculated maintenance amounts identified by NAONAO HC 252 — DWP Resource Accounts

£4.1mLegacy CSA arrears transferred to CMS2012 for which C&AG could not obtain "satisfactory evidence"Northern Ireland C&AG CMS Client Funds 2021–22

Year	NAO Finding	Significance
1994–95 onwards	Continuous qualification — legacy CSA scheme arrears cannot be verified. "Historic evidence of material inaccuracies" in the underlying assessments.	Over 30 years of known, unresolved calculation errors carried forward into CMS2012
2013–14	Qualified opinion — material errors in maintenance assessments confirmed. First year of CMS2012 operation.	Errors existed from the system's first year. Not a teething problem — a structural one.
2014–15	Qualified; adverse opinion on arrears balance first issued for CMS2012 accounts	The arrears balance does not "properly represent the true position" — NAO's own language
2015–16	Adverse opinion — £3.976 billion arrears balance does not properly represent the true position	Source: NAO, Statutory CMS Schemes 2015-16 — nao.org.uk
2020–21	Additional qualification — accounting records for arrears write-offs deleted under GDPR, preventing NAO audit	DWP destroyed audit evidence. The NAO cannot verify how much debt was written off or why. Source: DWP Client Funds Account 2020–21
2020–21 (paradox)	Compliance at record high (72% of paying parents paying) — but unpaid maintenance balances grew by £54 million in that year	If more people are paying than ever before, unpaid balances should shrink. They grew by £54m. The only explanations: inflated assessments generating more arrears per non-paying case, or the arrears figures themselves are inaccurate. Source: DWP Client Funds Account 2020–21
2024–25	£284.5m received, £275.1m paid out — £9.4m gap retained as "cash balance." Additional £70.8m in fees/charges classified separately, not in main audit.	Total fee income never published as standalone audited figure. Across 10+ years this is hundreds of millions in unaudited surcharge income. Source: CMS Client Funds Account 2024–25 — gov.uk
2025–26	NAO audit of CMS Client Funds Account removed — without Parliamentary vote, without published reason, without Parliamentary debate	Through these accounts pass £1.4bn in maintenance payments annually. Removed from audit in the same year a High Court JR challenges the lawfulness of the enforcement regime.

Source verification: Every entry above is independently verifiable. NAO reports are freely available at nao.org.uk. DWP Client Funds Accounts are published at gov.uk/government/collections/child-maintenance-client-funds-account. Northern Ireland C&AG reports at niauditoffice.gov.uk.

Breaking — The CMS Files

The Child Maintenance Service Just Deleted £78 Million

BBC Coverage

BBC Finally Exposes the Child Maintenance Service

The Arrears Paradox — DWP's Own Published Accounts

Compliance Record High.
Unpaid Balances Growing.
How?

In 2020–21, CMS reported a record high compliance rate: 72% of paying parents contributing. In the same year, the unpaid maintenance balance grew by £54 million. If more people are paying than at any point in the system's history — why is the total unpaid balance increasing?

Three Possible Explanations

OPTION A

Assessments Are Being Inflated

New assessments are generating higher maintenance amounts than is warranted by the paying parents' actual income, creating larger arrears balances per non-compliant case. If calculations are inflated, compliance can be high while arrears still grow — because the assessed amounts are themselves wrong.

OPTION B

The Arrears Figures Themselves Are Inaccurate

The NAO has confirmed "historic evidence of material inaccuracies" in CSA assessments underlying the legacy arrears. £3.7bn in CSA arrears was migrated onto CMS2012. If those figures were wrong to begin with, and CMS2012's correspondence engine enforces them without independent validation — inaccuracy compounds year on year.

OPTION C

Both

The most likely explanation given the evidence: both new assessments and legacy arrears contain material errors. The system has no independent verification mechanism. Neither has been corrected in 30 years of qualified audit opinions. The paradox is the documented symptom of a system generating numbers it cannot verify.

What DWP Has Not Done

✗Published an independent calculation audit methodology

✗Commissioned an independent review of the arrears paradox

✗Published a response to the 30-year sequence of NAO adverse opinions

✗Confirmed whether the correspondence engine validates arrears before enforcement

✗Explained how a record compliance rate produces growing unpaid balances

✗Disclosed the total cumulative unreconciled gap between receipts and payments

✗Disclosed the basis on which the NAO audit was removed for 2025–26

✗Confirmed whether CMS2012 is running the version of BaNCS barred by US court injunction

Sources: DWP Client Funds Account 2020–21; DWP Client Funds Account 2024–25; NAO HC 104; Parliamentary questions (multiple, unanswered)

The Calculation Platform — Built on Stolen Code

Every Debt Figure Since 2013
Generated by a Platform Under
a US Court Injunction

This is not a speculative claim. It is a confirmed judicial finding — established after an eight-day jury trial, affirmed by the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on 21 November 2025.

What the Court Found

The 5th Circuit (Case No.24-10749, 21 November 2025) confirmed that TCS built BaNCS — the payment and calculation platform at the core of CMS2012 — using wilfully and maliciously misappropriated source code and technical manuals belonging to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC/DXC).

Court orders: $56m compensatory + $112m punitive damages + permanent injunction barring TCS from using the version of BaNCS developed with CSC's stolen IP + a 10-year monitorship over TCS's IP handling practices.

That barred version is the version embedded in CMS2012.

5th Circuit No.24-10749 · 21 Nov 2025 · law.justia.com

What This Means for Your Debt Figure

Every debt figure CMS has enforced since 2013 — every DEO, every charging order, every committal — has been generated by a platform the US 5th Circuit has confirmed was built on code TCS had no right to use.

DWP has never confirmed: (1) whether CMS2012 is running the barred version; (2) whether the stolen IP affects the accuracy of calculations; (3) whether paying parents should be informed that their debt figures were produced by a platform under US court injunction.

When DWP pays TCS licence fees for BaNCS — as it has done throughout — it has been paying for software TCS had no right to licence.

Contracts Finder CF af8827fd · DWP confirmed new TCS contract Jul 2024 · PublicTechnology.net

The comparison the industry understands: The Post Office Horizon scandal involved software generating incorrect figures that were then used to prosecute innocent people. Here, the software platform generating CMS debt figures has been confirmed — by a US federal court — to have been built on stolen intellectual property. The NAO has confirmed 30 years of material inaccuracies. The two facts are connected: a platform built on stolen, corrupted code may not produce accurate figures. No independent audit of the accuracy of CMS2012 calculations has been published.

The Legal Lockout — s.33(4) CSA 1991

No Court Can Check
Whether Your Debt Is Correct

s.33(4) Child Support Act 1991:

"On an application under subsection (2), the court shall not question the maintenance calculation under which the payments of child support maintenance fell to be made."

Confirmed absolute by the House of Lords in Farley v Child Support Agency [2006] UKHL 31, per Lord Nicholls.

This provision means that even where CMS has calculated a completely wrong debt — one that the NAO has confirmed contains "material inaccuracies" — no court hearing the liability order application can examine whether that calculation is correct. The court is required to make the order if the debt is asserted due and unpaid. It cannot ask whether the debt was correctly calculated in the first place.

The consequences of this in combination with the evidence above:

FACT 1

The calculation platform (TCS BaNCS) has been judicially confirmed as built on stolen IP — its foundational accuracy is therefore in doubt.

FACT 2

The NAO has confirmed material inaccuracies in CMS and CSA calculations for over 30 consecutive years.

FACT 3

Hundreds of parents across multiple platforms report debts that do not correspond to their actual maintenance obligations, debts that reappear after payment, and assessments that do not reflect their actual income.

FACT 4

s.33(4) bars any court from examining the calculation at enforcement stage. Courts cannot check.

FACT 5

CMS has published no independent calculation verification mechanism that operates before enforcement is initiated.

RESULT

People are being imprisoned, having their homes charged, their wages seized, and their credit destroyed — on debts that no court is permitted to examine, generated by a platform built on stolen code, producing figures the NAO has been unable to verify for three decades.

The CMS Files

The CMS Files: Exposing Fake Child Maintenance Debt

The CMS Files

CMS Split Care and Fake Calculations Exposed

Parliamentary Record — MPs Have Raised This — On the Record

The Calculation Problem
Is on Parliamentary Record

The following are documented interventions in parliamentary proceedings — Hansard, committee evidence, written questions. All verifiable at hansard.parliament.uk and committees.parliament.uk.

Weston-super-Mare Magistrates' Court — 8 July 2026 · Documented

Approximately 300 CMS liability order applications listed in a single session lasting just over one hour at Weston-super-Mare Magistrates' Court. Each order documented as generating £300 to CMS — approximately £90,000 in a single sitting. No individual judicial consideration. No examination of any debt calculation — s.33(4) CSA 1991 bars the court from examining it. No Article 6 compliance for any individual case. CMS had issued the summons for every single one — not the court. Several thousand liability orders are granted across England and Wales each year in sessions of this nature. This is not judicial enforcement. It is bulk administrative processing conducted in court rooms, using instruments CMS has admitted are its own templates.

Documented — 8 July 2026 · s.33(4) CSA 1991 · FOI2026/50177 · CourtServe listing data

Alexander Nicholson — · Documented Case

Mr Nicholson's case is documented across every stage of the CMS enforcement chain in this investigation: inflated and disputed calculation; unlawful policy application; void summons (CMEL7298 template, no court seal, no court reference, CMS address of issue); bulk hearing at MK Magistrates 27 March 2026 (one of 48 simultaneous cases before DJ Arvind Kumar Sharma); lay representative raising s.51 MCA 1980 jurisdictional objection removed by court security. Case at the heart of High Court proceedings AC-2025-LON-001412. The GLD solicitor's own written admission (Z2500859 para 8) — that CMS served the summons, not the court — was obtained in the course of these proceedings. His case documents the entire arc: from calculation to policy to void instrument to unlawful enforcement to High Court challenge.

AC-2025-LON-001412 · GLD Z2500859 para 8 · 27 March 2026 hearing

Lords Public Services Committee — HL Paper 181 — October 2025 · Paras 155–156

The Committee documented that Baroness Sherlock told it fewer than 2% of CMS callers waited over an hour — attributed to "memory bias." DWP's own data for April–December 2024 showed 130,000+ calls abandoned before being answered and 82,000 calls waiting over one hour. A ministerial statement directly contradicted by the department's own published data — on call times, but indicative of the pattern of ministerial misstatement on CMS performance.

HL Paper 181, October 2025 — committees.parliament.uk

Lords Public Services Committee Report on CMS — June 2026

The Committee concluded the CMS system is "not fit for purpose" — a finding published formally by a House of Lords Select Committee. This finding covers the calculation and administration of the system, not only its enforcement mechanisms.

Lords PSC Report June 2026 — committees.parliament.uk

Andrew Western MP — Written Answers — 18 and 26 March 2026

The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for DWP provided contradictory written answers eight days apart on whether ss.32M/32N CSA 1991 (the administrative LO regime) had been commenced. This contradiction — on a binary factual question with a yes/no answer — is itself evidence of the systemic information failure at DWP regarding CMS.

Hansard Written Answers — 18 March 2026 and 26 March 2026

DWP Impact Assessment — June 2025

DWP's own impact assessment for CMS consolidation states the policy will lift "20,000 more children out of poverty." This calculation considers only children in receiving-parent households. It contains zero assessment of children in paying-parent households affected by income reduction caused by inflated or fictitious assessments. Published at gov.uk — confirmed in Volume 3 of this investigation.

DWP June 2025 Impact Assessment — gov.uk

Baroness Sherlock — Lords Grand Committee — 8 June 2026

The Minister confirmed the new CMS system will "uncouple from court processes" — confirming that the existing enforcement regime has been "coupled" to court processes. She also admitted she is "personally speaking with key powers in the Scottish judicial system" about ALO implementation — a regime confirmed uncommenced by her own department.

Hansard — Lords Grand Committee 8 June 2026

Baroness Sherlock — Ministerial Correspondence MC2026/27154 — 28 May 2026

Personally signed ministerial letter defending the CMS liability order process using the phrase "complaint and summons notification" — a term that appears in no statute and is not recognised in court procedure. This invented term was used by the minister to describe a process her own FOI team confirmed is an administrative template.

MC2026/27154 — held by researcher and Callum Anderson MP

Parent Testimony — Documented Across Multiple Platforms at Scale

Hundreds of Parents.
Same Experiences.
Documented.

This investigation does not rely on social media alone. But the scale and consistency of reports across independent platforms — thousands of posts on dad.info, Mumsnet, Facebook CMS support groups, formal complaint forums, and to MPs — constitute a documented pattern that cannot be dismissed as individual error. The themes recur with striking consistency across unrelated parents, unknown to each other.

Reported Patterns — Documented Across Platforms

→Arrears appearing on the CMS system with no corresponding period of non-payment — debts arising from apparently thin air

→Debt confirmed as paid — then reappearing in the system weeks or months later

→Income assessments that do not match HMRC records, payslips, or tax returns

→Arrears balances that increase even when the paying parent is in full compliance under a DEO

→Retrospective assessments applied without notification, creating arrears from periods already closed

→Shared care weeks miscounted — reducing the shared care deduction and inflating the amount owed

→Payments shown as received by CMS but not credited to the paying parent's account, leaving a phantom debt

Where These Reports Are Documented

→dad.info — UK's largest fathers' advice forum. Thousands of CMS-related posts. The CMS calculation thread runs to hundreds of pages.

→Mumsnet — Multiple threads, both paying and receiving parents, documenting CMS miscalculation.

→Facebook — CMS Support Groups — Multiple large groups with tens of thousands of members. False arrears is among the most common reported issue.

→STOPSuicides UK — stops.org.uk — Campaign organisation documenting CMS-related deaths, including cases where fictitious or inflated debt is cited.

→Justice4Gavin Briggs — justice4gavinbriggs.com — Campaign raising the CMS calculation failure issue, documented DWP actively discouraging suicide FOI requests.

→Parliamentary correspondence — Multiple MPs have received constituent casework raising false arrears. Evidence submitted to Work and Pensions Committee.

This investigation does not treat social media reports as primary evidence. They are documented as contextual evidence of the scale and consistency of the reported problem — corroborated by the NAO's own qualified audit opinions, the arrears paradox in DWP's own published accounts, and the confirmed inaccuracy of the calculation platform at its technical core. The pattern is documented across every level: parliamentary record, audit report, court finding, and parent testimony.

What Must Be Done — Independent Investigation Required

The Demands That Flow
from This Evidence

Independent Calculation Audit

An independent audit of a statistically significant sample of CMS debt calculations — conducted by a body with no DWP connection and full access to the calculation inputs. Must include: income data verification against HMRC records; shared care verification; legacy arrears validation.

Demand: NAO with extended powers · Work and Pensions Committee

BaNCS Platform Independent Review

An independent technical review of whether CMS2012 is running the version of BaNCS barred by the US 5th Circuit permanent injunction — and if so, whether DWP has a lawful right to operate it. Include: accuracy testing; comparison with HMRC income data; audit of the correspondence engine.

Demand: SFO · NAO · Cabinet Office · Parliamentary Question

s.33(4) Review — Parliament Must Act

Parliament must review and amend s.33(4) CSA 1991 to allow courts to examine calculation accuracy in enforcement proceedings — particularly where the paying parent can demonstrate a specific, documentable error. The absolute bar is incompatible with a system confirmed to produce material inaccuracies.

Demand: Work and Pensions Committee · Joint Committee on Human Rights

Arrears Paradox Explained Under Oath

Baroness Sherlock and DWP Permanent Secretary must explain under oath how compliance at a record high of 72% in 2020–21 produced an increase in unpaid balances of £54m in the same year. This is a numerical contradiction that requires explanation from the people responsible for the accounts.

Demand: Work and Pensions Committee · Lords PSC

Moratorium on Enforcement Pending Review

No further enforcement action — committal, charging order, or arrest — should proceed against any paying parent where: (a) the underlying calculation relies on legacy CSA arrears the C&AG could not verify; or (b) the paying parent has a live FTT appeal against the calculation; or (c) the arrears arose without a period of non-payment the parent can verify.

Demand: DWP · Minister of State · High Court interim relief (AC-2025-LON-001412)

Redress Scheme

Where a paying parent can demonstrate that enforcement was taken on a fictitious or inflated debt — through HMRC income verification, payment records, or system error documentation — a statutory redress scheme must be established. This should cover financial loss, credit damage, imprisonment, and consequential harm. The Post Office Horizon scheme is the model.

Demand: Parliament · Cabinet Office · DWP

Have You Experienced a Fictitious Debt?

Submit Your Statement

The CMS Files evidence portal collects written case statements from parents — false arrears, inflated calculations, enforcement on debts that don't exist. Your statement may be submitted to the SFO, Work and Pensions Committee, courts, or used to support group action.

Submit Your Statement → Download Templates

Fictitious Debts.Admitted. Documented.Still Uncorrected.