Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission v Mitchell & Anor [2010] EWCA Civ 333

“1. JUDGE VINCENT: This is an appeal against a decision made by the Eastbourne magistrates on an application for issue of a committal warrant by the agency that I shall call the Child Support Agency, albeit that they may at some stage operate under a different name. The justices found in respect of an undefined amount of past maintenance liability that Mr Mitchell had culpably neglected to pay. That finding ostensibly gave them the power to accede to the application for the issue of a committal warrant or, in the alternative, to make a driving disqualification. They elected to make a driving disqualification and then suspend that disqualification on payment terms in respect of the past liability. 2. The first argument that has been mounted against their decision is that the application for the warrant for committal offends the Limitation Act 1980. Section 9(1) of that Act says: ‘An action to recover any sum recoverable by virtue of any enactment shall not be brought after the expiration of six years from the date on which the cause of action accrued.’ 3. Section 24 of the same Act says: ‘An action shall not be brought upon any judgment after the expiration of six years from the date on which the judgment became enforceable.’ 4. The liability order in this matter is now very historic and t was a liability order made by the justices. They had limited alternative but to make it, however it was on any basis a judgment for the purposes of section 24 of the Limitation Act 1980. In other words, whilst their hands may have been tied as to what steps they could take, nonetheless it involved a judicial decision and the sanctioning of an application for the liability order. 5. By the same token, looking at section 9 of the Limitation Act, it seems to me that the issue of an application for a committal warrant does, in the circumstances, amount to an action to recover any sum recoverable under the child support legislation. It has two purposes; it can be a simply punitive jurisdiction based on default, and the culpable neglect or wilful refusal has to be found before the jurisdiction is invoked. 6. Nonetheless I am in no doubt that its source purpose is to achieve payment of the liability and that is a view reinforced by the specific power in the justices in dealing with any such application to suspend any order that they make on such terms as they see fit. Those terms conventionally would include terms of a monetary nature involving discharge of the liability. 7. It follows that the application for a warrant for committal falls squarely within the terms of section 9(1) of the Limitation Act as well. In a sense it does not matter which of those two provisions of the Limitation Act 1981 one considers. On both points, given the age of the liability order and the due maintenance payments under it, the application for a warrant of committal would offend section 9(1) or section 24(1) of the Limitation Act 1980 and that application for a warrant is therefore statue barred. 8. That, in a sense, is enough to dispose of the appeal because it means that the justices were without jurisdiction to make the orders that they made and it therefore follows that I set aside their decision of 19th November and nothing else remains.”