Child Support Agency

17.07.06

The Child Support Agency (CSA) is the clearest sign that Blair’s Government has become one of the most incompetent in history. There are many examples, regrettably, of failure – from tax credits to Iraq, from increasing CO2 emissions to the chronic housing shortage. Yet the costly mistakes on the CSA are astonishing.

A few statistics. For every £ collected in child support, the CSA spends 70p on bureaucracy. Since 1993, when the Conservatives brought the CSA in, over £3.5 billion has gone uncollected. Labour’s reforms to the CSA have cost £539 million yet the new scheme is working as badly as its predecessor.

When you see the real-life cases behind these figures, as I do in my constituency surgeries most weeks, the fact that the heartache and worry for ordinary families cannot be measured in cash terms shows that the human cost is much higher.

What really angers me is that parents trying to put the interests of their children first, often end up arguing more because of the CSA’s incompetence. Meanwhile the real problem parents – especially those who won’t take responsibility for their children – are so frequently not caught. This is madness.

I’m convinced we now have to bite the bullet. Scrap the CSA. Use family courts for the majority where couples can reach a long term settlement. And give the tax authorities stronger powers to chase down the real absentee parents.