New child agency to focus on debt collection

The failed Child Support Agency is to be replaced by a new organisation with tougher powers to recover maintenance payments from errant absent parents, the government announced today.

The work and pensions secretary, John Hutton, told the House of Commons that despite the best efforts of its staff, the overall performance of the CSA had fallen "well short of expectations".

"The need for a radical overhaul is clear and obvious."

The new system would aim to encourage parents to make their own arrangements in future so that a new streamlined agency could concentrate on chasing payments from non-compliant parents.

Accepting the recommendations of a review of the system by Sir David Henshaw, Mr Hutton said a new organisation would be set up with strengthened enforcement powers.

Those who repeatedly fail to pay would face curfews and the suspension of their passports under new laws that ministers planned to introduce.

The government was also planning to name and shame parents who were prosecuted for failing to pay for their children's support.

Other changes included:


· forcing the joint registration of births;· providing better guidance to parents on voluntary maintenance arrangements; · ending a rule that forces parents on benefits to use the CSA whether or not they have voluntary arrangements in place, and· allowing parents on benefit to keep more of their maintenance allowance.

Under the current system errant parents owe more than £3bn in maintenance payments. The government proposed to set up a separate organisation to "pursue this debt aggressively", Mr Hutton said.

He added that this would allow the new agency, which had yet to be named, to make a "fresh start that is not burdened by the failure of the past".

Mr Hutton said the changes could increase the number of children receiving support from 1.1 million today, to 1.75 million, with administrative savings for the taxpayer.

But the Conservative spokesman Philip Hammond said the statement would be a "disappointment" for the 1.5 million families "trapped in the shambles of the CSA".

The Child Poverty Action Group cautiously welcomed the changes.

The chief executive, Kate Green, said: "The end of the CSA will be welcomed by millions of parents who have been failed by it over the last 13 years. But they will also want to be reassured that the new system begins to get maintenance money through to them and their children as a matter of urgency."

She said the new agency would need to show stronger enforcement, provide financial advice those making their own payment arrangements and carefully monitor how much money was getting through.