Letter: Fathers shut out

Sir: That a divorced or separated father should "run around in a BMW and pay nothing towards his child's upkeep" is, as the Social Security Secretary says, intolerable ("Darling backs prying by CSA", 22March). A couple of thousand of them are rightly sent to prison each year for such conduct.

However, there is ample research to show that nearly half of all single mothers deliberately obstruct or completely block access to their children by the fathers. It is a rarity for even one of them to be sent to prison for repeated ignoring of court orders regarding paternal access.

Is this not equally intolerable and what does this government propose to do about it? What price sexual equality?

JOHN C GRIFFITHS

Redbrook, Monmouth