Politics: Thousands still suffering at hands of 'appalling' CSA

THOUSANDS of people will suffer over "unacceptable" errors by the Child Support Agency, a high-powered committee of MPs protested yesterday in the most hard-hitting criticism so far of its record.

The hardship and distress caused by the CSA was sometimes linked to suicide, said the MPs in a biting report on the agency.

The spending watchdog, the Commons select committee on public accounts, calls for a one-off injection of money into the CSA to clear the backlog of more than 500,000 cases.

The agency, which has a statutory duty to pursue absent parents for maintenance payments, "appalled" MPs on the committee with a litany of failures, including a backlog of 572,000 cases, and outstanding debt by parents totalling pounds 1.1bn.

But the MPs' sharpest criticism was over the CSA's record of errors, which are hurting families either because the demands are too high or the payments are too low.

The chairman of the committee, Tory MP David Davis,condemned the agency for "failing the children and families it was designed to protect". He said: "It is frankly appalling that errors in assessments are left unchecked and the process for new assessments is riddled with confusion and delay."

The CSA told the MPs that 39 per cent of payments were wrong, and its chief executive, Faith Boardman, who was brought in to sort out the mess after the agency's launch, said it did not have the resources to put all the errors right.

The committee said: "We think it is important that Parliament and the public should know that the agency have taken the decision to let hundreds of thousands of incorrect assessments hang fire until individual cases rise to the surface of attention or come up for periodic review. Thus many thousands of people will suffer hardship and distress at a difficult time in their lives and the agency expect them to accept this unless and until their cases come up for review. This is unacceptable. Individual citizens should not suffer because of the mistakes of public bodies."

Many MPs have been pressing the Government to scrap the CSA and start again, as the only solution to the backlog of cases, but ministers so far have insisted that reform is the best answer. The committee's report will intensify the demands for more radical action.