MPs push for tougher CSA

NICHOLAS TIMMINS

The Child Support Agency should shift its priorities and use tougher enforcement measures to tackle the "huge armies" of absent fathers who are "cocking a snook" at the taxpayer by refusing to co-operate, MPs said yesterday.

New powers - which ministers are considering - are also needed to deal with self-employed fathers who are using accountants to hide their real worth, the Commons Social Security Committee said.

After a "dire" start in its first 18 months, the agency's operations are now improving, even though "major difficulties and failings still exist".

But the Government's targets for the agency have encouraged it to concentrate on the "soft target" of absent fathers on benefit who are most easily traced and dealt with. They account for about 45 per cent of the full assessments the agency is making.

"Success in transferring small sums [typically pounds 2.35 a week] from a claimant on benefit towards the cost of another claimant's benefit is small beer," the committee said.

"What is required is a withdrawal of the amnesty the Government has given to huge armies of absent fathers who are refusing to fill in the maintenance inquiry form and to mothers who are refusing to fill in the maintenance application form." Some of the latter were "colluding with a previous partner, or a current partner, in refusing to push a claim".

In the wake of the agency's near collapse in its early days, about 350,000 cases were put on hold.

Labour MP Frank Field, chairman of the committee, said the amnesty "worries us very much", along with the extent of fraud and the failure to deliver more money to lone parents with children.

The committee added that the self-employed are using accountants to reduce their tax liability to the point where they "artificially reduce or even extinguish" their child support liability. The CSA should work more closely with the Inland Revenue and be given new powers - backed by criminal sanctions - to require production of all documents.

In the longer run, Mr Field argued, the CSA probably needed to be transferred from Department of Social Security, whose traditional role is paying out money, to the Inland Revenue whose expertise is in collecting it. The rising backlog of unpaid maintenance is now heading towards the pounds 1bn mark.

The report's call for tougher enforcement was welcomed by the National Council for One Parent Families, who saw it as "a welcome new turn" in recognising that the cash actually delivered to lone parents and their children was the true test of the agency's success.

The Liberal Democrats called for the agency to be scrapped and replaced by family courts, but the committee said there was growing acceptance that the CSA would be "a permanent feature of British life".

n Second Report, Social Security Committee, session 1995/96, HMSO pounds 15.90