Letters: Families reduced to penury by CSA

Sir: Once more Polly Toynbee gets close ("Fathers won't pay? Then punish the mother", 21 Oct) only, in the final analysis, to miss by a mile. The reason the Government now penalises lone mothers who won't co- operate with the Child Support Agency is very simple ... because mothers, too, have realised that Her Majesty's Treasury does not, and cannot, work in the best interests of their children, and they are registering their disinterest and disapproval in increasing numbers.

The CSA is not "caving in to a vast male conspiracy to break the law on child support" ... it is collapsing beneath the disgust felt by both men and women that a government should seek to use our children as weapons in a new form of tax.

The real aim of the Child Support Act is to allow government to claw back benefits against child maintenance payments made by second families. It replaces the previous system of court orders and voluntary payments with a harsh and unforgiving formula and often reduces both first and second families to poverty. Some are left with a straight choice: do I buy food or pay the CSA?

BRUCE SAWFORD

Network Against the CSA

Lillingstone Lovell, Buckinghamshire