LIB DEMS CALL FOR CSA TO BE AXED AFTER NEW FIGURES HIGHLIGHT ONGOING CRISIS - BROOKE

6.00.00pm GMT Thu 9th Feb 2006

The Liberal Democrats today called for the crisis-ridden Child Support Agency to be axed, and for the agency's responsibilities to be transferred to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The call comes ahead of an expected Government statement today on the future of the CSA.

Commenting, local MP Annette Brooke, said:

"These latest figures show that the CSA remains an utter shambles - with staff leaving, complaints soaring and a vast unprocessed backlog of cases.

"It is unbelievable that support and back office staff are being cut back, when there is a delay of 470 days in dealing with unprocessed new scheme cases.

"The CSA is the most ineffective Child Support Agency in the developed world, collecting just £1.85p for every £1 spent on administration. Labour have totally failed to deal with this mess with the amount of money owed to families has rocketed from £1.1bn in 1997 to £3.3bn.

"I fear that the Government is set to announce more gimmicks and more reviews about the CSA, instead of doing what is now necessary and replacing this failed agency with a system which will work.

"John Hutton should announce that he is scrapping the CSA in its existing form, and will transfer its responsibilities to HM Revenue and Customs. The taxman already collects information on people's earnings, and those who won't pay should have the cash deducted at source."

ENDS - Note for Editors

New figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show the scale of the crisis at the failing agency:

 The CSA has received an amazing 108,921 formal complaints in the last 2 years alone [PQ 06/21961].

 1,960 of the CSA's 9,500 staff left during the period 1/4/04 to 31/3/05 (1 in 5 members of staff) [PQ 05/21855].

 The CSA continues to be ineffective in enforcement - only using its powers to withdraw driving licences 11 times in the last 5 years, since the power was introduced, in spite of over 250,000 non paying absent parents. [PQ, 05/28420]. In 2000, the Government minister introducing this measure told the House of Commons that "The threat of losing their licence will probably cause them to pay their dues".

 The CSA has been forced to admit that it has cut support staff and back office staff numbers over the year since January 2005, despite a recommendation from the Work and Pensions Select Committee that; "It makes no sense to implement job cuts when the Agency is already struggling." [PQ 06/45754].

 The CSA continues to fall further behind in its work - receiving 219,000 new scheme applications since January 2005, but clearing only 211,000 of these [PQ 05/21582].