Child Support Agency

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:48 pm on 17 January 2006.

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Photo of Anne McIntosh Anne McIntosh Shadow Minister (Work and Pensions) 4:48, 17 January 2006

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point, and I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to respond to it.

The Minister told us about the catalogue of missed targets. The Select Committee report showed that not one of the targets had been reached. Paragraph 31 stated:

"The Committee believes that the failure to achieve any of the Ministerial targets for the new scheme is totally unacceptable and in the opinions expressed forcefully by One Parent Families represents nothing less than a severe breach of trust."

The Committee related that failure to the increasing incidence of complaints to the independent case examiner.

As I said, we do not expect that the solution will be easy or that there can be a quick fix, but we are not convinced that the Inland Revenue is the answer. Its computer system shares many of the faults and defects of the CSA system and the Revenue has the disadvantage of not knowing a person's total income until the year end.

The Conservatives want to help parents with care and to set people free, thereby saving money for the benefits system, and thus the state, while making parents live up to their responsibilities. Obviously, two parents are always better than one, but the CSA has to deal with the situation to the best of its ability and I am sure that the House agrees that the system should be improved. The question is what those improvements should be, and I should like to go through them.

The case for the CSA was agreed with all-party support when it was set up in 1993. Wherever possible, children should be supported financially by both parents, rather than by the taxpayer, and the agency should play a key role in providing financial support to enable lone parents to get out of the benefit trap and into work.

I should like to place on record the reason we believe that the Liberal Democrat policy, in so far as it was set out—