What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of Child Support Agency cases waiting to be processed.

The main steps are increased staffing levels and improvements in the agency's IT, and those steps are working.

At the commencement of the improvement plan, there were some 220,000 new scheme cases uncleared. By last December, that was down to 186,000. The immediate target is to get it down to 160,000 by the end of the first full year of the plan—and given that clearances have exceeded intake for nine consecutive months, I am confident that the target will be met and that there will be continued improvement thereafter.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's response. He will recall that earlier today his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that there was a backlog of 200,000 cases with the CSA. What assessment does the hon. Gentleman make of the work of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, which indicates a far higher level of problems and backlog? Does he accept that the backlog is causing real problems for vulnerable people in all our constituencies? What further will he do to clear that backlog quickly?

As I told the hon. Gentleman, the backlog is now being reduced. It was reduced by 13 per cent. in just the first year of our operational improvement plan, and the targets that we have set for the agency include the clearing of 80 per cent. of cases within 12 weeks by 2009. The substantial improvement achieved in the first year will continue. If the hon. Gentleman wants to know what more is being done to support that improvement, I suggest that he read the detailed information that we have made available about reforms to the agency's information technology system. When we examined it at the start of the operational improvement plan, it contained 500 defects. More than half those defects have now been fixed, including all the important ones. Additional investment, new processes and new ways of working for staff are helping us to make rapid progress in reducing the backlog.