Child Support Agency

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 11:00 am on 2 December 2004.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Work and Pensions, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions) 11:00, 2 December 2004

My Lords, there have been well documented problems with the new IT system. However, three-quarters of all CSA cases are on the old system and 99 per cent of payments are made within 10 days.

Under the new system, which is where the IT problems are, 90 per cent of private cases have had maintenance assessments and the money flows. Our problem, in other words, is not that payments are not being made—they are—but that the new computer, for various reasons that we could explore, is not yet sufficiently robust to allow us safely to migrate the old system cases on to the new system. That is where the key problem lies.