My Lords, as the Statement acknowledges, the Child Support Agency was set up by the last Conservative government with all-party support. It remains as true today as it was in 1993 that, wherever possible, children should be supported financially by both parents and that even low-earning or benefit-recipient absent fathers—for it is usually fathers—should make a contribution to the upkeep of their children according to their means.

Unfortunately, no one in either House of Parliament realised the scale of the problem that was to be tackled. However, by making a few quite popular changes in 1995 and 1996, the then government made it considerably more acceptable, in particular by reducing the maximum level of maintenance, which made it more affordable for absent parents. The Government inherited a system that was, I believe, beginning to work, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, the then Minister for child support, was able to say in 1998 that around 80 per cent of assessments were correct to the last penny and that some 98 per cent of maintenance,

"is passed on to the parent with care within 10 working days".

None the less, the formula used to calculate payments was hideously complicated and slow and led to long delays in assessment. The Government therefore produced a new one which was intended to go live in late 2001. It was delayed several times due to problems caused by a new computer system, but it did go live in 2003. Now, three years later, it still is not working properly and cases resolved under the old formula have still not been entered into it. I note that the Statement says that it is quite likely they never will be.

The problems with the computer programme were so dire that they caused the resignation of the chief executive last year. This was hardly surprising when a Select Committee of another place, in July 2004, described the CSA's £456 million IT system as,

"defective and over spec, over budget and over due".

The new chief executive, Stephen Geraghty, then stepped into the breach, with an initial remit to investigate what was going on in the agency and to report to Ministers with solutions, as we have heard. I emphasise this as it is quite clear that his solutions of another £300 million and hundreds of extra civil servants are unacceptable to the Government. I am glad, though, that we will be able to see exactly what he said through the departmental website. I cannot help but wonder whether he was given the wrong remit. But we shall see.

The department has already admitted that there is a backlog of cases amounting to almost 330,000 and that more than £3 billion of debt remains uncollected. Recent figures from the CSA statistical summary of last month show that the new scheme is still not delivering. Why has only 61 per cent of maintenance due under the new scheme been paid as of December 2005, compared with 72 per cent under the old scheme? Why does the agency's enforcement unit cost £12 million a year to run but only managed to recover £8 million from absent parents last year? Why did the agency receive 63,678 complaints in 2004–05, an increase of almost 30 per cent? Is it because of the fact that, of the 67,000 cases assessed as having a positive maintenance capability, only just over 40,000 parents with care are actually receiving any money? Most importantly of all, why have the Government taken so long to get down to this fundamental review?

Better late than never. So I welcome the decision to appoint Sir David Henshaw to conduct what I hope will be a root and branch review of a government organisation which by any account is a total shambles.

I also believe that this new review should look at each operation of the CSA separately. Assessment, case management, collection and enforcement are all discrete functions of the agency and could ultimately be carried out by separate organisations, either within or without the public sector. I note that an immediate solution is to use an outside agency to collect such debts as have been identified. This must be right—but I hope the Minister will acknowledge that it is only a temporary solution. There are also suggestions around of attachment of earnings orders being used. I would have thought that these were long overdue.

In essence, this is an honest and, for once, unspun Statement. At long last the Government are grasping a nettle and my party will do all in its power to contribute to the solution. Child support is one subject on which we desperately need a consensus.