CSA presses for tagging powers

Row over whether Agency doing enough to collect child support arrears

News, 8 November 2005

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Lawyers and others have challenged leaked proposals that the Child Support Agency be given powers to seek electronic tagging of parents who fail to keep up maintenance payments.

The extended range of sanctions, which also include confiscation of passports, disqualification as company directors and community orders, are contained in a letter by departmental civil servants to Home Secretary Charles Clarke, reported in the press today.

The CSA already has power to seek imprisonment or disqualification from driving of parents who refuse to pay up, but according to official figures only 27 custodial orders and nine driving bans have been imposed since the powers were introduced in 2001.

About £1.26 billion in maintenance arrears is currently owed by some 450,000 parents. The Agency has a backlog of over 250,000 cases. Over a third of phone calls made to it are unanswered.

John Fotheringham Convener of the Law Society of Scotland's Family Mediation Committee, said the Agency should concentrate on solving its own problems and that it already had all the powers it needed. The Institute for Public Policy Research said that the CSA's bureaucracy meant that claims took months to process.

A CSA spokesman said the Agency was carrying out a "root and branch" reform of its system, through to the new year.

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