28 November 2003
The £300m IT system brought in to speed up Child Support Agency maintenance payouts has 'failed spectacularly', with less than 4% of claimants receiving payment, according to the Liberal Democrats.
The party also said the computer problems were so acute that staff were being forced to make manual calculations.
Information obtained by LibDem work and pensions spokesman Steve Webb showed that of the 152,564 applications received, just a third have been processed and of these, only 10% have resulted in a maintenance payment being made.
'It is scandalous that this multimillion pound computer system is so completely unreliable that CSA staff are having to get pocket calculators out simply to keep the backlog down,' Webb said.
'Hard-up lone parents will rightly ask where their cash is. Taxpayers will rightly question why huge sums of public money have been wasted.'
But a spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said it had always been open about the problems affecting the computer systems. He also disputed the LibDems' figures, saying they masked the true picture.
'It ignores the fact that something in the region of 40% of new applications typically close before there is any need to calculate maintenance – usually because parents reconcile,' he said.
He added that there had been significant progress in clearing the backlog of applications. 'The most up-to-date figures show 6,000 of the poorest families are now benefiting by up to £10 a week from the new child maintenance premium.'
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