04 August 2006
The man who made the decision to scrap the troubled Child Support Agency has told Public Finance that the organisation's demise was 'inevitable' because it 'simply was not up to the job' of supporting single parents.
But Sir David Henshaw, who published his proposals for overhauling the UK's child support network on July 24, defended the CSA's staff and said that they had prevented a complete meltdown at the agency.
Speaking to PF after his report was published, Henshaw said: 'Clearly the CSA has been struggling for many years and its problems have been well documented. Its successor needs to go back to basics and focus on delivering critical child maintenance cases. Fundamental change was inevitable.
'But what struck me during the review process was the extraordinary commitment of the CSA's staff, who had been rather unfairly criticised in the past. They were using platforms and systems that simply weren't fit for purpose.'
The CSA has a backlog of more than 300,000 cases and around £3bn in uncollected maintenance. It has struggled to transfer recalculated maintenance payments across a flawed £465m computer system.
A senior source at the Department for Work and Pensions said that Henshaw, the former chief executive of Liverpool City Council, had discovered 'a complete mess'.
The source added: 'It's fair to say that he found a dysfunctional body that was not focused on delivering its core priorities.'
Henshaw confirmed the National Audit Office's recent claim that staff were forced to use up to 600 'tricks' to overcome problems with CSA computers.
He has called for a streamlined CSA successor, dealing only with cases where parents fail to agree maintenance terms between themselves. Under proposals to be fleshed out in a white paper later this year, parents who refuse to pay maintenance could have their passports suspended or be subject to curfews.
Henshaw's proposal to increase the extent to which benefit payments are disregarded when the state passes on maintenance to the parent responsible for a child should also lead to significant rises in income for thousands of low-income families – and take pressure and additional costs off the new body.
Henshaw indicated that the current benefit 'disregard' of £10 per week could increase to as much as £100, although he stressed that the final decision would be made by Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton.
PFaug2006
