Press Release

The solution to the problems of the Child Support Agency lies outside the agency itself.

So now it has been recognized - the enforcement unit of the CSA cost £12m to run and has recovered £8m.

Parents with care would be better off, by 50%, if it were shut down and they were given the taxpayers' cash saved. The CSA as a whole costs £1 in administrative costs for every £1.85 it raises.

These are of course only the costs that fall on the public purse. Everyone who deals with the CSA knows that the private costs are far far greater - finding out the information, filling in the documentation, proving the figures, trying to resolve the mistakes, the postage, the delays, the unanswered phone calls, the fears and the dashed hopes.

The total net social cost of the CSA must be massive.

Its abolition would be an enormous relief for all parties.

The enterprise was a massive failure of 'joined up government’.

'The first step in dealing not only with child support, but with child poverty and a raft of other social problems, is to tackle the problem at source',

said FNF Chair John Baker.

'The problem lies in the assumption that just one of the children's parents should have the care and the cost, and the other is simply a source of money for the children's financial support. The residential parent under this scheme cannot earn enough, and the non-residential parent resents paying for children from whose lives he/she is excluded.'

'Of course non-residential parents should pay towards the cost of their children, but their duty is to be a parent 'in the round', by contributing to both the care as well as the cost of the children. It is its concern with only part of a child-centred family policy that has been the downfall of the CSA.'

'Shared parenting would share the cost as well as the care of children, and this would promote more equality in earnings, as well as reducing child poverty and the cost to the taxpayer of support to lone parents'

‘The need for a CSA would recede. There would be fewer cases, and the sums needing transfer would be less.’

‘The CSA is based on a misreading of public attitudes. Parents voluntarily share their money with children and their carers if they share a life with the children. Perhaps they should not, but they will, resist paying for children from whose lives they are excluded. ‘

‘A 'joined up' family policy would seek to give the children of separated parents the benefits of the involvement of both. This is what most of them want and it would bring them benefits in every area of life. ‘

‘And it will promote the voluntary sharing of money. In all other areas of Family Law, arrangements that are agreed are seen as better than ones imposed.’

‘There will still be a need for a CSA, and it would need to be reformed on lines that are fairer and more child-centred than the existing one. But it would, however, be much smaller, shrink further with increasing equality in employment and child care, and its work would engender less resistance. ‘

‘If departmental responsibility of the CSA is to be changed, it should not go to the Inland Revenue. It will still be seen as part of taxation. It should go to the DfES, to be seen in the context of policy for children.’