Sanders Urges Support for Those Failed By CSA

12.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 24th Jul 2006

Local MP Adrian Sanders has applauded the announcement that the Child Support Agency may be scrapped, but has urged the government not to abandon those families who have been failed by the system.

The CSA, established in 1993, may be replaced by a new system which the government hopes will prove more successful in chasing up maintenance payments owing to families. However the Bay MP fears that the scaling down of the system will mean those families waiting on payments from the CSA will lose out.

Adrian Sanders said:

"I wrote to the Prime Minister last year urging him to scrap the Child Support Agency, which is clearly not fit for purpose. I am delighted that the obvious failures of the agency have at last been acknowledged, and hopeful that a new system will prove more effective in working for those who receive payments in support of their children.

"However it is crucial that the £3 billion of uncollected arrears owing to children, the 35,000 outstanding payments, and the hundreds of thousands of unassessed cases left by the maladministration of the CSA are not simply swept under the carpet, and that any restructuring of the service is a real attempt to improve child support, and not simply a cosmetic change to this failing service."

The Government's Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton is set to announce the changes to the Child Support Agency in a Commons statement today.