After that useless CSA, will this bring home the bacon? 

Ever since it was set up in the early 1990s, the doggedly malfunctioning Child Support Agency (CSA) has left politicians and parents alike tearing their hair out. Only one in three parents with care receive any maintenance at all, the backlog of unmet payments runs to over £3bn, and an agency designed to bring savings to the taxpayer actually costs the exchequer £200m a year. When the government’s independent adviser, Sir David Henshaw, proposed dismantling the CSA last year, no-one fought to keep it. After several ineffective attempts at resuscitation, ministers have rightly agreed to turn off the life support.

The government’s ambition is for a slimmer but slicker system where parents meet their responsibilities and money gets to the children who need it most. If plans shortly to come before MPs get the go ahead, the Child Support Agency will be replaced by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, or C-MEC. In setting up C-MEC, ministers hope to see more parents negotiating maintenance arrangements between themselves: a simpler process of assessing and making decisions, and a range of new powers to get tough on non-resident parents (usually fathers) who don’t pay up.

With Treasury resources limited, the child support system can — and must — shoulder a far greater share than currently of the responsibility for meeting the target of halving child poverty, now looming on the horizon. More than four in ten poor children live in lone parent households, but less than a quarter of these parents receive any maintenance payments at all. In the UK, child support is responsible for less than three per cent of reductions in child poverty, compared to 25 per cent in Australia and 18 per cent in Sweden.

Under existing rules, resident parents on income support are compelled to register and make arrangements through the CSA. As well as facing the well publicised delays and errors of the agency, these parents are denied what research consistently says they most want: the chance to negotiate child support between themselves. Plans to remove this obligation, alongside a major simplification of the way maintenance assessments are calculated, should help deliver a fairer process.

However, if C-MEC really is to have a tighter focus on the ‘hard end’ cases and tough enforcement, rather than being swamped like its predecessor, then more separating parents need to be supported to reach voluntary agreement themselves. A recent National Audit Office (NAO) report found that mediated settlements take nearly a quarter of the time, and cost the taxpayer half as much, as those that end up in the courts. However, the NAO found that only 20 per cent of legal aid cases go to mediation, an option not offered to one third of families — thus demonstrating the potential for improvement.

To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, mandated settlements must genuinely be the last option. This means entrenching strong, institutional links between C-MEC, relationship support and mediation services.

Evidence suggests that helping families to deal with the trauma of separation as amicably and consensually as possible leads to higher rates of maintenance payments and more regular contact with non-resident parents, both of which are beneficial for children.

Worryingly, the government’s white paper refers only fleetingly to improving ‘access to information and guidance’ and links to ‘quality support’. This is not the only area where the government needs to go further.

Child maintenance payments count as household income for the calculation of means-tested benefits. But for many low-income parents higher child support payments simply mean lower benefits. When extra cash accrues to the taxman rather than children, there are few incentives for either parent to ensure maintenance is paid.

Indeed only 42,000 parents with care on benefits see any net rise in their income as a result of child support payments. A recent rule change now means resident parents can keep the first £10 a week of maintenance before benefits are affected. The government must deliver on its pledge to significantly increase this ‘disregard’, encouraging both resident parents to seek maintenance and non-resident parents to pay up.

Finally, the government wants to get tough on parents who persistently dodge their responsibilities. Tenacious debt collection, passport confiscation and the ‘naming and shaming of deadbeat dads’ are all on the table (and in the headlines).

Potentially more profound though are proposals to compulsorily register fathers on the birth certificate. This is a complex and sensitive area, where the protection of vulnerable women and children at risk of domestic violence is vital. However, the messages it will convey about the equally precious role of both mum and dad, and of parenthood as a joint and non-negotiable act of citizenship, make it the right step to take.

Parenting is emerging as a key political battleground. Legislative change can ensure fair procedures, efficient systems and positive incentives. But equally vital is a culture change in the value and status we give to the contribution of both parents to their children and our collective future, practically and emotionally as well as financially. This, in the end, will frame the real enduring test of the government’s latest child support reforms.

Graeme Cooke is Social Policy researcher, ippr.