CSA: Realism must take the place of idealism

Parliament has had to deal with two waves of child support legislation so far. Under the Conservatives, the Child Support Act 1991 led to the creation of the Child Support Agency which started work in April 1993. After what was widely regarded as the catastrophic failure of that scheme, the New Labour government, promising to make child support reform a priority, introduced the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000. This led to the introduction of a new scheme supported by a new computer system in April 2003.

Despite high hopes, that new scheme has similarly foundered, with the Work and Pensions Select Committee concluding in 2005 that the CSA was a failing organisation in crisis. Parliament now faces a third major Child Support Bill, with ministers again promising that wholesale reform of the child maintenance system — including a new formula and the abolition of the CSA — will finally lead to more money reaching the children who need it.

Amid the debris of two failed child support schemes, there has been a degree of heartsearching among MPs and peers as to whether parliament could have done a better job during the passage of the two Child Support Bills in anticipating the problems which subsequently emerged. Are there any lessons to be learned so that, this time round, parliament does it better?

There are some pretty intractable barriers to proper parliamentary scrutiny. One problem which will confront MPs and peers this time, as it has done in the past, is that the Child Support Bill will be very much a ‘legislative skeleton’, with a great deal of the detail left to regulations. Indeed, at the stage when the Bill is being debated, teams of officials will still be working on crucial aspects of the reforms, such as the detail of how the new assessment process will operate and the detailed plans for transferring existing cases to the latest model.

Some areas of reform will not need to be implemented for another two or three years at the earliest, and officials will want to keep their options open in order to develop and adapt their proposals over time. Key elements, such as the size of the maintenance disregard in 2010, will depend on funding decisions several years in the future. This can create a tension between legislators, anxious to seek assurances, and ministers and officials, keen to give themselves maximum flexibility on implementation.

The ‘devil is in the detail’ but much of that detail has yet to be developed and will be buried later in a series of statutory instruments which, due to the way parliamentary procedure works, cannot be amended, but only accepted or rejected in their entirety. This was a problem acknowledged by the Commons Social Security Committee in 1999 when it undertook a detailed review of the white paper which preceded the 2001 Bill. The Committee proposed the establishment of a ‘Child Support Advisory Committee’ similar to the Social Security Advisory Committee which has the task of scrutinising draft social security regulations, often after extensive external consultation. This proposal was rejected by the government at the time, but in the light of experience parliament may want to revive it.

A hard-won lesson from the two attempts to create a viable administratively-based child maintenance system is that — however much agreement there is on the broad principle — much depends on the practicalities of implementation. Yet at the Bill stage, parliament has only a limited ability to influence this.

For example, the first attempt to create a viable child support system suffered greatly because it was reliant on an inappropriate IT system which did not support its business. Parliament was promised that the same mistakes would not happen again.

But the second attempt to reform the system was stymied right from the start by major IT difficulties with the new CS2 system. This delayed the start date by some two years and threw up major defects when the system went live.

As it considers the third wave of reform, parliament may have little direct power to determine future IT systems or effect the profound business transformation needed to create a truly effective child support service, but bitter experience has taught it that tough questions need to be asked on delivery issues. There is no doubt that successive critical reports — from the Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee (its July 2004 report on the management of IT projects within DWP, which used the CSA as a case study) as well as the 2006 report from the National Audit Office on the second wave of child support reforms — have given MPs and peers a much greater ability to question ministers on key areas.

These include the proposed greater use of private and third-sector organisations to deliver services, the future of the troubled CS2 system and whether it will be replaced, and what more will be done to recover the more than £1bn owed in ‘collectable’ child support arrears to parents with care.

Looking back, one of the most striking features of the initial introduction of child support is the contrast between the widespread political consensus in parliament around the need for the new scheme, and the degree of vociferous and organised opposition once it was implemented.

From the start there has been a degree of over-optimism about the willingness of those called upon to pay child maintenance to part with their money, and a failure to face up to a culture of non-compliance which exists around child maintenance in this country.

Today, the proportion of lone parents receiving child maintenance stands at 32 per cent. In 1991, when the first Child Support Bill was introduced, the figure stood at 29 per cent.

Arguably, MPs and peers need to bring to the latest proposals for child support reform — which include a drive to encourage more parents to make their own maintenance arrangements — a degree of realism about the extent of non-payment of child maintenance in this country, and the need for an effective, efficient organisation which challenges non-compliance and is focused on getting the money to children.

The introduction of a new Child Support Bill takes place against a wider political background where arguments about the role of the family, and the consequences for children of parental separation have become hotly debated issues.

There is a danger that some will seek to use the forthcoming debates on child support reform as a vehicle for this wider agenda. This would be a mistake. There is still a widespread cross-party consensus that children in separated families need the support of both parents — including financial support. If this goal is to be achieved, the experience of the past suggests that politicians need to concentrate all their energies on ensuring that the latest proposals actually deliver.

Janet Allbeson, policy officer at One Parent Families, previously worked as Committee Specialist to the Work and Pensions Select Committee. janet@oneparentfamilies.org.uk