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One Parent Families CSA Campaign hits the headlines
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18/11/04 One Parent Families helped push the crisis-hit Child Support Agency (CSA) to the top of the media and political agenda in the run-up to the resignation of the agency's Chief Executive Doug Smith. Mr Smith's resignation was announced at a Work and Pensions Select Committee hearing, at which the Secretary of State and Mr Smith gave evidence.
Opening the hearing, Chairman of the Committee Archie Kirkwood MP referred to the powerful testimony given by our lone-parent member Nancy Lombard, who came with us to give evidence to the committee at an earlier hearing on the agency last month. Nancy's testimony on the agency's inefficiency in handling her case and its failure to deliver her payments had been "...the most compelling piece of evidence this Committee has had for a long time", Mr Kirkwood said.
After the hearing Janet Allbeson from our Policy Team was interviewed by - and quoted in - most of the major national daily newspapers covering the hearing and appeared on BBC and Channel Four news and on Newsnight.
Our member Michelle Holman gave interviews on her own experience of the CSA to BBC News, Radio 4's Today programme and to The Daily Telegraph. Lone Parent and One Parent Families' trustee Tine Wade gave an interview which ran throughout Radio One's peak-time news bulletins and our helpline team was filmed for ITN's lunchtime and evening news.
Straight after the hearing, reacting to Mr Smith's resignation, Janet told the media that Mr Smith's departure would make little difference to 'desperate' lone parents who had waited months or years for the child maintenance they were promised when the CSA was reformed 18 months ago: 'Rearranging who runs the CSA isn't going to solve theproblem,' she told national reporters. 'It is a systemic failure. There are a million cases waiting to come on to the new system and tens of thousands of lone parents missing out on the £10 a week (maintenance premium) that was promised to them.'
Across the print and broadcast media network, Janet reiterated our call to stop the staff cuts at the Agency, describing it as 'ludicrous' that an Agency struggling to cope stands to lose up to 4,000 staff. And she called for the Government to consider introducing an advance maintenance scheme under which lone parents would automatically receive at least a proportion of their entitlements with the Government taking responsibility for recouping the money from the non-resident parent.
The debate gathered momentum and reached the floor of the House of Commons with the Prime Minister taking questions on the Agency from opposition MPs. Acknowledging that the Agency's current performance is 'unacceptable' the Prime Minister said that transferring the CSA's work to the Inland Revenue could cause more problems for the Agency's clients.
At One Parent Families we will keep the pressure on for an early decision from Government - on whether the current IT system at the Agency can be made to work and on what else needs to happen to get money flowing to lone parents' children. Lone Parents and their children have lost out for long enough. It is time for Government to show that it can deliver a fully functional and efficient child maintenance service.
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