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10.4 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Angela Eagle): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastwood (Mr. Murphy) on being successful in the ballot for Adjournment debates and on the excellent way in which he has represented his constituent in this difficult case.
As my hon. Friend will appreciate, I am bound by the rules of confidentiality and cannot therefore respond in detail in the House to the points that he has made about the CSA's handling of this case. I share his concerns, however. It is clear that the standard of service that Mr. Reilly received falls far short of what is acceptable. I shall be happy to meet my hon. Friend in a more discreet environment to discuss the details of the case.
I apologise on behalf of the agency for its mishandling of the case. The problems date back over six years and flow from a succession of errors and failures on the part
of the agency. I understand that the CSA's independent case examiner has now investigated my hon. Friend's constituent's complaints about the way in which his case was handled, and ex gratia payments have been made to him in recognition of those failures. I am also told that arrears of maintenance that were wrongly paid have also been refunded. Perhaps I can discuss with my hon. Friend whether all those arrears have been refunded, because he raised the issue of amounts that do not tally.
My hon. Friend tabled four questions last summer about the operations of the CSA's independent case examiner, and he has corresponded with my ministerial colleagues on this case, with the most recent response having been sent last week.
My hon. Friend has raised a number of issues about the way in which the Child Support Agency handled his constituent's case, and I shall try to respond to those in general terms, but in particular to four key issues that the case highlights.
First, there were clear failures in keeping Mr. Reilly, and indeed my hon. Friend, informed about decisions of crucial importance in the handling of the case and subsequent inquiries. As many hon. Members know, the CSA has always had difficulties with clear and effective communication. That is partly because it uses a computer system that was already 20 years out of date when it was bought in 1990. As a consequence, it issues notification letters that pose more questions than they answer and could rarely be described as being written in a clear and understandable way.
There is a further failure on the part of the CSA to share information with other parts of the benefits system, which can make difficult cases even more confusing. That has happened in the case that we are discussing.
The changes to the decision-making provisions in child support, which we implemented in June 1999, gave us the opportunity to simplify and enhance the way in which the CSA communicates with its clients. In particular, the reasons for decisions are now explained more clearly, and parents should now have a much clearer understanding of how they can get a decision with which they disagree reconsidered.
The second point concerns the way that allegations of fraud and undeclared income are approached by the CSA. I am sure that my hon. Friend will appreciate that that is inevitably a difficult matter for an agency that has to amass the vast range of information needed to complete an assessment using the existing unwieldy child support formula.
Too often, parents come to the CSA already highly suspicious of each other and all too ready to believe the worst. Given that the CSA's involvement usually begins as a result of a claim to benefit by the parent with care, there is often suspicion on the part of the non-resident parent that benefit has been claimed fraudulently.
In the past, the CSA has simply passed such allegations to the Benefits Agency and failed to follow them up. However, that has changed since the Government took office. I can assure my hon. Friend that allegations of fraud are taken very seriously. All well-founded allegations of benefit fraud are investigated and further action is taken when appropriate.
That may take a little time and it is not always obvious to the person who has made the allegation that the suspect is under investigation. That may of course be frustrating
for the parent concerned, but I hope that hon. Friend will understand that data protection principles do not allow the person who has made allegations of benefit fraud to be kept informed of progress with any investigation.
In the summer of 1998, the chief executive of the CSA, Faith Boardman, invited the benefit fraud inspectorate to inspect the agency and help to develop a security strategy. The resulting fraud and security strategy was published as part of its report. It included a number of specific commitments to support the Benefits Agency's fight against fraud, in particular by the introduction of better, streamlined fraud referral processes, clear service level agreements with the BA and better information sharing.
It should be remembered that, even if it is proved that benefit has been claimed fraudulently, maintenance liability might not be affected. That is because child support action that began with a claim to benefit does not cease automatically when a parent with care is found not to have been entitled to the benefit concerned. The simple fact of benefit being paid begins the child support process; it only stops after entitlement to the benefit has ceased and the parent with care asks the CSA to stop acting.
Thirdly, the case raises issues about the treatment of payments made between the parents and the interaction between such direct payments and the amount that the CSA seeks to collect if asked to do so by either parent. It is right that the CSA should, if asked to do so, seek to collect maintenance by the method that will best ensure that maintenance due becomes maintenance paid. When there is no agreement with the non-resident parent that ensures that maintenance will be paid, maintenance can, and should, be deducted directly from the non-resident parent's earnings.
That does not mean that the CSA can ever be justified in failing to ensure, before action of that sort is taken, that liability and any debts have been calculated properly; that the non-resident parent is given every opportunity to discuss alternative means of payment; and that any difficulties deductions from earnings may cause are considered sympathetically. Clearly, the handling of Mr. Reilly's affairs fell far short of acceptable in that respect.
We have already taken steps to improve the service that the CSA offers to non-resident parents. Longer opening hours and more use of the telephones mean that staff are available at times that suit working parents. In addition, the CSA is working with the private sector to improve compliance, to ensure that where possible parents do not fall into arrears with payments.
Fourthly and finally, Mr. Reilly's case highlights problems in getting tribunal decisions put into effect. Hon. Members will appreciate that, given the complexity of the child support formula, appeal tribunals are often not equipped to work out the new assessment when they allow an appeal. In the past, the tribunals were required to send all appeals that they allowed back to the CSA for action. That often entailed further investigation and long delays before people who appealed had their liability put right. Those delays simply added to the months that parents had had to wait for the appeal to be heard in the first place, thus piling frustration on frustration.
As I have mentioned, we have now changed the way in which child support decisions are made; we have also changed the way in which tribunals work. Delays in
hearing appeals will be reduced and the way in which successful appeals are handled has been streamlined. Where necessary, the tribunal can still refer the assessment back to the CSA for determination; inevitably, that will continue to take time. However, where the tribunal can decide the issue under appeal, it will be free to do so.
We have all encountered such cases via our constituency postbags--I have dealt with some myself--and they are the main reason that we are determined radically to reform the agency. I understand my hon. Friend's concern that the agency has provided him with information that was wrong. There is no excuse for that, but the complexity of the current system substantially increases the risk of it happening, especially in connection with cases that go back many years.
Ever since the CSA was launched in April 1993, there has been a catalogue of complaints from parents with care who do not get the maintenance to which they are entitled, and from non-resident parents who have been let down by receiving a poor service. With hindsight, we can see that the problem lies with the way that the child support system was designed. The complex rules do not fit, either with the lives of separated families, or with other systems that provide support for those families.
Parents are left baffled and angry with a system that seems bureaucratic and insensitive to the very real difficulties that they face. When things go wrong, they can go very wrong indeed, as Mr. Reilly's case shows. The way in which the system operates too often adds to the tensions between parents, thus denying children a good relationship with both their mother and their father. Complexity leads to delay, which leads to maintenance debts as the non-resident parent's liability mounts waiting for the CSA to makes an assessment. That leads to anger and resentment all round.
That is why we plan to abolish the current scheme and replace it with a simple, more deliverable system that is focused on the needs of children and of good, responsible parents. Parents who face up to their responsibilities will receive a better service, whereas irresponsible parents will face effective and speedy sanctions.
As I said earlier, the case to which my hon. Friend referred has been the subject of an investigation by the CSA's independent case examiner. The agency takes complaints about its service very seriously and has developed a system to analyse them and to identify and correct the weaknesses that they reveal. For example, there is now an earlier recognition of clients' problems, and early efforts are made to put them right. More cases that reach the independent case examiner are resolved by an early resolution procedure that prevents the need for a full-blown and lengthy investigation.
The case which lies behind tonight's debate highlights problems of which we are all only too aware, many of which surfaced in the early days of the CSA. There have been substantial improvements in the agency's performance since then. As a result, the CSA has seen its numbers of complaints fall by more than 20 per cent. as compared with 12 months ago, at a time when its case load has increased by more than 20 per cent. The agency now has nearly a million cases on its books.
Ultimately, however, the only answer lies in radical reform. That is why we must introduce a new child support service with a simple, transparent and predictable
formula for working out child support. In the reformed scheme, non-resident parents will know in advance what their maintenance liability is likely to be and can plan accordingly.
A more effective and efficient child support service coupled with the introduction of a £10 maintenance premium in income support and the 100 per cent. disregard of maintenance in working families tax credit will mean that more than 1 million children will gain, many of them seeing the benefit of maintenance for the first time.
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