Oral Answers to Questions — Work and Pensions. Child Support Agency. House of Commons debates. Monday, 18 July 2005

Paul Rowen (Rochdale, LDem)

What his estimate is of the number of outstanding Child Support Agency claims.

James Plaskitt (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Work and Pensions) Link to this | Hansard source

Of 680,000 new scheme applications, 260,000 are still to be cleared. A further 78,000 old scheme cases are still to be cleared, down from 130,000 a year ago. Some progress has been made, but those figures again illustrate the scale of the problems with the agency. We have therefore asked the chief executive to conduct a strategic review. His findings will be presented in the coming months, and we will report to the House in due course.

Paul Rowen (Rochdale, LDem)

I am sure that the Minister will recall that, in January, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions expressed concern and said that the CSA was living on borrowed time. At that time, just under a quarter of a million cases were outstanding. On the figures that he has given us this afternoon, the figure is now up to 330,000. Does he agree that the CSA is living not just on borrowed time but on stolen time and that that delay is causing misery and despair for many working families?

James Plaskitt (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Work and Pensions)

The delays are, of course, a problem. I think all hon. Members deal with these matters in their surgeries, which is why we are anxious to make progress in tackling the problems. The key is improving compliance rates because, if we can get those up, the agency can deal effectively with the backlog. I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that, based on the first results from 2005-06, compliance rates are reaching 82 per cent. in new cases and up to 75 per cent. under the old scheme. That is a remarkable improvement on where we were some time ago.