Lone Parents (Hansard, 11 May 1998)

§ Mr. Keith Bradley

Regular payments of maintenance can transform the lives of lone mothers and their children, providing a stable income that can help them off Income Support and into work. We expect the Child Support Agency to provide a consistent, fair and efficient service to all its clients.

The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the Chief Executive, Mrs. Faith Boardman. She will write to the hon. Member.

Letter from Faith Boardman to Mr. Steve Webb, dated 8 May 1998: I am replying to your Parliamentary Questions to the Secretary of State for Social Security about maintenance due to parents with care who are receiving or moving off Income Support. In cases where the parent with care is receiving Income Support and the maintenance liability changes, the Child Support Agency notifies the Benefits Agency to advise them of the change. Benefits Agency staff then access the Income Support Computer System and input the revised amount of maintenance liability, and Income Support is adjusted accordingly. This revised information will then be available via Common Enquiry Services. Where the parent with care is moving off Income Support, the Benefit Agency notify the Child Support Agency of the date from which Income Support is no longer payable so that maintenance payments can be passed onto the parent with care. Statistics are not collated on the time between the notification and payment as these details would not prove very informative due to the several factors that have an influence on when a payment is due and in turn actually made. The length of time is influenced by the complexity of the change, the payment preferences of the parent with care and the absent parent, and also the absent parent's pay frequency. It is therefore difficult to estimate an average length of time for this process. The Agency is very aware of the need to deal with changes and ensure payments are passed on to the parent with care as quickly as possible. Where the change is straightforward all aspects can be dealt with in 2 weeks; in more involved cases (e.g., where a deduction from earnings order is in place) the change can take 8 weeks. During 1997–98, the Agency exceeded its Secretary of State target which required that 97% of payments be passed to the parent with care within ten days of receipt from the absent parent. We are constantly looking at how we can adapt and improve our procedures to speed up the time taken. The timescales achieved for many cases have shortened over the last 2 years. Such an example is that the Agency is building more pro-active use of the telephone into its procedures between assessment and first payment to ensure that timescales are shortened wherever possible. The vast majority of payment advice is now conducted by telephone. As part of the Welfare to Work programme, the Agency is committed to ensuring that the disincentives and barriers to entering employment are minimised, and that obstacles are removed which jeopardise the prospect of lone parents moving from welfare dependency to work. The Agency has agreed to process as a priority cases where the parent with care has signed up to a New Deal for Lone Parents Action Plan. Also the Agency has agreed to answer straightforward inquiries from New Deal for Lone Parents Personal Advisers on behalf of lone parents immediately, and more complex ones within five working days. As the Department moves towards a more Active Modem Service, one of the key elements is to provide staff with a system which cuts across all Agencies where they will have access to information regarding payments and records of other Social Security systems. This should alleviate problems encountered by staff acting in ignorance of information held by other Agencies. I hope this is helpful.