7 IN 10 STILL FAIL TO COUGH UP.

Byline: By EMILY NASH 

SEVEN out of 10 absent fathers still refuse to pay for their children 12 years after the CSA was set up.

The astonishing claim came in a letter from MP Frank Field to the Prime Minister in August this year.

The former social security minister warned the system was in "meltdown".

Mr Field wrote: "The information which the CSA still publishes shows that it has collapsed in all intents and purposes for perhaps the majority of parents seeking maintenance for their children.

"In practically all respects the CSA now performs worse than it did a year after the 1997 election. The 2003 reforms, for which the new IT system alone cost taxpayers pounds 456million, have made an intolerably poor service even worse."

Mr Field also revealed that since the Government spent the hundreds of millions on a computer system, the cost of recovering pounds 1 in maintenance had risen from 48p to a "staggering" 54p.

And the Labour MP for Birkenhead said total maintenance still to be collected was up by a third in a year to pounds 1.26billion.

There were 261,000 applications yet to be processed, including 73,000 made before March 2003.

More than half of applications take more than a year to go through with the average wait 448 days. The backlog could take nine years to clear.

Delays blamed on the failed computer system amid a catalogue of failure forced Doug Smith to quit as CSA boss last year.

In January, half a million children were without support from absent parents. And in September the CSA wrote off pounds 1billion owed to needy families by absent parents.

Meanwhile official figures published last month revealed the backlog of families waiting to be assessed was 347,000 - a 20 per cent rise in six months.

The average new case processed took 180 days and the proportion of parents getting a first payment fell from 72 per cent to 52 per cent.

The CSA collected pounds 600million in maintenance payments in 2004.

CAPTION(S):

LETTER: MP Frank Field