057f3528_1997_articles__s__not_necessarily_contiguous_
[Date & reference] 1997-07-17 This Is Lancashire Scrap Child Support Agency
SIR: Mr Tony Blair leader of the Labour Party knows the Child Support Agency is in dire straits. A survey carried out by Labour's Gerry Sutcliffe just before the general election firmly established that MPs are simply not prepared to carry on dealing with surgeries stuffed full of CSA cases. They want action. The point is, what kind of action will they get? They realise the only solution is abolition, yet, strangely, Labour's catch phrase of the moment is that they cannot afford to scrap the CSA. They seem quite unaware that income is more or less the same as it was under the old Liable Relatives Unit, yet the CSA costs nearly four times more to run. What's more, the court-based system remains in place. It still deals with all other aspects of divorce, even though matters of child maintenance have been removed from its remit. There is no reason why, even temporarily, things couldn't go back to how they were. It would instantly save taxpayers £1.1b..... the cost of a new computer.
1997 articles
Extracts (not necessarily contiguous)