The independent commentary on British political affairs.
The independent commentary on British political affairs.
May 2008
Vol. 11, No. 11
A People's War: Brenda Boardman | The shadow over Brown's plan's to change the way we are governed: … More…
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At last the government has decided to radically reform the disastrous child support policy and dispose of the Child Support Agency. Since the implementation of the CSA in 1993 the policy has been ineffective and the proportion of parents with care receiving child maintenance has hardly shifted from around 30 per cent. This is despite changes in social norms, with more fathers becoming actively involved in childrearing both within intact families and following separation.
Crucially, the new proposals will return control to parents themselves. All parents, including parents with care in receipt of out-of-work social security benefits, will be free to leave the CSA and negotiate private child maintenance agreements with the other parent. There will be no third-party involvement from C-Mec unless the parents want it and all parents with care will be able to keep more of the money paid before it affects their social security benefits (a higher ‘benefits disregard’).
These two key elements — a more generous ‘benefits disregard’ and the encouragement of private agreements — lends the policy some long-needed legitimacy in the eyes of parents. Now, parents will be able to see their children gain from child maintenance payments rather than watch their money go to the Treasury. Hopefully this will increase compliance and thereby help to tackle child poverty.
It could be said that children will ‘come first’, but the question is when? Key contradictions are apparent in the policy framework regarding the principle to tackle child poverty and much of the policy proposal remains opaque.
The level at which the ‘higher benefit disregard’ will be set has not yet been announced and in any event is not due to be implemented until 2010-11, after the government’s interim child poverty target is examined.
This is inexplicable given the evidence in Sir David Henshaw’s review of child support policy that a full disregard could lift up to 90,000 additional children out of poverty. It seems the delay is due to a preoccupation with the potential perverse incentives that the disregard might have on the employment behaviour of parents with care — particularly lone parents in receipt of social security benefits. Yet there is no evidence to substantiate this misplaced concern.
There is plenty of research evidence showing that lone parents do want to work, but it is the lack of affordable and suitable childcare that is the main barrier to employment. Also, lone parents’ decisions to work are not driven simply by economic concerns; they consistently say in research studies that they want to work in order to be independent of social security benefits, to set good examples to their children and to improve their own and their children’s immediate well-being and future life chances.
Therefore, the weight of evidence on lone parents’ employment behaviour would suggest that it is more likely that child maintenance monies would be used to help gain and sustain employment rather than encouraging parents to languish on miserly social security benefits. Mistakenly, government policy tends to stick to a philosophy of ‘economic rationality’ by assuming lone parents’ decisions are driven primarily by financial gain, rather than by their own and their children’s well-being.
To put children’s needs first, the new policy proposals might also have considered more effectively the role played by non-resident parents, mainly fathers, in their children’s lives. It is recognised in the white paper that where parents can agree their own arrangements they are more likely to be committed to paying child maintenance and that the previous system could actually harm some parental relationships.
But it does not discuss at all the extended role fathers might play in their children’s lives. There are no proposals regarding how contact time with the non-resident parent might be recognised in the new child maintenance formula.
The key contradiction here centres on child maintenance being less about the child’s relationship with his/her father and sharing his resources and living standards, and more about child maintenance money being used to address income poverty for the family unit of the parent with care.
Conversely, there is no maximum amount set for child maintenance in the latest formula and, as Professor McKay argued in the DWP Select Committee’s enquiry, this element could be regarded as being more about sharing the fathers’ resources and less about poverty alleviation.
This muddle surrounding the guiding principle to tackle child poverty might explain the reluctance in the white paper to discuss contact issues or to make a nil assessment for child maintenance when there is nearly equal shared care between parents (a proposal suggested by Sir Henshaw in his review).
It might also explain why the system appears intent on penalising some of the poorest parents. Non-resident parents in receipt of social security benefits will see the amount of child maintenance automatically deducted from their benefits rise from £5 to £7 per week. According to CPAG this is equal to a 40 per cent increase in their child maintenance liability if they receive Income Support.
This is not an insignificant amount for a single non-resident parent who may be receiving as little as £45.50 per week. This increase in child maintenance liability could severely hinder these poorest parents in maintaining contact with their children and sharing their resources with them. It is also unknown what impact this rise could have on the poverty of their families if they have resident children living with them.
Another element that seems out of line with the poverty reduction principle is the apparent refusal to offer a collection service for parents who have made private child maintenance agreements with each other arriving at their own figure for payment. If parents want to have their private maintenance payments collected then C-Mec will not provide this service, at least not without carrying out a full assessment using the new formula. As Stephen Geraghty (the current Chief Executive of the CSA) stated to the Social Security Committee: ‘The plan is we offer calculation and collection or calculation but not collection, but we would not offer collection but not calculation.’ (HC 219-1, 2007, p 28).
The latest DWP research evidence on Maintenance Direct payments suggests that parents would be more willing to make private agreements if they could be assured of having it collected. This applies to both parents with care and non-resident parents, with the former wanting some security over regularity of payments and the latter wanting some evidence recording the payments that they have made.
This is rather short-sighted, as a collection service for privately agreed amounts, even for a time-limited period, could help establish a pattern of payment early and help build trust between separated parents. The main role for C-Mec is therefore to be one of enforcer only and will be, according to the secretary of state John Hutton, the ‘worst nightmare’ for non-compliant non-resident parents.
The provision of a collection service would appear to undermine the aim for C-Mec to be an efficient and effective enforcer with its attention unflinchingly focused on the harder non-compliant cases. Clearly, this fits incontrovertibly with the aim to tackle child poverty — to force recalcitrant parents to pay up. C-Mec will therefore wield a bigger and better stick than the CSA and it will be aimed more accurately at those who resolutely ‘refuse’ to pay, applying stronger and potentially more effective enforcement powers.
Whether this will produce the hoped for transformation in human behaviour remains to be seen, however. No one knows what this mix of greater freedom to make private agreements alongside a stronger enforcement function will yield in relation to parents’ and children’s relationships, and child poverty alleviation.
Many policy challenges remain — not least some major operational issues such as the transition arrangements for consolidating the two current systems of child maintenance onto a simpler one.
Other laudable and important elements of the policy framework also remain untried and untested, such as the new role for Her Majesties Revenue and Customs to provide income details of non-resident parents from tax records and the provision of a new universal advice and guidance service for separating parents.
The story of this policy is not over yet, nothing has been fixed and policy makers cannot afford to heave a sigh of relief that the ineffective and much maligned CSA is now dead.
The proposals as a whole contain some inconsistencies and tensions, and much of the detail of how it will work is missing. MPs need to be aware that the missing detail was a major flaw in the first 1991 Child Support Act.
Dr. Christine Skinner, Lecturer in Social Policy,Department of Social Policy & Social Work, University of York .