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29 Mar 2006 : Column 1015W—continued
Correspondence
Sir Michael Spicer: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State will reply to the letter of 31 January from the hon. Member for West Worcestershire. [57640]
Margaret Hodge
[holding answer 29 March 2006]: I replied to the hon. Member on 27 March 2006.
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Child Support Agency
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the average time is for the Child Support Agency cases to spend in (a) the pre-application stage, (b) the application stage, (c) the information-gathering stage and (d) the calculation and collection set-up stage before first payment is received for (i) cases from parents with care receiving income support or income-related jobseeker's allowance, (ii) cases from parents with care not on income support or income-related jobseeker's allowance and (iii) all cases. [18787]
Mr. Plaskitt: The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the chief executive. He will write to the hon. Member.
In reply to your Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive. The Chief Executive is currently unavailable as he is communicating the Operational Improvement Plan to all Agency staff. I am responding on his behalf.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time is for the Child Support Agency cases to spend in (a) the pre-application stage (b) the application stage (c) the information-gathering stage and (d) the calculation and collection set-up stage before first payment is received for (i) cases from parents with care receiving income support or income related jobseeker's allowance (ii) cases from parents with care not on income support or income-related jobseeker's allowance and (iii) all cases.
The CSA does not collect data in exactly these categories but such information as is available is set out in the tables attached, together with notes describing each category.
The Agency defines an application as having cleared the overall application process if a maintenance calculation has been carried out and a payment arrangement between the parent with care and the non resident parent is in place. Additionally, since not all Child Support Agency applications result in a calculation, an application is also defined as cleared if the case is closed, the parent with care is identified as claiming Good Cause or is subject to a Reduced Benefit Decision, or the application is identified as being a change of circumstances on an existing case as opposed to a new application.
The time from application clearance to first payment represents the first stage of the compliance and enforcement part of the process, as by this point the onus will now be, to a large extent, on the non-resident parent to accept financial responsibility for their children and comply with the request for maintenance.
As you will notice, many of the cases yet to clear individual stages of the process are more than a year old, a level of performance which is clearly unacceptable to our clients. In the Operational Improvement Plan announced by the Secretary of State on 9th February 2006, the Agency set itself a target of reducing the backlog of uncleared new applications to the point where, by March 2009, 80% of applications will be cleared within 12 weeks and there will be no backlog in this area.
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Notes:
1. Intake type refers to the parent with care's (PWC) benefit status at the time that their application is received, and not their current benefit status nor the status at the point when the case is cleared. The PWC's benefit status may change during the course of their application being processed and these figures make no provision to take account of such changes.
2. The pre-application stage is where a potential application is screened to establish whether it is valid. Pre-application clearance is where the case either progresses to the application stage, a reduced benefit decision (RBD) is applied, good cause is accepted, or the case is closed.
3. A case enters application stage where it has been accepted as valid at the pre-application stage. An application clearance occurs when a calculation is carried out, a RBD is subsequently applied, good cause is subsequently accepted or the case is subsequently closed.
4. A case enters post calculation stage where clearance at the application stage results in a calculation being carried out. Post calculation clearance is where a collection schedule is set up, an MD arrangement is set up immediately after calculation, a RBD is subsequently applied, good cause is subsequently accepted, the case is subsequently closed, or the calculation is classified as being a nil liability meaning that no further action is required.
5. The first payment stage is the time between a collection schedule being set up and a first payment being made to the PWC, or a maintenance direct arrangement being put in place. There are an additional 2,000 cases where payment was made to the PWC prior to a schedule or maintenance direct arrangement being agreed (i.e. voluntary payments), which have been excluded from the first table.
6. For those cases that do not result in a calculation, clearance of the overall application process can occur at any stage. Cases can also have cleared individual stages, but still be part way through the overall process. This means that, mathematically, neither the average time to clear the whole application process, nor the age of all uncleared cases can be obtained through summing the components presented in the table.
7. These figures do not include 84,000 cases received via the Jobcentre Plus interface that are yet to be processed, and for which we do not currently have sufficient management information for them to be included in this analysis.
8. In addition, analysis of clearance times excludes 104,000 cases received via the Jobcentre Plus interface that have been closed, or identified as a change of circumstance to an existing case (as opposed to a new application) as, again, we do not currently have sufficient management information for them to be included in this analysis.
9. Figures are rounded to the nearest day.
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Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what his estimate is of the (a) annual running costs of the Child Support Agency and (b) annual saving in benefits as a consequence of Child Support Agency maintenance payments for each year from 1996 to 2005; and if he will make a statement. [21586]
Mr. Plaskitt: The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the Chief Executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested. Letter from Stephen Geraghty:
In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what his estimate is of the (a) annual running costs of the Child Support Agency and (b) annual saving in benefits as a consequence of Child Support Agency maintenance payments for each year from 1996 to 2005; and if he will make a statement.
The table below shows the requested information as reported in the Annual Report and Accounts of the Child Support Agency.
Details of the annual savings in benefits are unavailable before 1999–2000, since they are not explicitly stated in the Annual Report and Accounts.
Since March 2003 Child Support applications have been dealt with under the new scheme. The new scheme introduced the Child Maintenance Premium, this is a £10 per week disregard of maintenance when calculating parent with care entitlement to Income Support. The Child Maintenance Premium was introduced to provide an incentive to parents with care to co-operate with the Agency and also to selectively target additional support to children in the poorest households. A consequence of child maintenance premium has been a reduction in the amount of maintenance collected by the Agency and paid to the Secretary of State to offset the annual cost of Income Support administered by Job Centre Plus.
Note:
Annual saving In benefit relates to maintenance collected passed to the Secretary of State rather than the parent with care.
The category of annual benefit savings covers only maintenance paid to parents with care in receipt of income support and jobseekers allowance. In recent years the proportion of the caseload that relates to non-benefit parents with care has increased. Failure to secure maintenance for this group of customers would result in some parents with care having to claim income related benefits.
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