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Peter Black and South Wales West Liberal DemocratsRepresenting Aberavon, Bridgend, Gower, Neath, Ogmore, Port Talbot, and Swansea |
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CSA debt write-off is immoral says Assembly Member
November 30, 2006 10:23 AM
Peter Black at the Citizen's Advice Bureau
The Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Member for South Wales West, Peter Black, has criticised the suggestion that up to £1 billion of the money that the Child Support Agency has failed to collect from absent parents will simply be written off.
Ministers have admitted that one of the options they are looking at is to change the law so as to authorise the Child Support Agency to write off debts where there are "limited prospects of recovery". The decision means that about 130,000 single parents will never see an average of £14,000 in unpaid maintenance.
"I simply do not understand how this Labour government thinks that it can write off debts that are owed to somebody else," said Mr. Black. "This is money owed to lone parents, many of whom were, and continue to be, in difficult financial circumstances. In some cases, a debt has become uncollectable because the agency, through its own inaction, has failed to take effective enforcement action. In such circumstances there would have to be proper compensation for families who otherwise stand to lose substantial sums of money they are legally owed."
"This debt should not be treated as an accounting transaction. Like many other AMs and MPs, I have constituents who are owed money that the CSA should have obtained on their behalf from an absent parent. The Government is abandoning hundreds of thousands of families failed by 13 years of CSA incompetence. What it must not be allowed to do is use a new power to 'clean up the system' to get rid of lots of this debt. People have been relying on the CSA to come good and in many cases it stopped them seeking their maintenance on their own through the courts."
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