To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many DNA tests were carried out on behalf of the Child Support Agency in each of the last five years. (105078)

The administration of the Child Support Agency is the matter for the chief executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.

Letter from Stephen Geraghty, dated 15 January 2007:

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, how many DNA tests were carried out on behalf of the Child Support Agency in each of the last five years.

This information is provided in the following table:

I hope this information is helpful.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how many Child Support Agency cases were (a) outstanding and (b) unprocessed in (i) Yeovil and (ii) Somerset in each year since 1997; (102130)

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, dated 15 January 12006:

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 two related questions:

How many Child Support Agency cases were (a) outstanding and (b) unprocessed in (i) Yeovil and (ii) Somerset in each year since 1997.

How many Child Support Agency cases were (a) outstanding and (b) unprocessed in each year from 1997 to 2006 in (i) Somerset and (ii) Yeovil constituency.

The agency begins to process new applications as soon as they are received and continues until they have been cleared. Any applications that have not yet been cleared can be regarded as outstanding. The amount of work required to achieve clearance and the elapsed time it involves varies considerably depending on, amongst other things, the circumstances of the parents and how readily they cooperate with the agency.

As such, the agency holds only a negligible number of completely unprocessed cases and it is not possible to allocate these to individual constituencies.

With regard to part (a), the agency can only provide the information requested for applications (both new and old scheme) operating on the new computer system (CS2). Therefore this is not representative of the overall trend and volumes of the total amount of uncleared applications at the geographical level requested. Please see the attached table.

It should be noted that there are always applications for which the agency cannot assign a county or a constituency, either because they had been received directly via Jobcentre Plus and had not reached the point in the process at which details on the constituency of the parent with care can be identified, or because the application is on the old computer system from which it is not possible to provide robust estimates at the geographical level requested. In September 2006, there were around 70,000 such applications.

For future reference, it should be noted that information relating to the number of uncleared applications on the new computer system in September 2006 in each parliamentary constituency is publicly available, and can be found in table 27 of the September 2006 Child Support Agency ‘Quarterly Summary of Statistics’, a copy of which is available in the House of Commons Library, or on the internet via the following link: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/child_ support/CSA_quarterly_sep06 .asp

Although the total volume of uncleared applications nationally across both schemes, 247,500 in September 2006, is the lowest since comparable records began, the agency recognises that this remains unacceptably high. The agency therefore has a 2006-07 target to ensure that, by march 2007, the volume of new scheme uncleared applications outstanding at March 2006 is reduced by 25 per cent. and our challenge, as set down in our operational improvement plan, is that the agency should not have a backlog in this area by March 2009. I hope you find this answer helpful.