The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter of the Chief Executive. He will write to the hon. Member.
Letter from Stephen Geraghty, dated 12 March 2008:
In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of Sate promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will break down the number of non-resident parents from whom the Child Support Agency is seeking to collect maintenance arrears by (a) age of their debt and (b) the amounts owed within each of debt age band.
The Agency reports the amount of outstanding debt in its Annual Report and Accounts, the latest version of which is held in the House of Commons library. The information requested is supplementary to that reported and therefore the additional analysis provided in the attached table does not include the provisions applied as a result of the annual debt analysis exercise within the Agency's accounts.
The original Child Support Computer System (CSCS) does not record the age of outstanding arrears. This means that the age of any debt accrued on that system including debt on cases subsequently migrated to the new computer system (CS2) can not be reported. The tables provided therefore are restricted to a breakdown of debt accrued on CS2, and summary totals for debt held on CSCS and for debt accrued on CSCS which has since been migrated from CSCS to CS2.
I hope you find this answer helpful.
Age of debt Amount of debt outstanding (£ millions) Number of non resident parents 0-3 Months 93 1411,900 3-6 Months 75 1306,400 6-9 Months 69 1282,100 9-12 Months 66 1260,300 12-18 Months 123 1271,100 18-24 Months 118 1239,200 24-36 months 202 1222,800 36-48 Months 158 1142,000 48 Months+ 134 172,800 Total 1,038 — 1 Each non-resident parent may be included in several lines.
Number of non resident parents with outstanding debt migrated from CSCS to CS2 and amount of debt outstanding: November 2007 Amount of debt outstanding (£ millions) 622 Number of non resident parents 55,900
Number of non resident parents with outstanding debt on CSCS and amount of debt outstanding: November 2007 Amount of debt outstanding (£ millions) 2,125 Number of non resident parents 349,200 Notes: 1. A non resident parent has been recorded within each time band in which they have debt outstanding in e.g. if they have debt that is less than three months old, debt that is 3-6 months old, and debt that is 6-9 months old they will be counted in all three age bands. Therefore the number of NRPs given in the answer cannot be totalled to show the number of NRPs with outstanding debt. 2. If a NRP also has debt which has migrated from CSCS to CS2, they will be counted again in this category. 3. The number of NRPs has been rounded to the nearest hundred; the amount of outstanding debt has been rounded to the nearest hundred thousand. 4. The Agency reports the amount of outstanding debt in its Annual Report and Accounts. The information set out in these tables is supplementary to that reported and therefore does not include the provisions applied as a result of the annual debt analysis exercise within the Agency's accounts. 5. The Agency conducts an annual debt analysis exercise to estimate the collectability of the amounts outstanding at the end of each year. The Agency estimates that of the £3.7 billion total debt outstanding at March 2007, £1.5 billion is classed as collectable.