Work and Pensions secretary James Purnell, will this week announce a new crack-down on absent parents. He intends to give officials of CMEC, which replaces the Child Support Agency, the power to ban parents from driving or travelling abroad if they do not pay child support.

The Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill – setting out the Government’s plans for replacing the CSA – will have its second reading in the House of Commons today. We predict that C-MEC will fail as surely as the CSA failed, and for most of the same reasons.

It is generally agreed that the CSA was a failure.
We are concerned the reasons for the failure will not be understood by the government which – without acknowledging the real reasons – is destined to repeat the same mistakes again.