CSA allows fathers to avoid paying £3.5bn

Absent fathers owe £3.5 billion in maintenance payments to their children, official figures reveal.

The amount that the Child Support Agency has failed to collect grew by £242 million last year. More than 1.4million families are still waiting for money.

The figures, which follow a pledge to overhaul the failing system, fuelled fears that the crisis surrounding the agency is likely to continue for years after it is scrapped.

The Government is replacing the CSA with the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, which will be able to confiscate defaulting fathers' passports and seize money directly from their bank accounts.

Critics say, however, that delays mean some families could remain in the present system until 2013.

The CSA insisted yesterday that there had been progress because the increase in the monthly amount owed had slowed from £23 million to £20 million. However, it will fail to reach a target of a 25 per cent cut in unprocessed applications by March.

Tory work and pensions spokesman Philip Hammond said: "The CSA is failing to meet its own timid performance targets, which does nothing for the morale of the 1.4 million families trapped in the nightmare of a system unable to pay out what they need to survive."