The recent reforms at the Child Support Agency don’t seem to have had the desired effect:

The report shows that under the old system 50 per
cent of absent parents paid maintenance in full, while 29 per cent paid
nothing.

Under the new system – launched with
great fanfare four years ago – only 31 per cent make their payments in
full, while 34 per cent pay nothing.

Reform means worse perhaps? But the really damning number is this:

It stressed that the CSA was now spending 70p for every £1 of maintenance it managed to collect.

So bloody awful is the system that we’re close to the point (in fact, perhaps we’re past it, if we add in the time spent by people in dealing with it) that it would be cheaper simply to pay all of this child support direct out of the taxation system.