A report by the Commons Public Accounts Committee says that plans to charge single parents for access to the replacement for the Child Support Agency could worsen child poverty.
It warns that the Commission's cost reduction plans are high risk in that they rely heavily on the introduction of fees on parents rather than achieving genuine savings. Forecasting how parents will react to fees is difficult. Whilst ensuring parents accept proper responsibility for the cost of care for their children is important, it would be unfortunate if an unintended consequence of this initiative was more child poverty with extra costs to the taxpayer. Parents lack confidence in the system, and the Commission needs to demonstrate that it has a service which is worth paying fees for.
The report is available here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/TSO-PDF/committee-reports/cmpubacc1874.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment