Runaway dads face tax attack

THE CHILD Support Agency will be given unprecedented access to confidential tax files of absent parents so it can calculate how much money they owe and deduct it from their pay packets, under a massive overhaul of the system to be announced by the Government.

Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Social Security, plans to change the law to allow inspectors to ask the Inland Revenue and National Insurance authorities for details of where unco-operative fathers work and how much they are paid. The CSA will then be able to calculate what their maintenance payments should be and take it out of their salary at source if they still refuse to contribute to their children's upbringing.

The plan, which follows a wide-ranging review of child support, has led to tension between the Department for Social Security and the Inland Revenue, which fears that it will encourage non-resident parents to make fraudulent tax returns in an attempt to reduce their maintenance liability. It will also infuriate Labour left-wingers and civil liberties campaigners, who see it as an invasion of privacy.

However, Mr Darling said the Government was determined to force fathers to support their offspring. "We are beginning to get home to men that you cannot bring children into this world then walk off and leave them to somebody else," he said. "They have a responsibility that endures their entire life and the purpose of the overhaul of the CSA is to ensure that that duty is far more rigorously enforced."

The shake-up, which will be announced in the next few weeks, will also introduce a simplified formula for calculating liability, with absent parents paying 15 per cent of their net income for one child, 20 per cent for two and 25 per cent for three or more. This is in contrast to the existing system, which requires 104 pieces of information to work out how much an absent parent should pay.

Staff spend 90 per cent of their time calculating payments and just 10 per cent enforcing them. As a consequence, many claims are delayed for months, or even years.

Publication of the Government's proposals has been delayed for several weeks while officials struggle to install the appropriate computer software to operate the new system.

Controversy will focus on the decision to open up absent parents' tax records to the CSA. The welfare reform Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, puts in place the mech- anism for ministers to allow this to happen.

A Social Security source confirmed that the intention was to target fathers who refuse to support their children. "One Government department already has the information, so it's just a case of being able to get it from one to the other," he said. "If you are using it for tax purposes there is no real reason why we should not know about people's income for child support purposes. The Inland Revenue are always worried about this kind of thing but ministers are concerned about the wider picture."

But Iain Duncan Smith, the shadow social security spokesman, condemned the plan as an "an appalling breach of privacy". "People's rights over their own personal records are being eroded by this Government," he said.

Mr Darling will this week unveil plans to clamp down on benefit fraud, with tougher checks when people first apply for welfare support. Government inspectors will tour the country visiting claimants regularly in their homes to make sure they are genuine and that their circumstances have not changed.