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Child Support Act:
Tories in retreat Christine Thomas examines the problems facing the Tories after 18 months of the Child Support Act - and Labour's SCRAP Child Support Birmingham demonstrators protest against the CSA. THE GOVERNMENT IS desperately searching for a way out of its worst legislative cock-up since the poll tax, wrote The Economist on the first anniversary of the Child Support Act (CSA) in April this year. At that time, all over the country, single parents, absent parents and second families were holding huge demonstrations and rallies to protest at the suffering and hardship the Child Support Act was generating.
MPs' post bags were bulging with letters complain- Matte GMB failure to respond.
ing about the Act, many of them from former Tory supporters. In the face of such an onslaught of opposition the Tories decided to set up yet another review.
The Child Support Agency itself is clearly in total chaos. In July, Ros Hepplewhite, then head of was forced to admit as much. "Perthe Agency, formance has not always measured up to the standards we set out to acheive" she said, when the Agency missed its target for benefit savings by CSA • 18
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20%. "We apologise to our clients for the difficulties they have experienced because of our shortcomings". Two months later she had resigned, unable to withstand the pressures of the job. Once again the Tories are divided about what to do next. Should they make minor alterations to the CSA in the hope that this will stem the growing tide of opposition? Or should they opt for root and branch' changes as some MPs are demanding? Back in February some minor concessions to absent fathers were made but had little effect on the escalating protest action. The Tories are clearly worried that granting a few more concessions will once again fail to cut across the deep-rooted anger that has developed. However, any attempts at fundamental reform would seriously challenge their plans to cut back on public spending. One Tory backbencher summed up their dilemma: "The party is torn because no simple solution exists". The TUC voted at its annual conference to scrap the Act.
The launch of yet another Tory review has also opened up a debate amongst groups campaigning against the Child Support Act: should it be reformed or repealed? Support for total repeal has been steadily growing, fuelled by the chaos in the Agency and the Tories' weakness. Significantly, the TUC voted at its annual conference to scrap the Act. This marks an important change of policy reflecting the mounting opposition both inside and outside the trade unions, where the majority of union conferences voted for repeal rather than reform. Only the right-wing leadership of the civil service union, the CPSA, has held out against repeal, arguing that it would jeopardise the jobs of workers in the Child Support Agency. Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument would mean we should oppose full employment on the grounds that it would mean job losses in Unemployment Benefit Offices! Clearly such a position is untenable. Their arguments appear even more spurious in the light of their lack of determined opposition to 'market testing in the civil service and the job losses that could result.
Militant Labour members have played a key role in moving resolutions in the trade unions in support of repeal, especially in the shopworkers' union USDAW from which the successful TUC motion came. At the same time, we have called for a fair and flexible maintenance system which would be non-coercive for single parents and benefit them financially. By taking into account individual circumstances and judging each case on its own merit such a system would not only guarantee the redeployment of workers currently employed in the Child Support Agency but would actually create more jobs. A determined campaign is now essential to ensure that the TUC resolution does not remain on paper but is turned into effective action. The trade unions have the potential to unite together all those campaigning to scrap the Child Support Millant Scottish SCRAP THE CSA NO MORE POVERTY BENEFITS No $8: 80 DeDucTioNs Act. Pressure should be put on the TUC to call a national demonstration on the lines of the March demonstration against racism, which mobilised over 40,000 people. With the Child Support Agency in such an horrendous mess, this kind of united action could be enough to provoke its final collapse. U NITY IS VITAL if the Child Support Act is to be defeated. Whenever they are faced with growing opposition to their social policies the Tories invariably attempt to sow divisions amongst campaigning groups in order to cut across the movement. Absent parents and their partners have been encouraged to vent their anger on grasping vindictive 'parents with care, out to screw them for every penny they ve got; while single parents are urged to get their revenge on irresponsible ex-partners who are living it up' while they and their children are struggling in poverty. A concerted media effort initially peddled the myth that the majority of single parents would benefit from the CSA, although now even some of the Tory-supporting papers are critical. Nevertheless, statements still appear such as that of Polly Toynbee, the BBC's Social Affairs editor, who in an article in The Guardian (2 February, 1994) described the Child Support Act as "the biggest redistribution of wealth in their (womens') favour since the Married Women's Property Act of 1882" Unfortunately, the leadership of some groups : to speak for single parents have given credence to this baseless argument. "It is a mess but it remains our only hope", declared Sue Slipman, director of the National Council for One Parent Families (NCOPF), in May. "If the CSA collapses it will be a disaster for one-parent fami-
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Liverpool campaigners protest against the opening of a local office. A CHILD SUPPORT ACT = ROBBER WITH VIOLENCE lies everywhere". The Child Support Act has been £3 million actually reached single parents. Because maintenance payments are deducted pound for pound from benefit the majority of single parents are no better off. A survey of single parents in the South East who had co-operated with the Child Support Agency, carried out by the National Coun cil for One Parent Families itself, found that 80% had received no money at all. Many are worse off. By April last year at least 700 single parents had suffered benefit deductions for refusing to co-operate. Urganisations such as the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux have extensively catalogued the suffering and hardship that single parents on income support are experiencing as a result of the Child Support Act.
Single parents face enormous practical difficulties when it comes to getting organised and making their views heard. Yet many have done so, often against all the odds. The National Council for One Parent Families claims to represent and speak for single parents. Whenever the media is looking for someone to put the case for single parents Sue Slipman is frequently the person who is interviewed. In that case she has a duty to set the record straight and explain what the Child Support Act really means. Her comments have been unhelpful and divisive, providing ammunition for attempts at divide and rule. Although supposedly 'apolitical' the National Council for One Parent Families has been seen by many single parents as little more child than a prop for the Tories.
W THY DO GROUPS like the National Concl for One Parent Families support reform rather than repeal? It all comes down to principles.
Sue Slipman at a recent forum on the future of the CSA at the House of Commons, reiterated her support for the 'principle' behind it. "The principle behind the Child Support Agency has widespread public sup- , wrote Labour MP Frank Field in The Guardian. "The TUC therefore supported the principle of the Act", stated an interim report to the 1994 TUC women's conference.
"If the CSA collapses it will be a disaster for one-parent families everywhere"
Sue Slipman.
What 'principle' are they refering to? In 1990 the Tories outlined their proposals for a new maintenance system in a White Paper entitled Children Come First. They argued that the number of single parents had more than doubled since 1971 to 1.3 million, with 2.2 million dependent children. Eighty per cent of single parents were claiming income CSA • 20
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support but only 30% were receiving regular
maintenance averaging at f27 a week: men should
be responsible for their children, contributing finan-
cially to their upbringing. Under the new system
'errant' fathers would be vigorously pursued for
maintenance payments. My message to those
men who have chosen to walk away from their
family responsibilities", said John Patten, then
minister of state at the Home Office, "is that you
cannot stop being a father". The idea that men
should have financial responsibility for their chil-
dren was generally supported. But was the
'principle' behind the Child Support Act really
about fathers facing up to their responsibilities in
order that children could be put first?
Sue Slipman and the National Council for One
Parent Families were consulted by the Tories when
drawing up their proposals. "There is obviously
concern that the government will use increased
maintenance to recoup money for the state", she
said in January 1990. "However, the government has raised our expectations much higher than this scenario". Militant Labour in contrast pointed out that recouping money for the state was indeed the real 'principle' behind the new proposals. Faced at the time with a potential public sector debt of £50bn, the aim of the Tories was to make savings of £500 million by cutting benefits to single parents and where possible getting them off benefit all together. In the 1992 pre-election edition of the Militant International Review we wrote that "the Tory government try to give the impression this is being carried out to alleviate the poverty in which single parents live. But any maintenance is deducted pound for pound out of the income support of single parents, and after £15, for family credit recipients. In other words, the main beneficiary of the maintenance collected will be the treasury.
21 • CSA
Most single parents will be
before"
The role of leadership is to anticipate and fore-
see events. Although the National Council for One
Parent Families claims it speaks for ordinary sin-
gle parents it is clear that its leadership has
become divorced from the concerns and problems
of the majority of single parents struggling to bring
up children on income support. Enjoying living
standards much higher than the people they claim
to represent they totally failed to see the real
implications of the Child Suppport Act. Now, very
late in the day, the NCOPF appears to have
woken up to reality and had a change of heart.
Sue Slipman is now saying that the NCOPF may
have to withdraw its support unless the CSA is
made to work for single parents. She should never
have given it her support in the first place.
When the Act went
through parliament the
majority of Labour MPs
did not vote against it.
HE LABOUR PARTY also supports reform
rather than the repeal of the Child Support
Act. When the Act went through parliament
the majority of Labour MPs did not vote against it. It seems incredible that after eleven years of Tory attacks, Labour MPs believed that the Tories would introduce a piece of legislation with the financial interests of children at heart, that the government responsible for freezing child benefit, for the closure of nurseries, for subjecting one in three children to a life of poverty, would suddenly change course. "My gut reaction was that nothing good would come of it", admitted Audrey Wise, speaking in the House of Commons. "Unfortunately the opposition were mislead because we actually believed the title of the White Paper Children Come First".
Slashing state spending to boost the profits of the rich is understandably an unpopular strategy. To try and make their policies more acceptable the Tories attempt to dress them up with ideological propaganda. Unfortunately the Labour leadership appear to fall for the Tories' propaganda every time. When, for example, in an attempt to soften public opinion for future housing spending cuts, the Tories accused young single parents of jumping the housing list, Labour MP David Blunkett rose to the bait. "We need... positive housing policies" , he declared, "which do not encourage the belief that the only way to a home is having a baby". This despite information from 30 local authorities showing that it is rare for unmarried or pregnant girls to present themselves for rehousing. He should
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have been calling for a crash house-building programme, for the right of everyone to a decent home, regardless of how they choose to live their personal lives. But because he and the rest of the Labour leadership are not prepared to challenge the capitalist system they end up accepting its economic limitations, accepting the idea that resources must be rationed, whether it be housing, health care or state benefits. With no economic alternative or independent class analysis of their own they also end up adopting the moral agenda of the ruling class.
Tony Blair, in one of his first speeches after becoming Labour leader, commented: "The vast majority of single parents do not choose to be single parents... if they do I personally don't agree with them in doing that". Such comments play into the hands of the Tories who have targeted single parents as scapegoats for their economic policies, which are the real causes of unemployment, homelessness and the majority of social problems in this country. The Labour leadership should be outlining policies that will allow everyone to live free of poverty in relationships of their choice, not moralising about single parents and jumping on the Tories ideological bandwagon.
HROUGH THEIR PROPAGANDA, the To-
ries try to promote one ideal family, where
women and children who do not work are
economically dependent on a male breadwinner. However, even the Tories themselves have had to accept that this 'ideal' nuclear family is fast disappearing, that the majority of women now go out to work and are in the workforce to stay. The Child Support Agency itself has revealed the myriad of different and often complex family relationships and households in which people choose to live. The Tories understand that it is not possible to turn back the clock or legislate to push back the changes that are taking place in the family and in society. However this does not prevent them scapegoating single parents or continuing to promote the kind of family which accomodates their economic interests. The maintenance assessment under the Child Support Act includes a carers allowance which effectively reintroduces maintenance for wives. Individual women are to be economically dependent on individual men, even though they do not live together and are no longer having a relationship.
The current debate extends beyond the Child Support Act and the question of child maintenance to the wider issue of alleviating the poverty of single parents and their children. In 1990 the Family Policy Studies Institute argued that maintenance would not be enough to end the poverty of single parents: "A comprehensive strategy for lone parents is needed which will take into account the level of benefits for children and obstacles to women's employment such as the shortage of child-care places" . Britain has one of the lowest levels of child benefit in
UNION
OF SHOP.
DISTRIBUTIVE
& ALLIED
WORKERS
USDAW moved the resolution opposing the
CSA at TIC Conference.
Europe and one of the worst provision of state-run nurseries. A survey conducted by the DSS found that 75% of single parents on income support would prefer to go out to work. When asked why they didn't do so, the two most common reasons given were lack of affordable child-care and being no better off because of low wages and the loss of benefits such as housing benefit and mortgage interest payments.
The 'new look' Labour Party has so far failed to properly address any of these questions. On childcare, they originally made a commitment to the introduction of a nursery place for all three and four-year olds within the life-time of one parliament, and then backed off. They are no longer prepared to commit themselves to a timetable. How does that differ from the Tories who support nursery education 'as resources allow"? On low pay, the leadership is currently trying to fudge the question of a minimum wage. Even half male median earnings, which is what they initially proposed, would only work out at about £4 an hour. The European Commission says that £6 an hour is the minimum below which nobody should have to fall. It is not even clear whether the party will adhere to the idea of universal child benefit. By refusing to commit themselves to concrete policy proposals, the Labour leaders are accepting the economic constraints and restrictions of working within the capitalist system.
Single parents should have choice. The choice to work, through the provision of free, flexible, good quality child-care, and a guaranteed minimum wage that allows them and their children an adequate standard of living. If they decide to stay at home to look after children, they should be able to do so free of poverty, Single parents should have choice in how they live their personal relationships, without being forced into economic and financial dependence on individual men. A crisis-ridden capitalist system cannot guarantee these choices. A socialist planned economy under democratic control, however, would allow the freeing of economic resources to enable all of us to live the lives we choose, free from ideological or economic restraints.
CSA 22
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