CSA proposals: £100 to lose 100 years of status reform
OK, so the Gov has gone after the disabled and now the children of single parents. Yes, their victims are getting increasingly defenceless but come on - going after minors is frankly embarrassing. What's next? IVF tax?
The Gov has plans to charge parents to use CSA, in fact, plans to charge the parent who has the children, not the parent who has left and is refusing to pay. Astonishing. The CSA was formed to get the non resident parent to pay the parent "with care" but proposed changes would simply strengthen the non resident parent's position (nothing to lose by refusing to pay so will quickly become default position) AND give the refuser a way to use the situation to get back at the parent with care.
Under Gov proposals, the parent with care must pay £100 application fee to use the CSA and the Gov will additionally levy up to a 20% charge on the monies paid in admin fee. Look at it this way: the children of a broken relationship are being asked to pay an upfront charge and regular deduction from their maintenance because the parent that left refuses to pay for them and their government won't make them. Embarrassing. Let's face it, any money that comes out of a single parent family comes out of money usually spent on the children, so the children are paying. That's a large demographic of unhappy voters in waiting.
If you can bill one parent, you can certainly bill the other. There are clearly other options:
1. Submit to financial assessment AND make payments under contract or access to the children will be stopped until they do. Having children is about responsibility (financial, support) and rights (access, decisions etc) and the law should be clear and firm on this. It's not.
2. Pay a 20% surcharge onto the refuser's payment to cover the deduction.
3. Pay a £500 penalty to the refuser's account and pursue him like a parking penalty. Kids are more important than parking yet we don't enforce support with anything like the same vigour. Priorities, anyone?
So the Gov would see single parents in an even worse financial position than ever before. Taking this further, punishing single mums (usually, although I accept some are dads ) for not making a relationship work carries other unpleasant implications, the flavour of which would put the status of women back 100 years.
That's one hell of a Tory "long game".
The Gov has plans to charge parents to use CSA, in fact, plans to charge the parent who has the children, not the parent who has left and is refusing to pay. Astonishing. The CSA was formed to get the non resident parent to pay the parent "with care" but proposed changes would simply strengthen the non resident parent's position (nothing to lose by refusing to pay so will quickly become default position) AND give the refuser a way to use the situation to get back at the parent with care.
Under Gov proposals, the parent with care must pay £100 application fee to use the CSA and the Gov will additionally levy up to a 20% charge on the monies paid in admin fee. Look at it this way: the children of a broken relationship are being asked to pay an upfront charge and regular deduction from their maintenance because the parent that left refuses to pay for them and their government won't make them. Embarrassing. Let's face it, any money that comes out of a single parent family comes out of money usually spent on the children, so the children are paying. That's a large demographic of unhappy voters in waiting.
If you can bill one parent, you can certainly bill the other. There are clearly other options:
1. Submit to financial assessment AND make payments under contract or access to the children will be stopped until they do. Having children is about responsibility (financial, support) and rights (access, decisions etc) and the law should be clear and firm on this. It's not.
2. Pay a 20% surcharge onto the refuser's payment to cover the deduction.
3. Pay a £500 penalty to the refuser's account and pursue him like a parking penalty. Kids are more important than parking yet we don't enforce support with anything like the same vigour. Priorities, anyone?
So the Gov would see single parents in an even worse financial position than ever before. Taking this further, punishing single mums (usually, although I accept some are dads ) for not making a relationship work carries other unpleasant implications, the flavour of which would put the status of women back 100 years.
That's one hell of a Tory "long game".