Backlash expected over reform of child support rules

The Government Appeals Service says complaints against the Child Support Agency are likely to rise sharply when new rules governing child maintenance payments are introduced later this year.

Under the reforms, the current complex network of regulations will be replaced by a simple formula forcing absent parents to pay 15 per cent of their net weekly income for one child, 20 per cent for two and 25 per cent for three.

The change will be introduced for new cases in April. The million existing cases will be transferred to the scheme in the coming months.

But a newsletter published by the Government Appeals Service warned: "There is potential for renewed grievance on the part of a large number of people (up to 2 million) who have accepted (however grudgingly) their current entitlements and liabilities. When they receive notice of what they will in future have to pay or receive, one or other of the parties will almost certainly perceive themselves to be worse off."

An extra 50 staff have been recruited to deal with the expected increase in appeals.

The Liberal Democrats accused ministers of introducing an "excessively crude" formula for calculating payments. Steve Webb, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman, said: "The new system is far too crude. It will undermine the system even more because people will not think it is fair. Unfairness has bedevilled the Child Support Agency from the start and this will cause fresh resentment."

The Department for Work and Pensions said the new rules were fair, and insisted that any changes to payments would be phased in gradually. Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said: "The objective is to get money that children need to them. Parents have an obligation to support their children whether they live together or not."

* A report today by the Centre for Policy Studies, a right-of-centre think-tank, warns that more than 50 per cent of unmarried couples split up within five years of having children.

Jill Kirby, a consultant to the Tory party, says her findings link increasing rates of divorce and cohabitation with increasing rates of child homelessness, drug abuse and physical abuse of children. The report, published to coincide with National Marriage Week, cites the "collapse of the two-parent family" as a main cause of child poverty and deprivation. "The losers and the dispossessed are the children," the report says.