Mothers to name and shame fathers

Letters are going out to around 100 parents - almost all of them mothers - asking if they want their former partner's name to be included on an internet list of people who have dodged maintenance payments.

The move came as Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton published a Bill to replace the crisis-plagued Child Support Agency with a new commission with tougher powers to make absent parents pay.

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (C-MEC) will be able to deduct cash direct from non-payers' bank accounts, as well as take away their passports and impose curfews on them if they fail to support their children.

And it will be able to charge absent parents for the cost of pursuing them if they default on payments, potentially saving the taxpayer millions of pounds.

Under the new system, parents will be encouraged to come to private agreements on financial support for children when they separate, rather than requiring them to comply with officially-set maintenance arrangements, as the CSA does.

The letters from the CSA relate to absent parents who were convicted in the first three months of this year of failing to provide the information needed to deal with maintenance claims for their children.

The parents looking after the children will be asked if they object to their former partner being named and shamed. If they do not object within 14 days, the names of those dodging payments will be posted on the CSA's website www.csa.gov.uk.

"We feel that taking this action and making an example of those who commit these offences will encourage other non-resident parents to give us the information we need straightaway," says the letter.

"Our intention is to make it clear that it is not acceptable for non-resident parents to fail to support their children. We want to get more money flowing to more children and one way of doing this is to convince non-resident parents who don't pay that we are serious about taking action to recover what they owe."