Sunday Post View: Why did society even need a Child Support Agency?

THE final demise of the Child Support Agency leaves a sour taste all round.

There is £3 billion still owed to mothers who struggled to raise their children.

Now, that money is unlikely to be given to those who deserve it.

The CSA was touted, when launched in 1993, as the body that would force wayward fathers to take responsibility for their children.

Abandoned families nodded in agreement, struggling mums were pleased that at last someone was fighting their corner.

But while the idea was laudable, the execution didn’t come up to scratch. The cash shortfall is proof of that.

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The CSA was dogged with problems throughout its lifetime. A National Audit Office report as early as 1998 showed a quarter of all CSA child maintenance assessments were wrongly calculated.

Various shake-ups and re-organisations over the years tried to fix it, but in truth it never performed well.

But that isn’t the real question we should ask as human beings.

Real parents, the type who would work like demons and fight like lions to provide for their children, will have asked what such an organisation was for?

They would believe that a man should not abandon his child. Indeed, what sort of man could leave his son or daughter cold and hungry.

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Even if he didn’t get on with the mother, or felt he was wrongly excluded from his child’s life, he should have helped financially. Whatever went wrong with the parental relationship, it wasn’t the child’s fault.

The meanest animal in the forest will look after, or fight to protect, its young.

We shouldn’t have needed a Government organisation to make us face our responsibilities.

What went so wrong in our society that a man could ever turn his face away from his own flesh and blood?