Minister takes the rap for agency mess

Work and pensions secretary Alan Johnson admitted “ultimate”
responsibility for the failures of the Child Support Agency last
week.

Johnson acknowledged the “huge” failure of the computer system
introduced in March 2003 to the select committee on work and
pensions.

Currently, only 61,000 support payments have been made out of
478,000 applications.

Committee chair Archy Kirkwood said the CSA’s problems were a
result of “chronic failure of management”.

Outgoing head of the CSA Doug Smith said that the implementation of
the system “had not gone well”, but denied he was resigning because
he had “failed to deliver”.

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