THE immediate scrapping of the Child Support Agency was demanded today by a Bolton councillor at the Liberal Democrat conference.

Mrs Barbara Ronson told delegates in Brighton of nightmare cases from the town.

She said one woman from her Horwich found that the CSA demanded increased contributions from her husband's income support benefit - extra cash of which she does not get a penny.

It was a scandal that in the words of the Citizens Advice Bureau: "Where the parent with care is herself on income support, the Department of Social Security keeps the sums deducted from absent parents."

Cllr Ronson said: "This can only be seen as some kind of punitive fine, without trial, imposed to finance the Government, not the children."

Cllr Ronson - who will stand against Bolton West MP and Home Office Minister Tom Sackville at the next election - said her opposition to the CSA came from being deluged with complaints from absent parents and those with care of children in Horwich.

Nothing would do but the abolition of the CSA and its replacement by a system of family courts to make reasonable settlements with the children put first,.

In another a local case, an amicable agreement under which a wife kept the house and the husband paid the mortgage had been torn up by the CSA.

Because of the increased payments being demanded, he could not afford to pay mortgages on his new home and his former wife's.

Now he was going to have to sell the house occupied by his first wife and children to meet the CSA's demand, forcing the family angrily into poorer quality accommodation, distressing all concerned.

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