POWERS to allow the government to access errant parents’ bank accounts are to be given to the body that will replace the Child Support Agency.

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, to be known as C-MEC, will gain the power to enforce compulsory direct debits from fathers and mothers to pay for the upkeep of their offspring.

The measure was outlined at last week’s cabinet meeting by John Hutton, the pensions secretary. Legislation was pencilled in to overhaul the child support system in the Queen’s speech last month, but little detail was known.

The minister will publish his proposals — which some colleagues believe are draconian — in a white paper in the next few weeks.

Other new powers will include:

• Making it compulsory for both parents to register their names on a birth certificate, whether married or unmarried;
  
• Giving the commission the power to deduct maintenance from an errant parent’s earnings, without a court order;
  
• In extreme cases, allowing the courts to order that those who persistently refuse to pay maintenance are electronically tagged or subjected to curfew orders;
  
• Giving the commission access to revenue and customs records to track errant parents;
  
• Allowing the commission to enforce fixed monthly payments regardless of whether or not a parent claims their circumstances have changed.

  Parts of Hutton’s plans are being opposed by other cabinet members. Lord Falconer, the lord chancellor, and Harriet Harman, his junior minister, have protested in cabinet letters that the joint birth certificate proposals are “unworkable”, because some mothers will not want their child permanently linked with the biological father. For example, the biological father may be a rapist, an abuser or a sperm donor.

  Ministers, who have been frustrated by the CSA’s bureaucracy and failure to target the most needy cases, are determined to focus the efforts of the new commission on the most unjust cases of neglect.

  The CSA was set up by John Major’s government in 1993, but has been dogged with complaints. It has a backlog of 300,000 cases.

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