THE agencies charged with ensuring absent parents pay towards the upbringing of their children have hardly covered themselves with glory.

The Child Support Agency was a byword for inefficiency – ordering some parents to make crippling maintenance payments following divorce or separation, while allowing others to escape scot-free.

And the people who suffered most? The children, of course.

Now the CSA’s successor, the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC), could be given draconian new powers to force absent parents to pay up.

Under proposals contained in the Welfare Reform Bill, it would be able to seize their passports and driving licences, without needing to take them to court first.

There are many who may welcome this development. Parents have a responsibility to their children that does not end simply because a marriage or relationship breaks down. If they refuse to accept that responsibility, the state is right to force them to do so.

Losing their passport or driving licence would make a real difference to the quality of such people’s lives. The threat of that could make them think hard before trying to shirk their responsibilities.

But there is a civil rights issue here, too. CMEC can already seize these documents from non-payers – but only after seeking a court order. Allowing the agency to bypass the courts is designed to make the process “faster, simpler and easier for the taxpayer”.

But many of the people employed by CMEC will be the same ones who created such a shambles with the old CSA. Do we really want to give these people such quasi-legal powers? And who is to say they will not get things wrong? Would it not be like the DVLA being able to seize your licence when you had never been convicted of anything?

By all means, let’s pursue the non-payers. The children they have abandoned deserve nothing less. But let’s do it by sorting out the mess that is child support, instead of chasing an easy headline.