IT has been clear for a long time that the Child Support Agency was in urgent need of an overhaul.

The CSA has managed to spend £3bn of public money on its administration but has been unable to deliver any evidence that it is more effective than the courts system which preceded it.

New cases take 470 days to process and less than two-thirds of maintenance is being recovered from absent parents. The agency actually spent more on debt recovery last year than it got back. By any standards, that amounts to abject failure.

The big question is why has it taken the Government so long to act? The CSA has been dogged by criticism since it was established in 1993.

Even now, we only know that a "root-and-branch review" of the UK's child support system is to be completed by the summer. We do not know how the wreckage of the CSA is to be put right.

A month ago, we commented on Education Secretary Ruth Kelly's announcement that new laws were to be rushed through as a result of new controversies over sex offenders being allowed to work in schools. We made the point that this would be the same legislation which the Government had described as "urgent" 18 months earlier.

It is now eight years since the Prime Minister declared that there needed to be "urgent" reform of the CSA.

It seems the word "urgent" sometimes has a rather loose definition in ministerial circles.