Junior Social Security Minister Angela Eagle told MPs ministers were preparing to extend Child Support Agency pilot schemes for assessing self-employed absent parents across the UK next spring.

Ms Eagle told the Commons in an adjournment debate 80% of people in this category failed to pay all the money due from them.

Schemes under review by the government included introducing a method of calculation more in line with Inland Revenue assessments.

Angela Eagle: "Support is a route out of poverty"

Ministers were considering allowing the parent with care to apply for a 'departure' from the normal assessment procedures, giving them access to information produced by tribunals - which can summon witnesses and demand information barred to the CSA.

Ms Eagle said a mother could apply for the new method of calculating income on the basis that the absent father was declaring a level of income inconsistent with his lifestyle.

She said: "Child support offers a real route out of poverty for many lone-parent families and particularly for children, many of whom currently live in needlessly difficult circumstances.

"To make child support work, we will ensure that we close the many loopholes which allow some parents to escape their responsibilities.

"We will make sure that the self-employed cannot hide behind false accounts and administrative confusion from their duties to their children."

'Unable to cope'

Ms Eagle's comments came in response to a short debate in which Labour's Tony McNulty raised the case of a mother-of-two who took five years to win a CSA case against her self-employed and wealthy ex-husband.

The former husband had a joint income with his new wife of almost £200,000 a year.

Mr McNulty said: "He owned a Porsche, two BMWs, his two children from his second marriage attended private schools and he employed a cleaner and a gardener."

Mr McNulty said the case showed the CSA was unable to cope with the complexities of absent parents who were self-employed, uncooperative and sometimes misleading.