Feckless parents are withholding more than £32 million from children in Bradford, new figures reveal.

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, which is in charge of the Child Support Agency, is pursuing parents for refusing to pay £32.8 million towards the upkeep of their offspring.

The biggest child debt blackspot in the area is the parliamentary constituency of Bradford South, where non-resident parents owe £8.29 million.

It ranks as the 51st worst parliamentary constituency out of 650 for the amount of cash owed.

In Bradford East parents owe £7.45 million, £6.035 million is outstanding in Bradford West and £5.748 million in Keighley.

Shipley has the lowest amount of debt with parents owing £5.3 million between them.

Shipley MP Philip Davies said too often the CMEC targets parents already paying and tries to get more cash from them instead of concentrating on people who do not pay anything.

He said: “It is scandalous that so much money is being denied to the parents who are looking after the children from the parent who is no longer there.

“It goes to show how useless the Child Support Agency is and has been because if it was doing its properly it would not be the case that so much money is owed.

“What would be interesting to know, and what I will now try to find out, is how much of the total owed is from people who have not paid a single penny towards their child as that is totally unforgivable. The CSA has failed to protect those it is meant to serve.”

Earlier this month the Government admitted the set up was a problem and said changes would be made later in the year after questioning from Mr Davies.

Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the Government would make absent parents pay.

Fiona Weir, chief executive of Gingerbread, the charity which works for and with single parent families: “Child maintenance is vital for children in separated families. We know from single parents that this is much-needed money which pays for items such as clothes, school meals, activities and childcare.

“Ultimately the responsibility for paying child maintenance rests with the non-resident parent but the Child Support Agency has to do its job too in collecting debts and enforcing payment. We want to help single parents caring for children take action to ensure their arrears are paid.”