Schedule 1
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
9:30 am
Andrew Selous (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; South West Bedfordshire, Conservative)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry, and am particularly grateful that he is able to serve on our Committee with his long experience as both a Minister and a shadow Minister. He has taken a close interest in these matters for a long time, and I am sure that both sides of the Committee would agree with me that we are grateful for the benefit of his advice during our deliberations.
I agree with my hon. Friend that the people we are looking for—the chair and the chief executive—must not only run the organisation extremely well in terms of day-to-day delivery, but undertake an extremely important communication task. The phrase “changing the culture” has quite rightly been mentioned on many occasions. I know that it is something the Government are seeking to do. The position has a high salary and, as I have said, I do not begrudge that, because we are looking for an impressive set of skills including management competence and relevant experience of dealing with children’s issues and family law matters. The person must also have the ability to communicate with the country at large and explain why the payment of maintenance is a civic duty and a personal responsibility for us all and that it is not something that can be dealt with by the general good will of taxpayers.