Clause 6
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
10:30 am
Danny Alexander (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I agree with it in the sense that a charging regime must not punish people simply for their choice of interacting with CMEC. The existence of a child maintenance support system is a public good, so to charge people willy-nilly to interact with the service seems wrong. The amendment would make it clear that, in a certain category of cases of those who fail to pay an amount of child support maintenance—those who have gone through the CMEC system and have not complied with their obligations—a charge might be a useful additional incentive to encourage them to meet their obligations.
The Minister has rightly made it clear that the importance of the Bill is that it encourages those who interact with the child support system to fulfil their responsibilities. He has said continually that one of the major reasons for the failure of the current child support system is that many non-resident parents—mainly men—are not meeting their financial obligations in quite disgraceful ways. The amendment would allow fees to be charged in such cases, but it would exclude charging to be allowed in the generality of cases for all parents with care or non-resident parents.