Clause 7
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
11:30 am
Paul Rowen (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Rochdale, Liberal Democrat)
This clause deals with agency arrangements and the provision of services. I know from our evidence-taking sessions last week and our debates that when CMEC comes into operation, greater use will be made of the voluntary and third sector to provide information services. I welcome that. The amendments seek to place in the Bill what we believe is the prime purpose of the agency and to ensure that that aim is not overlooked when arrangements are made to contract out and for different services and support to be provided by other bodies.
I appreciate that if money can be saved by delivering a service in a different way, that is in itself a laudable aim. But that pursuit of greater administrative efficiency should not be allowed to obscure the importance of delivering the service for which the agency has been set up. The Minister already knows of our concerns about the planned cuts. He has given reassurances about that, which he has repeated this morning. Nevertheless, as we begin to contract out and to use other services, we need to make sure that our prime purpose is to ensure better delivery of service. That is why I quoted the example of making greater use of the third sector in the provision of information services. That is an excellent example, which shows that locally delivered, locally administered voluntary agencies can be much more successful in providing support to parents who seek to make child care arrangements than an arm’s length agency that might not have sufficient staff in the locality to provide information and support.
We also accept, as the Minister pointed out last week, that the use of private debt collection agencies has brought results. We are not opposed to the use of private debt collection agencies. However, we have to be clear about our purpose in moving to the use of such agencies, and that purpose must be the provision of child maintenance and the welfare of the child. The amendment is designed to ensure that that remains the prime purpose for introducing any such contracting or agency arrangements.