Clause 8
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
12:00 pm
Mark Harper (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Forest of Dean, Conservative)
My hon. Friend makes a good point. In relation to the specific example that he raised, many of us know from constituency casework that private companies can have tough powers to take enforcement measures that can be used disproportionately. The remedies available to individuals and the Members of Parliament acting for them are limited—far more so than they would be if they were dealing even with a non-departmental public body, with recourse at some stage to a Minister.
The applications for curfew orders under clause 26 are potentially very serious. Admittedly, there is a safeguard that the order must be made by a court, but, again, it is not appropriate for the commission to contract out to another organisation to seek from a court an order to limit a person’s liberty, a breach of which could result in imprisonment.
Similarly, clause 27 gives the commission the power to apply to a magistrates court for a warrant committing someone to prison if they have failed to pay the amounts that they owe. We might think that that penalty is appropriately tough, but given its very toughness, a private sector organisation should not be allowed to seek to have an individual imprisoned. That power should properly be exercised by a public body with the appropriate levels of accountability. The public would not be happy to see it contracted out.
Tough enforcement will potentially be one of CMEC’s weapons, whether or not it has to use it, when trying to change the culture to one of compliance. Apart from the principled arguments that I have been making, a danger of contracting out is that the inappropriate use of enforcement powers might drag all the enforcement mechanisms into disrepute—it would not need many inappropriate uses; one might be enough.