Clause 9
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
4:00 pm
Paul Rowen (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Rochdale, Liberal Democrat)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Taylor.
Just before the break, I was talking about amendments Nos. 10 and 11 and I shall continue. The Minister said, when we were talking about contracting out, that it was highly likely that other Departments may be involved in dealing with some of the work. I took it from that that he was talking about Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, particularly in respect of some of the assessments and collecting the money. If HMRC is to be involved in that process, and if other private agencies are to be involved in collecting debt or third sector bodies in providing information, it is important that information about how they are progressing and dealing with the case forms part of the annual report.
As I said previously, we have so little information in the Bill—we do not even have draft regulations in front of us—and we do not know how different the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission’s ways of working will be from those of the Child Support Agency. It is therefore important that what the annual report will deliver is written down and agreed early on. It is of major importance to the House and the public that the new agency gets off on the right foot, sets itself clear objectives and is held accountable to the House for the progress that is being made.
Amendment No. 9, which we support, seeks more detail about the numbers of children that will be dealt with—the numbers receiving payments—and the type of arrangements. Because we are talking about a shift and a move back to more private arrangements, I should think that the Select Committee on Work and Pensions would want to scrutinise the operation of the new systems. Again, we would support that.
Amendment No. 69, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, reiterates that we will not let the issue of historic debt go away. As we heard in the evidence presented by One Parent Families last week, the information about the current historic debt is extremely flaky. It is important that, in the interim, before CMEC is set up, we ensure that that information is firmed up. As I said last week, there is more than £1 billion of historic arrears, but the current targets for the CSA only deal with £213 million. We need some clear assurances and clear information about what is happening to that old, historic debt. That needs to be dealt with and we need to know how it is to be done.
I was disappointed with the Minister’s response to me that,
“the debt has arisen because of the lack of co-operation of non-resident parents, who simply have not faced up to their responsibility....That is ultimately where the fault of the situation lies.”——[Official Report, Child Maintenance and Other Payments Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2007; c. 116.]
I ask the Minister to go back, pre-CSA, and look at why the CSA was brought into being. I am sure that the hon. Member for Daventry is in a better position than me to comment on that. Nevertheless, the CSA was brought into being because the court system, as it then existed, was not working for the same reason that the Minister now gives for the CSA not working, and it is important that we understand and accept that point when we consider the arrangements for the operation of CMEC.
In my experience as a teacher, one accepted that certain children were always going to be naughty. One was not surprised if they were, but one planned one’s lessons to ensure that they did not disrupt what was happening. When dealing with non-resident, non-paying parents, we must accept and understand that many will try every trick in the book to avoid paying. The systems that we set up must be robust enough to ensure that they cannot do so.
I welcome the Bill’s greater teeth and tougher powers. It will enable CMEC to get stuck in, which is fine with the new arrangements. I said last week that we do not want the agency to use this clean break as an excuse to wash its hands of that difficult debt, which has sat there for years and not been addressed. We want to ensure that Parliament holds the new body to account, because as I said last week, the Government made a different decision from that in the Henshaw report. Henshaw’s recommendation was not that the historic debt should move over to CMEC, but that it should sit elsewhere. The Government have not taken that decision; they have said that the historic debt will go with the new body.