Clause 12
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
5:15 pm
Danny Alexander (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)
I have a few brief questions to put to the Minister. Because clause 12 relates to the transfer of functions from the Child Support Act 1991, and therefore, in many cases, effectively from the CSA to CMEC, this is a good opportunity to ask some questions about the nature of, and planning for, the transition between the two organisations, although there may be further opportunities to raise such issues.
The clause cuts to the heart of questions about the administration of the transition. It will transfer a substantial number of functions under the 1991 Act to CMEC, except those listed in subsection (2)—the exceptions are dealt with clearly in the explanatory notes. I note in passing that the Work and Pensions Committee, in a report in March this year, stated:
“The CSA has an unfavourable history regarding transition between systems.”
If transitions from the old to the new within the CSA have proved to be such a problem, what consideration has the Minister given to the framing of the clause to deal with the potential pitfalls in transferring functions from the CSA to the new body? In his report, Sir David Henshaw stated:
“I believe there are strong reasons to justify making a clean break from the current Agency and creating a new body with a mandate to deliver a ‘fresh start’ for child support. This body should be separate from the task of dealing with legacy issues from the current system, including the management of existing debt.”
I am probing the Minister to go a little further on the matter. Perhaps he has not had an opportunity so far in the Committee to explain why the Government have chosen not to follow up that recommendation to keep the functions separate and to use the CSA to wind up historic debt and so on and to deal with other issues under the old system. That would allow CMEC to make a fresh start with future applications.
There is a question of the extent to which the creation of CMEC is delivering the clean break that Henshaw recommended and which the Committee wants to see. Two members of the Select Committee are here: the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare and the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire. Although one must remain silent, we hope to hear from the other in our debates. As they will remember, in its evidence to the Committee, One Parent Families stated that
“it would appear that the CSA (its staff and computer system) will simply be re-branded as C-MEC from 2008 onwards.”
Natascha Engel (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab) indicated dissent.