Clause 14
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
6:15 pm
James Plaskitt (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Work and Pensions; Warwick and Leamington, Labour)
First, I shall try to deal with the points that have been raised about property. In general terms, the CSA has access to property via existing contracts under TUPE. All rights under those contracts will transfer to the commission. Long-term decisions about estate strategy will be a matter for the commission, which will review the situation as it evolves.
Clause 14 concerns the transfer of property rights and liabilities to the commission. The commission will need to operate from day one to enable those existing contracts and assets to be transferred from the CSA to the commission. It will benefit significantly by accessing the current contract, rather than being obliged to renegotiate afresh. First, most of the contracts are Department-wide and therefore make extensive savings through economies of scale. Secondly, many of them have been entered into on a long-term basis to achieve maximum efficiency. It is therefore in the commission’s interests that rights and liabilities are transferred under these contracts. Most contracts in which the commission has a partial or total interest will contain provisions allowing them to be novated or assigned—that is, allowing the straightforward transfer of the contractual rights and liabilities from the Department to the commission—and ownership of both assets can then simply be transferred. For example, if the supplier had contracted with the DWP to supply stationery to the CSA centre, the contract would be amended so that it should instead supply stationery to the commission. In a few specific cases that may not be possible. For instance, if the provisions in the contract are not extensive enough to allow for transfer to the commission, the power will simply allow the Secretary of State to transfer the property rights or liabilities in question through a scheme. Similarly, if it proves necessary for the commission to make use of property owned by the Department, the scheme could be created to provide for exactly that. It is not unusual for the transfer of property rights and liabilities to be provided for in this way. The clause echoes closely the provisions of section 41 of the Food Standards Act 1999.
On liabilities, the clause is intended to allow us to transfer contractual rights and liabilities and not to transfer the Secretary of State’s liability for previous actions. For example, the Secretary of State will retain liability for cases of maladministration that occurred before the handover.
These straightforward measures simply ensure that the commission is provided with the tools and capabilities it will need to function effectively as an organisation from the first day that it is set up.