Schedule 6
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
11:00 am
James Plaskitt (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Work and Pensions; Warwick and Leamington, Labour)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the amendment. We have no objection in principle to what he wants to achieve by it, but there is a difficulty about the means. If he will bear with me, I shall explain what that is.
We agree that it is right that parents or their representatives should be free to disclose information from court proceedings to the commission if they consider that such information would enable the commission to make fairer and more accurate maintenance calculations and, in short, provide a better service to parents and children. In most cases the information that would be disclosed would be details about a non-resident parent’s income, obtained in private proceedings, such as ancillary relief proceedings in divorce.
By removing the current need, in certain proceedings, to apply to the court for permission to pass that information on to the commission, we may speed up the process of getting maintenance flowing to children and ensure that maintenance calculations are fair and accurate. We support the free passage of information between parties to court proceedings, their representatives and the commission where that would help the commission to fulfil its functions more effectively, and we are working to find the best way to achieve that agreed objective.
The amendment would capture the information held by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and potentially information held by expert witnesses, which might include, for example, information on psychological assessments of parents and children. We are sure that that was not intended by those who drafted the amendment. It is not clear, at this point, how best to achieve the objectives that the hon. Gentleman and I share. It may need a change in primary legislation, or it might be possible by changing court rules. The relevant court committees, including the family procedure rule committee, are the bodies that make rules of court. They would need to discuss and consider proposed rule changes, and appropriate consultation would be needed before that could happen.