New Clause 16
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
4:30 pm
Paul Rowen (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Rochdale, Liberal Democrat)
I hope that the Minister will accept the new clause. We are moving to a different situation from that under the CSA, which places the onus on the parent with care to provide evidence before a variation will be made. Under the new system, the commission will progressively gain access to more information about the financial circumstances of non-resident parents with care—it will not happen overnight. It is about gaining progressively more information. There is no way that from day one of the commission’s operation its systems and HMRC’s systems will be set up in such a way that information flows smoothly and without glitches. I am thinking in particular about what the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire has said about dividend income, which is declared in a totally different context from that in which any other earned income is declared, and which may well be declared later.