New Clause 7
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
4:00 pm
Paul Rowen (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Rochdale, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause is a probing clause, and we are seeking information from the Minister about private arrangements and, in particular, on how the new scheme will work, once it is in place. I am sure that the Minister will argue that the Government have already carried out research—for example, the indicators of future choices survey—that shows that they were correct in their estimate of the number of people who were going to move to private arrangements. However, I want to point out to the Minister that the survey was conducted with current users of the CSA to find out what they would do when CMEC comes into being—whether they will register with CMEC on the new maintenance agreement, whether they will register on the old agreement or whether they will leave the system altogether. We feel that ongoing research is needed to examine what people actually do once the commission is established.
As we have discussed, the big group at risk is those who do not enter the system at all. There will therefore be no reason for anybody to keep track of them, and a large proportion of them may well be parents on benefits who would previously have automatically enrolled before the repeal in this Bill of section 6 of the Child Support Act 1991. In particular, we want the research to focus on how many people have no maintenance arrangements in place, especially as the purpose of the Bill is to maximise the number of children for whom an effective maintenance agreement is in place. I am sure that the Minister will agree that we all want to tackle child poverty, and if we can encourage voluntary arrangements that work and ensure that parents pay their fair whack, it will help to do that. We feel that we need some sort of research to keep track of that and to ensure that some of the concerns that we have raised do not fall through a crack.
We know about the advice and information services that the commission will provide, which might be contracted out or handed over to the private and voluntary sectors. It is important for them to have an opportunity to feed back to the Government on their experiences and the people whom they see daily. Are such people going through voluntary agreements? If they are not following through those agreements, why not? What action might the Government need to take? The matter will probably not need legislation, but it might mean that the contracting out arrangements for support need to go further than the Government have envisaged.
Although the Minister may not agree with the new clause, I hope that he can assure us that some such review will be carried out and reported to the Select Committee. The private arrangement aspect of the Bill is its most novel feature, and it is the cornerstone of its success. It is not necessarily those who are in the system who are of concern, but those who move into those arrangements and might not enter into any private arrangements. If they do not enter into a private arrangement, we need to know why.