Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Defence – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 12 February 2001.
Caroline Flint
Labour, Don Valley
12:00,
12 February 2001
My hon. Friend will be aware that for some years I have been campaigning to have removed the arcane old-fashioned regulations that affect the pay of Navy, Army and RAF personnel. Those regulations prevent the operation of deduction of earnings orders that the Child Support Agency has imposed on some personnel, and so help them to avoid their responsibilities. When will the Minister do something about that? The new CSA arrangements will do nothing to deal with the backlog of cases affected by those regulations, and that is a crying shame.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
