My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement first delivered in another place. As I sat with the noble Lord in the Public Gallery in the Commons, I felt the Secretary of State's response to the serious concerns raised by my honourable friend David Laws fell far short of the standards of courtesy and behaviour we certainly expect in this House. Frankly, they did not measure up to the scale of the crisis at the CSA.

Let me give noble Lords a little flavour of the Secretary of State's remarks. He accused David Laws of "dancing around" and "intellectual bankruptcy", and then said that he did not want to get party political. Lone parents deserve far better than that from the Secretary of State who is meant to be responsible for protecting them and seeing that they get the money they need to bring up their children.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope—as he then was not—for chairing the Select Committee in another place and its excellent report. I know that he does not exactly share our views on this particular matter, but I pay tribute to him.

Why is it intellectually bankrupt to argue, as we do, that the CSA has failed, and failed again, beyond any reasonable prospect of redemption and that most, if not all of its functions should be handed over to HM Revenue and Customs? Why is that not a serious proposition to be examined sensibly and in detail rather than shrugged off with a few snide remarks?

Independent observers with an open mind would point out that the Inland Revenue must be the government department best placed to know individuals' personal financial circumstances and to enforce collection of debts. We agree that such a transfer would not be easy, but we are not looking for an ideal solution, just a realistic way out of a very deep black hole where the Government seem unable to stop digging.

I turn now to the review by Sir David Henshaw—sorry, it is not a review but a redesign. My dictionary says that a review is,

"a formal assessment of something with the intention of instituting change".

I would have hoped that that is what this redesign is meant to achieve.

Let us look at the terms of reference. They are: how best to ensure that parents take financial responsibility for their children when they live apart; the best arrangements for delivering this outcome cost-effectively; and the options for moving to new structures and policies, recognising the need to protect the level of service offered to the current 1.5 million parents with care. Is that not simply a statement of what the CSA is meant to do? It is just another review of how it should work. This seems to me, yet again, to be putting off the evil day of decision.

Why has Sir David Henshaw been selected? His curriculum vitae shows that his career has been entirely in the public sector. He has, for example, acted as a former adviser to the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit; he is a non-executive director of the Home Secretary's National Offender Management Board, adviser to the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit and member of the Treasury's Public Services Productivity Panel. With an organisation experiencing the degree of failure of the CSA, would it not have been better to have brought in someone who was more of a breath of fresh air and had some private sector discipline and experience?