Written evidence to be reported to the House

Part of Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:00 pm on 17 July 2007.

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Janet Allbeson: The Bill is a skeletal document. A lot of the issues that will determine whether or not the new scheme is successful relate to big questions that are hard for Parliament to address. For example, the Department’s budget will have a 5 per cent. cut, year on year, between 2008 and 2011. There are big issues to do with resources and delivery mechanisms, such as procurement policy, IT systems and project management. Delivery has been the big failure of child support. In the past, a lot of time was spent discussing policy questions and getting the policy absolutely right; far too little attention was paid to how it worked alongside effective delivery. A lot of the big issues are not mentioned in the Bill, such as the transition from two schemes running side by side to one new scheme or, in fact, three variations. There will be an information and advice service to support voluntary agreements, a cash collection service in another tranche and a new scheme. That transition is a huge mountain for CMEC to climb, but there is very little information in the Bill about any of that.