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Child Maintenance

My Lords, I welcome the Statement. The Government have the general direction right. We want to see the encouragement of private initiatives and the higher disregard, which are good incentives. However, if we are talking about changing the culture, as the Minister said, surely that is about the balance of rights and responsibilities. There are parents who choose to evade their responsibilities; they disappear and resist attempts to contact them. We have to recognise that. While I do not believe that naming and shaming people who seem to have little shame about their parental responsibilities will necessarily work, it may help for them to be contacted; on balance, that approach is probably right. The compulsory actions are a necessary part of that. They are the balancing act. The first, positive side is to encourage private arrangements and to try to ensure that both parents acknowledge their joint responsibility. So, by and large the Government have got it right, and I welcome the assurances on safeguards regarding birth certificates. My question is about the role of the Inland Revenue, which should probably have been utilised better in the past. Will it have the resources and staffing to deal with these extra responsibilities? If it does not, we shall see an unfortunate failure in that regard.