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Child Maintenance

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right about enforcement. Unfortunately, a culture has grown up among a significant proportion of non-resident parents in which it is acceptable to evade responsibility for paying maintenance for their children. That is absolutely wrong and we cannot condone it, so enforcement has to be tough because we have to change that culture. Changing the culture will make it possible for private agreements to take place, which is then a much better foundation on which other issues linked to relationship breakdown can be dealt with, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, suggested. As far as HMRC is concerned, we have had some very helpful discussions with it, and I am glad to pay tribute to officials there for their work. We are confident that we can manage the administration involved. There is no question but that having access to tax information in order to make assessments will make the management of future cases much more straightforward.