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Child Maintenance

I start by at least welcoming those parts of the hon. Gentleman’s comments where he indicated his support for the general direction of travel, and I am grateful to him for that. It is true that, when the previous Government set up the CSA, they had the benefit of a cross-party consensus, and it is certainly my intention to try, wherever possible, to sustain that as we take these reforms forward. The hon. Gentleman asked me specifically about the role of the voluntary sector. It is true that, in future, we want to see stronger advice and support, and yes—I do not want to use this word; it is not particularly politically correct, but it is important—some counselling in the system when parents contemplate splitting up. That is a proper role for the voluntary sector to discharge. I do not think, if I can be blunt, that that is a proper role for the state or the arms of the state. Yes, to ensure that there is a proper service, it must be properly resourced. That aspect of the system will not come in until 2010, and I must accommodate all the expense and cost of that from within my comprehensive spending review settlement. I am confident that I can do so. The details of exactly how much support is available will need to be fixed nearer the time. The hon. Gentleman’s principal concern was with the time scale for the transition, and I understand the point that he has made. I am sure that other hon. Members will seek to make the same point, so to all of them who are thinking of making that point, I offer a general response: we must be realistic and honest and straight with people. It would be dishonest to pretend that there is somehow a magic bullet that I can fire or a lever that I can crank in the Department to speed up the transition to the new system. If there is one thing that we should be wary of doing it is to assume that people such as me, who have responsibility at the moment, should overrule the advice that I have received from the experts who advise me and impose my judgment about a faster time scale. [Interruption.] Look, without labouring the point, that would be the real betrayal. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that he can do it faster, we look forward to hearing his advice. If it comes to a choice between the experts and the hon. Gentleman, I am afraid that I will go for the experts every day of the week. If he thinks that we can go faster, we will certainly look at his proposals and study them in detail, but we should not repeat the mistakes of the past, and the time scale seeks to reflect that properly. It is quite wrong to say that nothing will happen until 2013, as it is wrong to say that we are turning our back on the cases that are trapped in the current system—that is not true. The main aspects of the reforms will begin to come through in 2008. That is when we will be able to offer the ending of compulsion for benefit claimants and the availability of the new £10 disregard. We can do that in 2008, because new software is required to make that payment. It will not come from the CSA; the maintenance disregard will be reflected in an adjustment in benefits, so Jobcentre Plus will do that. The hon. Gentleman asks me about the interim maintenance assessment revaluation. That is a genuinely tough call. Again, we would do a disservice to our constituents if we did not acknowledge that there is a genuine problem that needs to be addressed. It is worth pointing out that those cases stopped in 2001, because we realised that the measure was ineffective. The dropping of IMAs was done by common consent across the parties—a shared agreement. We replaced the measure with a new criminal sanction of withholding information from the CSA. The original intent was that an interim maintenance assessment would act as a punitive encouragement to the non-resident parent who was not paying to fork out the cash. It spectacularly failed to do that. In cases where we revisited interim maintenance assessments, we found that the likelihood of money getting to the parent with care was about 30 per cent., looking at the total debt in the system. We have to make a choice. There is no point in pretending. Let me be honest: I know what will happen. If I try to pursue the whole debt, the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, and perhaps some of my hon. Friends too, will say, ““Hang on. This is unfair. You are asking the non-resident parent to pay back too much.”” We have to prioritise and make a simple, clear choice. I want to get as much of that money back into the hands, pockets and purses of the parents with care as I can. That is going to be my priority. I think that I can recover about £500 million of that money. I am being honest and straight with the House: I do not believe that all of that £1.3 billion is now recoverable. If I have a choice between investing resource into the new organisation and debt recovery, I am going to follow the money that I can recover cost effectively and not waste the time of the agency, or anyone else, in trying to recover debt that, frankly, is not recoverable. If that is what he is proposing, he is making a mistake. Finally, the hon. Gentleman wants me to reconsider deduction of earnings orders. Let me be clear: the White Paper proposes that we take a power to pilot that as one aspect of the system. I am sorry if I did not make that clear. That is what we are doing. I want to make one other point clear, too. If we are to incentivise the reaching of voluntary agreements, we have to make aware those parents who are thinking of holding up the proverbial two fingers to us again and saying, ““I can play the system. I can string this out and it is going to be fine. I will wriggle out of my responsibilities””, that that is not going to happen. I have to make the system as unpleasant, tough and harsh as possible for the non-compliant parents. That is what this potential new power could do. I want to charge the non-resident parents, as well—