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Child Maintenance

May I give a general welcome to what my right hon. Friend said, and may I ask him to consider an issue that the existing system does not deal with—the possibility of shared care between two parents? I have a classic case in my constituency—other hon. Members will have similar ones—in which, over a 10-year period, each of the two parents looked after their child for three days and a bit every week. The problem is that the size of the bit kept changing, so there were calculations and recalculations, and money passed back and forth between the parents. Diaries were kept, and there was a great deal of acrimony. There were hearings, appeals, and visits to Ministers, involving the two MPs’ offices. It could all have been avoided from the very beginning, if it was recognised that both parents had shared care, and neither owed any maintenance to the other.