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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. We want to reduce the number of cases that go to the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission. We already know from the Child Support Agency that it is not working. Having listened to the Minister in Committee, I assumed that by providing advice and support to both parents at the beginning of a separation, it would be possible to reach an agreement that would stick. We have yet to hear how much the Government will commit to making sure that that support and advice are available. However, at the end of 12 months, no matter what process they have gone through, a parent can go direct to CMEC. The Bill does not stipulate that they can go to CMEC only in certain circumstances. With all the advice and support that the commission will provide, they can enter into an agreement and, at the end of 12 months, tear it up. That goes against the spirit of the Bill. I agree with the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire that we are dealing with only a small number of case—9 per cent. of cases have maintenance agreements covered by minutes of agreement. Research in Scotland found that 93 per cent. of those agreements are made by owner-occupiers and only 4 per cent. by tenants in rented housing. The research concluded that the agreements were property-driven. Again, I agree with the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, whose new clause 5 seeks to address some of the issues in respect of property agreements. That is important. One of the problems with the Bill has been the fact that so many of the things that will happen will appear in regulations later. We should try to fix a far more detailed arrangement. I accept what the Minister said earlier. There has to be a clear principle that children should be able to benefit from any prosperity that both parents have. The Minister takes the view that we are putting forward tablets of stone that cannot be changed, but neither of the amendments being pressed are like that. I should like to read a little more from what Sir David Henshaw said in his report, because it comes to the crux of whether voluntary agreements will be worth the effort put into them. Sir David said:"““I recommend that consent orders obtained through the courts should not be able to be overturned by the administrative system. This would remove the current 12-month break-point which enables parents to move between consent orders and the administrative system. The order from the court would be given primacy and the courts would become responsible for varying and enforcing consent orders, in effect tying such cases into the legal system.””" I know that when the CSA was created, no standard assessment was made of what should be paid for maintenance. If the CSA has done one good thing, it is to have set in place a fairly well accepted system of what payments should be made.