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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I shall speak to new clause 7 and amendment No. 17. The latter would do what the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) seeks to achieve with new clause 3, and we will support him if he chooses to press that to a Division. We made the point in Committee that the new commission must make a commitment to the collection of historic debt. On the basis of figures from March 2006, £3.5 billion has not been collected by the CSA, and the total rises by £20 million a month. That is according to last year's CSA report, and the 2006-07 report will probably show a further increase. We all have examples of non-resident parents who have gone missing and owe the parent with care tens of thousands of pounds. A lady who came to see me last year is owed £24,000, which has placed a huge burden on her. It means that her children are not getting the support that they deserve and the non-resident parent has got away with evading his responsibilities. We have all signed up to the main aim that CMEC should be a fresh start—a clean break from the CSA and the failures of the past. Some of us argued that it might be better if the past debt were dealt with by a residuary rump, which could concentrate solely on that. The Government did not come to that decision, but it is important that CMEC's objectives should state clearly that it has a major commitment to clearing that historic debt. A generation of children has already grown up without the benefit of the support that the CSA was supposed to provide for them. They have gone through the system, but in establishing CMEC we need to ensure that the actual collection of the historic debt has equal priority with the new arrangements for a new generation of children. As the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire said, almost 100,000 of the 881,300 non-resident parents with arrears owe more than £10,000. That is a huge amount, so it is important that we make that debt a major priority. New clause 7, which we shall press to a vote, would make provision for Parliament to approve the operational plan. The plan would have to be laid before Parliament by the Secretary of State and considered by both Houses within three months. Regulations under the operational plan would have to give detail about the staffing levels the commission considers appropriate. A major concern about the Bill—expressed by Janet Allbeson of One Parent Families, who gave evidence to the Select Committee—is that it is very much a skeleton, and much of its detail will be in regulations, which, of course, are impossible for us to amend. It is true that CMEC will have to provide an annual report to the Secretary of State, which can be laid before Parliament. With great respect, however, I suggest that an annual report is just that; it looks back at the year that has just finished. It does not give Parliament the wherewithal to hold that new arm's length agency accountable for what it plans to do in the coming 12 months. Insisting that the operational plan be laid before Parliament would deal with many of the issues that we raised in Committee, such as the IT systems, the staffing levels or the giving of information and advice, provision for all of which is to be made later. Some of the regulations have been produced for us, as the Minister promised in Committee, but they are still only in draft and we do not have all the information. One of our major concerns is about staffing. The regulatory impact assessment is that CMEC's caseload will be reduced from the current figure of 130,000 for the CSA to 100,000. That may be the case. The staffing cuts already programmed envisage a 15 per cent. reduction for CMEC, taking the head-count down to 9,500 by March 2008, which in a perfect world might be okay. However, the problem that we have, and the concern that we raised in Committee, is that we have no evidence yet as to whether the case load will reduce as quickly and as drastically as is envisaged in the plan. We argued in Committee that there should be no reduction in staffing levels until CMEC has proved that it is functioning at the required standard. One of our concerns is that a new series of arrangements will have to be put in place, a new series of advice and information will have to be set in train, and new cases operating under the third type of child maintenance system will have to dealt with—at the same time as dealing with the huge historic debt and the nearly 900,000 non-resident parents who are in arrears. If that happens, and the staffing reductions continue, Parliament will have no recourse to hold CMEC to account. It is unfortunate that so much of the detail of how CMEC will operate has not been included in the Bill, although both Opposition parties moved amendments to try to change that. The new clause would make CMEC more accountable to Parliament. The new commissioner has already been appointed, despite the Prime Minister's statement about appointments being approved by Parliament. That has not happened in this case. The rest of the board, however, has not been appointed, and the House should have some say in how CMEC is going to be run. Giving it a statutory duty to present to Parliament an annual operational plan that looks forward not back—which is what we believe that the annual report will do—will give the House a proper opportunity to make sure that, at the third attempt, following the setting up of the Child Support Agency, CMEC delivers on its objectives. Although we have signed up to the broad brush of what the Government are trying to do, we believe that a lot of the detail has still not been filled in—detail that is vital to the success of CMEC. I am talking about staffing levels, IT support, and the provision of information and advice. None of those things are decided yet. If the operational plan were laid before Parliament, there would be an opportunity for Members on both sides to contribute positively to ensuring that CMEC gets the start that we all want. I hope that the Minister will support the new clause, which is not controversial. Implementing it would involve no additional costs. However, it would ensure that hon. Members could play a full part in ensuring that CMEC delivers on its objectives.