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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who participated in this debate. This Bill deals with very important matters and that has been reflected in the style and manner of the contributions of everybody who has spoken. I will seek to address each of the points raised. The general support that has been given to the Bill is appreciated by the Government but I recognise that in some respects it comes with qualifications and, to use the term used by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, is qualified with caution. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said that the Bill was very mechanistic and did nothing to encourage the nuclear family to stay together. That mirrors a number of contributions about the breadth of the proposal. I say to the noble Lord that it is focused overwhelmingly on getting child maintenance moving. Of course, there is a wider issue and I touched on how, through the Information and Support Service, we would engage in that wider agenda but I do not believe that we should lose sight of that. The noble Lord said that the CSA has an ignominious history. However, as my noble friend Lady Hollis pointed out, it was originally set up to claw back benefit and was not focused on the contribution that child maintenance could make to tackling child poverty. I will not challenge him on the assertion that this Government inherited a system that was beginning to work because we should focus on the future.