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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I do not know whether the management information that would enable us to judge that will be available. I am not seeking to impute bad faith to the professionals who operate the commission. If the CMEC scheme becomes understood, and is known to be efficient and to provide a good service to the public, it will increase the number of people who use it. If that happens, I do not see how the commission can conceivably deal with the legacy backlog. It cannot do both things at the same time. The policy is posited on losing 400,000 cases, because people will do their own thing. I do not know how robust that figure is, but I do not have anything better to offer. If the commission is not careful, it will end up trying to reduce case load so that it can live from day to day. At its core, the amendment, inadequately drafted as it may be, would achieve two things. We need to start asking children more—nobody in this process asks children. Let us bear in mind that children aged 12 in Scotland can make applications in their own right. Nobody goes anywhere near the children to ask whether they want the Child Support Agency’s support, and whether it helps their parents, their quality of life and their life chances. The amendment would shift the weight of that situation, so that more priority is given to consideration of children, as well as achieving the operational efficiency that we all want.