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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I have never been one to refuse an invitation, especially one produced like that. Before I start, for the avoidance of doubt I do not intend to have breakfast with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. Even if we had the same reading matter, we probably would not have the same cereal. The Minister has just explained a large group of amendments which I find extremely difficult to disentangle and debate. The noble Lord gives the impression—I hope it is no more and that this is not fact—that Her Majesty’s Government have a time agenda and have attempted to speed up the Committee stage of this Bill. As the debate on the last amendment showed, this Committee will not allow scrutiny to be sacrificed in the apparent hurry to get this Bill passed and on to the statute book. With such a large grouping, I can only hypothesise that these amendments have been scrambled together so that we may talk about the structure and composition of the commission. Many of the amendments could almost be described as drafting amendments, although clearly they have the effect he has set out, which is that the staff of the commission will remain civil servants for the foreseeable future. One rather wonders why the noble Lord has taken a power in the Bill to get away with that and take the staff outside the Civil Service, which he has just said that he has done. On whether Clause 13 should stand part of the Bill, I was rather nonplussed to discover that I had been pre-empted by the Minister, who got his name in before me even though I suspect that I tabled the Motion earlier. But I am well aware that that is the form in this House, so I do not complain particularly about it; I just comment. I originally proposed that Clause 13 should no longer stand part of the Bill because I wanted the noble Lord to respond to my concern that if the Bill makes provision for CSA employees to be transferred lock, stock and barrel, how will CMEC have a hope of being different from the CSA? The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, would probably agree with me on that point. Surely the same employees will inevitably bring with them the baggage of their former employment roles and duties, and thus the new CMEC, no matter what its new structure and intentions, will—to use the word of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood—morph back into that which came before it, and that which this Bill is expressly attempting to replace. On Amendment No. 2, not only will CMEC have the staff, it will have the same computer system and the same CEO as the CSA. In private discussion over the past three weeks or so the Minister has assured me that the computer system is now up and running to a standard that he and I would expect. It would be extremely helpful if he could now confirm that publicly. Another thing that we need to discover—and amendments to do this in more detail have been tabled—is the Henshaw report. [The Sitting was suspended for a Division in the House from 4.53 to 5.03 pm.]