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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I am grateful to noble Lords for tabling the proposed amendments, each of which I shall address in turn. Amendment No. 23 proposes that the main objective of the commission should be extended to include a subsection requiring the commission to secure the payment of arrears owed under the Act. I understand these concerns but I believe that the amendment is unnecessary. The commission will already be required to pursue all arrears, regardless of when they arose, under the objective which requires it to secure parental compliance with the Child Support Act 1991 where appropriate. Indeed, the Bill brings in new enforcement and debt management powers to prevent new debt building up and to enable accumulated debt to be recovered. I should also like to take the opportunity to reassure noble Lords that a range of targets will be published in the commission’s business plan that will underpin each of the commission’s objectives, and these targets will be agreed between the department and the commission in a process which has not yet begun. While we cannot commit to anything at this stage, we would expect the collection of outstanding debt to be part of the range of targets. Returning to the current drafting of the subsidiary objective, the words ““when appropriate”” are needed because Section 2 of the 1991 Act requires the commission to, "““have regard to the welfare of any child””," when exercising discretionary powers. Indeed, this is a provision to which the noble Lord himself referred at the start of our deliberations. This must take precedence over other considerations. If we removed the words ““when appropriate”” as suggested in Amendment No. 27, the commission would be caught between two absolute requirements: always to secure compliance under the Act and always to have regard to the welfare of any child. The current drafting of Clause 2 prevents that situation arising, thus ensuring that the commission can always have regard to the welfare of the child. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, pressed me on specific examples. There could be situations where pressing a non-resident parent could have a particularly difficult impact on the welfare of a child in his new family; or there could be issues of violence around the potential family situation which could be exacerbated by the pursuit of debts. If the noble Lord presses on why it should be the commission that makes that judgment, it is because the commission would generally be possessed of the information best to make that judgment. Finally, Amendment No. 36 seeks to strengthen the link between the commission’s objectives and the functions. I can reassure the noble Lord that by requiring the commission to pursue and have regard to its objectives, it can only exercise relevant functions in a way that it believes will help meet them. The proposed amendment to ensure that the commission is bound by its objectives when exercising a relevant function would do nothing to change or strengthen this. Furthermore, the current wording reflects standard drafting for such matters rather than any weakness in the link between objectives and functions. There is, for example, a similar approach in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. In the light of that explanation, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment. I turn to some of the additional points that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, mentioned my appearance before the committee in another place and made reference to provisions in accounts. We were then reinforcing the point that the commission should be dealing on a case-by-case basis with individual debtor situations. Obviously, when accounts are drawn up, a judgment is always made about the extent to which a debt book is collectable. It would be normal in those accounts to make a provision against the gross total. It does not mean that any particular debt has been written off and will not be pursued; it merely makes an aggregate judgment about the extent to which, ultimately, that debt will be recovered. I should make it clear that any write-off of debt would require the consent of the parent with care. A qualification might be where the non-resident parent is deceased and the estate is not in a position to deal with the amount due. At the moment, it cannot be, but there is a provision in the Bill which will enable the estates of deceased persons to be pursued. That is why that provision is there. The Bill includes a range of new powers which the commission will be able to use for the collection and management of historic debt. However, we have listened to concerns raised throughout the Bill’s progress and we have decided to introduce an amendment which we will discuss later in Committee. The amendment will ensure that all new and existing enforcement mechanisms, including liability orders, can be applied to debt at any age, in particular debt which accrued before July 2000 and which we had not previously been able to use court-based enforcement tools to collect. I stress that there are no plans to write off debt where a parent with care wants it collected. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, asked about the definition of ““child””. For child maintenance purposes it broadly follows the child benefit qualifications. It is therefore up to the age of 16 and after that it depends on whether the child is in education and the type of education in which he is engaged.