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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I sincerely apologise for missing the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. Forgive me, I was caught on the telephone and was not diligent enough to get off it quickly enough. I support the push of the noble Lords in the amendment, which I think is very wise. Many of us have what I hope are ill-founded reservations about the efficacy of a voluntary system. I understand that in Scandinavia, for example, the parents with care could not even claim good cause to allow them to remain anonymous. The reason for that, which was not the path that we followed in Britain in either 1991 or 2000, was to remove absolutely the burden of responsibility from the mother on to the organisation, to ensure that maintenance floated to the children. If it appeared to be discretionary as to what she sought and how much she would settle for, it was more likely that she would be at the end of harassment, bullying or even violence. I remember seeing a NACSA website which said, ““Go and break the window of your ex and tell her that if she pleads good cause, that she is afraid of you, you will pay her £10 or £15””. I saw that website; it was then taken off when it was realised that I had had access to it. One should not underestimate not just the fecklessness of some payers but the reluctance of men who feel that they have no continuing relationship with the parent with care and no continuing relationship with the child. Anything that sends agreements into the voluntary sector encourages him—I say him; I accept that some parents with care will be fathers, but 90 or 95 per cent will be mothers—to seek always to press down on the payments that he would otherwise make. That is especially true, from my experience, when he moves into a second relationship in which there is another player, possibly a woman with children of her own in a fairly tight financial situation, who is seeking all the time, understandably, to maximise the second family's income. My first point is that I have very deep worries about a voluntary system, given the inequity of bargaining power. A lot of European experience suggests that that is an unwise path to go down. My second concern is that, if we are going down that path, we must ensure that there is at least some way to give her some muscle. I know that she can come back to CMEC and the statutory system, but that will be discouraged, because the whole of the business case is based on trying to get as many individuals into the voluntary sector as possible. At the very least, I would like my noble friend to see whether it is worth exploring, alongside the amendment, reinforcing it by making it possible to have a registration system, as I understand there is in Scotland, so that voluntary agreements can be registered. They will not have statutory force, but will appear to stiffen and formalise the situation. If then by consent she seeks to depart voluntarily from the minute that she has registered—perhaps because she is trading a reduced sum for extra money for school trips or trains and so on—that is fine. At least it may balance some of the imbalance of power that may result. The third thing that worries me about a voluntary arrangement relates to an amendment to be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, later, with which I have some sympathy, although, again, I am not sure that it should be in the Bill. I am confident that my noble friend says in his speeches to staff and to public organisations all the time that getting child maintenance flow, along with getting lone parents back into work, is one of the most effective ways of tackling child poverty. That is undeniable. However, if we have voluntary arrangements, how do we know what money is going to children? How do we know, as a result, how many lone parents with children are above the 60 per cent median line? We would know the benefit income, but we would not know what additional income she is getting from the father if there is no way even to register it. I accept that a registration system is somewhat flaky and that it may be more observed in its absence than in its presence. But at least it gives us a benchmark which allows us to track what is happening to children who may or may not be just on the poverty line. If that money is flowing, at least we could see whether we are beginning to meet our targets, including the extremely challenging target of trying to reduce by half the number of children in poverty by 2010. For those reasons, I am worried about any voluntary system. First, it increases the father’s potential all the time to negotiate the money down because he has the power and the knowledge. He knows what he is earning, whereas the mother almost certainly does not. Secondly, we should at the very least stiffen it with a registration system, as in Scotland. Thirdly, I also want to see that registration system or a version of, it if at all possible, in order to track what is happening to child poverty. If we do not concern ourselves with this, we will not achieve one of the main outcomes that we are striving for in this Bill. We want to ensure that child maintenance flows to children, not just so that biological fathers rather than taxpayer fathers bear a proper responsibility for their child’s well-being, but so that we can tackle what is really a scar on the face of the nation—too many children bumping along at the very bottom level of income support.