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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My noble friend and I put our names to this amendment. Words of such a subjective nature in Acts of Parliament are far from helpful. Clearly, it is Parliament’s role to debate Bills, which cannot be very easily achieved if they are expressed in vague allusions as to what will happen in practice, or what is expected to happen, and what will actually happen. What will actually happen is not very often—especially under this Government—expressed in Bills; it is expressed in orders, which we cannot amend, although we can discuss them and argue for or against them. It takes a very rare Minister to withdraw an order after a debate; in the past few years there have been three—no, four, because the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, did it the other day. But in the general scheme of things it is very rare indeed. This is why as early in the legislative process as possible we need absolute clarity on what in this case the commission is intended to achieve. I hope that the Minister will agree that objectives are a necessary and useful yardstick against which we may in hindsight judge CMEC’s performance, in this case. It is important that the Bill contains as many checks and balances as it can to prevent a failing body continuing to fail. I know that the Minister will say straightaway that this is a new body, but I have already given my point of view on that. I would be very much interested in just what is the criteria for judging, ““effective maintenance arrangements””. Will it be quantified by a cash amount or reliability or what? Equally, what is meant by that slippery and frequently overused term, ““appropriate”” when positioned as it is here in the context of voluntary arrangements? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, on that matter. The inevitable but nevertheless crucial question is: appropriate for whom? Is it appropriate for the Government, for the civil servants behind them, for CMEC to achieve quick resolutions, for the parents or for the children? Perhaps ““appropriate”” should mean that the arrangements are at least comparable in amount with what would be available under the statutory scheme. I cannot see any good reason why Ministers should say that they would expect most voluntary arrangements to be in line with the statutory scheme. I do not think we have the slightest idea.