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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

moved Amendment No. 39: 39: Clause 4, page 2, line 15, leave out paragraph (a) The noble Lord said: This is a large group. My Amendment No. 39 starts it off, and it includes Amendments Nos. 40 to 46 and 48 to 50. These amendments are grouped so that we can consider a major new aspect of CMEC. We might call it its human aspect, which is intended to make it more than the money-extracting agency that the CSA was believed to have become. The CSA is not liked; more than that, it is resented. As a result, it has not succeeded in its role of administering child maintenance. I have tabled my amendment to ask the Minister what he considers child maintenance to be. On Tuesday, we had quite a long debate on this subject, but he has not yet satisfied me. How much of it is a financial duty and how much an emotional duty? More specifically related to the debate in hand, how much of CMEC’s role will be financial support for the parent and how much of it will be emotional support? Have the Government considered looking at the successful reformed Australian child support scheme as a precedent for our own currently unsuccessful scheme? Indeed, Amendment No. 40 acknowledges why the information and guidance facet of CMEC is needed. The need to protect the parent with care is great, but in so doing, CMEC must not alienate the non-resident parent because if the latter believes that CMEC sees him or her only as a target from which to demand money, he or she will feel alienated from the agency and resentful towards it. The result will be coercion, not co-operation; which is far from ideal. Only around one third of eligible families receive child maintenance in this country. In such a climate, where child maintenance is not valued, it is crucial to change child maintenance into something that is unquestioned and unchallenged. I know that is the Minister’s hope. Clearly, that necessitates getting the non-resident parent on side. As we have heard, 95 per cent of them are fathers. On Amendment No. 43, what does the Minister propose that the information and guidance suggested will be? If this is to be one of the obvious differences between CMEC and its predecessor, why is the new information and support service not even loosely defined in the Bill? A local and face-to-face service that is on hand for all parents is only going to make parents feel more consulted and included in the scheme. However, the Minister sent me—and I am sure other noble Lords—a letter on the appointment of Ventura some time ago. In it, he talked about Ventura operating from a central place, I think, in the north of England; I happen to think it is Sheffield, but I may have got that wrong. The point is that it will operate from a central place. If the inter-relationship with parents with care is going to be by e-mail, that does not matter at all, but if there are to be face-to-face interviews, it will have to set up some sort of local system to do that. There will not be many parents with care in the situation that we have been talking about who have the money to go from, say, Cornwall, up to Sheffield, or wherever in the north of England it happens to be. Clearly, it will have to set up some sort of subsidiary organisation. I hope that CMEC will be part of a large drive to help to improve the quality of life for Britain’s children and Britain’s struggling parents. That is why Amendment No. 48 is useful, because it points to how child maintenance, both financial and emotional, needs to harness all available resources. If HMG are so keen on joined-up government, why is that not in the Bill? Amendments Nos. 41 and 42 are obvious examples of drafting amendments, but they crucially tighten the relationship between CMEC and its commitment to giving information and guidance and turn it into a duty. While all so far has been well and good, I am afraid that I cannot agree with Amendment No. 49, which states: "““The Commission must devote at least 15% of its total annual budget””." That is inflexible, and it is not always appropriate. The percentage of money to be devoted to this area cannot reasonably be decided until the commission is up and running; and it is likely to change from year to year. A figure plucked out of the sky, uncorroborated by practice, is dangerous because it either threatens unrealistic demands or sets too easy a goal. I beg to move.