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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

moved Amendment No. 58: 58: Clause 9, page 4, line 22, leave out ““for each financial year”” and insert ““at the end of the first complete year and thereof annually”” The noble Lord said: The amendments are intended to improve the provisions in the Bill that relate to the commission's annual report to the Secretary of State. The Opposition always ask for reports—and the Minister has heard me ask for them on several occasions before now. This Bill predicates having a report, so I do not feel embarrassed asking about it and suggesting what I believe would be some very real improvements to it. It is important to get these mechanisms right. Strengthening the way in which progress is monitored is essential in ensuring that this new body is truly accountable for its efforts—its successes as well as its failures. Both the Secretary of State and Parliament need to know about both of those. The amendments that we have tabled are an attempt to do precisely that and to make the provisions for reporting more robust and transparent. Amendments Nos. 58 and 65 relate to the timing of the report. Amendment No. 58 tidies up the language to ensure that the report comes at the end of the first complete year of the commission’s activities. At the moment, the Bill gives precious little guidance as to when the first report is likely to come. Amendment No. 65 places a duty on the Secretary of State to lay the report before Parliament within one month of receiving it. That might be regarded as a slightly eccentric idea but it is necessary to ensure that what takes priority in the presentation of the report is its content and not, perhaps, its political implications. In drafting that amendment I have been generous to the Government; I should have thought that a fortnight would be quite long enough to concentrate their mind before laying it before Parliament. However, as the Bill stands, the Secretary of State could choose any time that he or she liked to present the report to Parliament, waiting until it would not be noticed to report bad news—perhaps on the last day before a parliamentary recess. That has happened. Or he or she may use potentially good news to mask another failure. I hope that that would never be the intention but it is important to remove as far as possible the chance of politicising the commission’s or even appearing to do so. The report must be scrutinised for what it contains, thus placing a duty on the Secretary of State to present it to Parliament promptly, which relieves him of even appearing to choose his timing based on political expediency and goes a long way to ensuring that the report receives the sort of attention that it deserves. The other amendments in this group refer to the contents of the report. We feel very strongly that the report should flag up the details of complaints that the commission might have received and how they were dealt with. We understand that creating an agency that will be truly effective is a dynamic process. The Minister has talked in the past two days about stages in this operation that has already started. Inevitably, however, there will be bedding down—and bedding down means some problems initially, which one hopes will not go on for too long but will certainly be there in the first two years. Thus if the commission is to be effective there must be a sensitivity to the problems that may arise. By including complaints in the report, the commission is made more accountable—but it also serves as a way in which to shed light on areas that can be improved. This part of the Bill allows the commission to empower any of its employees or other authorities to exercise its duties. Authorising employees of the commission to carry out its functions would certainly be a necessary tool in effective implementation, but it is still important to assess whether these authorised agencies are actually meeting the goals that they were assigned to meet. Essentially this is a point about responsibility. We understand that effective management demands empowering other bodies to execute some duties, but the responsibility must ultimately lie with the commission. Thus we propose that the report should include an assessment of the commission’s attempt to meet not only its overall goals but the goals of the bodies that the commission has empowered. Our interest here is in making the report paint the most accurate portrait possible of the progress of the commission’s efforts. The more that we understand about its work and impact, the better placed we will be to improve its effect. Amendments Nos. 67, 73, 74, 75 and 85, tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, are allied and consider how secondary legislation will be scrutinised. I shall probably return to that a little later. I beg to move.