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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I am not surprised by any of that, but I am disappointed. Two things strike me about what the Minister said. If he really believes—and I do not—that, in steady state, two regulations will be promoted by the commission a year, then there is an argument for adding it to the existing Social Security Advisory Committee. Its reason for not accepting the responsibility is that it would be too much work. Both these positions cannot be right. It may be that the committee is just ducking it because it is hard pressed, and it is. But if we are to have a steady state of two extra sets of regulations, it seems obvious to invite the committee to take this branch of semi-benefit law under its umbrella. It currently cannot because of how it is constituted and the provisions of its set-up. I will go away and contemplate, and perhaps talk to the Social Security Advisory Committee again. If its members could be persuaded that it would only be two sets of regulations a year, we might have a deal. I shall pursue that as a result of what the Minister has said. The point that the Minister is missing, which the Committee must not miss, is that the value of what the Social Security Advisory Committee currently does is that it consults and publishes in the public domain. On websites, people can see what it says in detail. Any amount of stakeholder consultation that the commission does—which I encourage it to do, and we are all agreed that people are willing to help it—will be between it and the bilaterals, or the close communities that they serve. If this piece of public policy is going to take root and win public support, it should be much more broadly and widely promoted. The Social Security Advisory Committee, or some child support advisory committee, would be, in my view, an important part of that. On the basis that I will go away and think carefully about what the Minister has said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 10 agreed to.