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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

Of course, we would encourage that sort of contact when it was appropriate—and there may be cases when it is not. At the moment the threshold at which adjustment to maintenance obligations kicks in with shared care is when it reaches 52 nights a year. Below that, if there are overnight stays, there would be no adjustment. So we already have a threshold. When overnight contact is between 52 or 103 nights, or further up the scale, and when it is appropriate, the Government would want to encourage it. It is for the parents and children involved to settle these matters. We do not want to have arrangements that would discourage that. The problem with this issue, and the one that we face through a number of engagements with stakeholders, is that some say there should be no adjustment for shared care, while others say that there should be far greater adjustment. That is why we felt that there was no compelling reason to move away from the current scale, other than to seek administratively to ensure that the arrangements do not get in the way of allowing assessments to be made, not only in respect of the opening period and how you can identify what the starting point should be for shared-care adjustments but also to lock the arrangements in as part of the fixed-term awards. Another bugbear of the current system is that there are endless requests for changes of circumstances, including arguments over whether it is one night more or less. Administratively that can be very complex, so trying to get that sorted up front and to lock into fixed-term arrangements, as we seek to do on incomes as well, will certainly help to make maintenance arrangements effective and move cash more quickly for the benefit of children.