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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

Picking up first on the points of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, he asked what data we have on successful applications, appeals and outcomes. We do not currently have detailed data on that, although some research is underway to look at this issue in detail. The key point is perhaps to recognise that we propose to shift it from how it currently works—or does not work—to try to make it more accessible. If we just shifted some of the issues I touched upon—about how we currently communicate with parents with care about its availability and so on—and nothing else, it would help. We are planning to do more than that. The noble Lord is right. Standing by itself, the amendment would not provide a parent with care with any more information about whether or not they should be seeking a variation. We are looking at profiling to see whether the commission can use it to inform parents with care of the likely circumstances in which a variation may be appropriate. We certainly want to move on to a better system. On the information we will be providing to the commission to which it does not currently have access, the amendment will provide the commission with access to all information held by HMRC for the purposes of functions relating to contributions. While the majority of information held for contribution purposes is also held for income tax purposes and, as such, will be accessible to the commission, specific pieces of information, and information above a certain age, will not. The agency currently makes use of historic contributions information when it needs to create a historical profile of a non-resident parent’s employment history in order to perform a maintenance calculation, or revalue an interim maintenance assessment. The commission will also require access to contributions information for these purposes. So there is certainly a particular opportunity there to go back into the past in trying to deal with these long-outstanding debts. That national insurance information will be helpful to the commission in helping it build an employment profile for somebody. I hope that deals with the points raised. On Question, amendment agreed to.