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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I think that the noble Lord is right. If I have understood my noble friend correctly, in a new case involving a second family in the voluntary system with a NRP shared with a family in the statutory system, the statutory figure would remain unaffected. All that they could get is the head space of the difference between, say, two and three children, which might be 5 per cent net, 4 per cent gross, as opposed to divvying up the full sum between them. That would be grossly unfair to the second family. That suggests that for any new family coming into the new scheme, if there is any linked case, the only way that they can get a fair apportionment of resources, especially if the first family chooses to stay in the statutory system, would be for them also to go into the statutory system. Otherwise, they could get only the head growth for the extra child, not share the apportionment between the two families.