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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

Perhaps I may start with Amendment No. 135, which seeks not to exclude deduction orders from being used against accounts that can be used only partly for business purposes. In light of the government amendment, of course, this amendment will no longer be appropriate, as the amended clauses will now remove such exclusions. Following on from that, Amendment No. 114 also seeks to extend the scope of deduction orders to all accounts. As we have made clear, we intend to expand the remit of deduction orders, but we do not think it appropriate from day one for deduction orders to be used on every type of account. As I outlined earlier, we would like to see accounts such as those held by more than one person for the purposes of business initially excluded by secondary legislation. I hope noble Lords will agree that although increasing the remit of deduction orders in the Bill is a positive way to enable the commission to collect more maintenance, it is important to allow sufficient opportunity to consider carefully how far that remit should be extended. I trust that this also addresses the issue raised by Amendment No. 115, which seeks to expand the current account deduction orders to any joint trade or business account. Amendments Nos. 137, 140, 141, 144, 147, 149 and 155 would prevent lump-sum deduction orders being used in relation to anyone other than licensed deposit takers. During consideration of this group of amendments, we have been unable to find any reference to licensed deposit takers in current legislation. I think that the term used to exist in old banking legislation, but went out in the mid or late 1980s. As a result, we are not quite sure how critical it is.