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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

moved Amendment No. 178: 178: Clause 25, page 18, line 16, leave out ““make”” and insert ““apply to the court for”” The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 178 stands in my name and those of my noble friends Lord Skelmersdale and Lady Verma and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. Clause 25 enables the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission to make, without reference to the courts, an order under which a person who fails to fulfil their child maintenance commitments is disqualified from holding a travel authorisation—in other words, a passport or identity card. It is also possible that under Clause 8, which allows CMEC to contract out functions, decisions about passports and identity cards may in due course be made by any employee of a business or organisation. In contrast to these provisions, CMEC must apply to a magistrates’ court to obtain a curfew order or one disqualifying a person from holding or obtaining a driving licence. The freedom to leave and return to one’s country is recognised as a fundamental right in international law. In its report of 13 December last year, your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution expressed the view that a civil servant or private sector employee should not be given the power to remove a person’s travel documents without reference to a court. The Minister said in correspondence that most people require travel documents such as a passport on relatively few occasions during the year, such as when taking foreign holidays. Clause 25 states that CMEC, and presumably any employee of one of its sub-contractors in the private sector, must consider before imposing an order whether the non-resident parent needs a travel authorisation in order to earn a living. But there is no mention in the Bill of family illness overseas or, indeed, any other consideration. It was the unanimous view of your Lordships’ Select Committee that confiscating someone’s travel documents is a sufficiently serious step that it should be overseen by the courts. Under the Bill, an order would not take effect until the end of the 28-day period in which it can be appealed, so the argument that these provisions would enable swifter and more effective enforcement does not run. Indeed, the Select Committee said that it is not obvious that the scheme of the Bill—an administrative decision followed by a right of appeal with suspended effect—will meet the Government’s policy goal of avoiding an inevitably drawn-out court process any better than a straightforward power for CMEC to seek an order from a magistrates’ court. The amendment will be succeeded at future stages of the Bill by further technical amendments, but its purpose today is to require CMEC to apply for an order from a magistrates’ court which is consistent with the judicial oversight envisaged by other sanctions in the Bill. I respectfully submit it for the consideration of the Committee and I beg to move.