---

Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Goodlad for tabling this amendment, to which I and my noble friend Lady Verma were only too happy to add our names. Although the withdrawal of a passport can be an effective measure to force non-resident parents to stop neglecting their obligations, it should not be within the competence of the commission to decide on that matter as the Bill proposes. It had not occurred to me that this administrative arrangement might extend to what my noble friend referred to as a ““sub-contractor””, and I wonder if he is correct in that. I am sure the Minister will be able to tell us. The commission is to be set up to enforce parents’ financial obligations to maintain their children. Therefore the administrative liability orders being introduced by the Bill are, on the whole, fully understandable. However, withdrawal of a travel order authorisation goes beyond affecting a person’s financial status and interferes with one of his civil rights: the freedom to travel abroad. That remains the main argument for leaving the decision about a passport withdrawal, along with a driving licence ban and a curfew, to the courts. The reason to do so is that all administrative decisions should have strict, limited and accurate legal bases, while any interference in civil freedoms—of which the liberty to travel is one—should be undertaken under the rules of law which are more complex than a simple administrative scheme would allow. For example, orders are to be made with regard to the rule of proportionality when the court examines whether the damage caused by the civil rights limitation is proportionate to the offence committed. Not only does that mean much more advanced data to be accumulated, but also judiciary skills which are not normally to be found in the possession of civil servants. I am grateful for the receipt of a copy of the Minister’s letter to the Clerk of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution. It was extremely helpful, although I sent an email to my noble and learned friend Lord Lyell, who the Minister knows is very interested in this matter, to say, ““Methinks the Minister protesteth too much””, and this is why. I am surprised, to start with, that in paragraph four the Minister stated that the commission is well placed to make both that judgment and that of the appropriateness of passport surrender. Why? Since the Child Support Agency performed badly and on many occasions was unable to collect information about the absent parent’s financial status, there is a serious threat that the new body will have neither the adequate capacity to collect the details of the person’s life nor the competence to assess in what ways a passport ban would affect his or her life. Elsewhere, the letter comments that CMEC staff will have additional training before handling cases. Gosh, will they not need it? They need it just to prepare a case for the courts, but in a case that will almost inevitably be appealed from the word go, they will need it even more. I would assume—again, the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—that that training would be of a lesser sort, as the Bill envisages administrative action. A point that has concerned all the committees that have examined the matter has been the assumption that a passport authorisation withdrawal has fewer consequences than a driving license withdrawal and can therefore remain an administrative decision, as the letter states in paragraph nine. That is simply an unjustified generalisation. It must be thoroughly recognized in what way a travel ban is going to affect the passport surrenderer’s everyday life, in exactly the same way as the court does before ordering driving licence withdrawal. That is the main reason why the decision on a passport ban, as well as the driving licence, should belong to the courts. Moreover, the argument presented to defend the position that the passport and driving licence bans have different results is what I believe is called argumento dicto simpliciter, a misleading deduction when the examples given—such as that the passport ban is allegedly not affecting third parties—are used to lead to one general conclusion, when in fact they are too trivial so to do. Opposite examples proving that third parties can be affected by the travel ban exist and can be given, such as going abroad not only for holidays but for serious medical treatment, or sustaining other family links because one of the non-resident parents may well have family abroad—but will not be countenanced. Paragraph seven of the report of the Select Committee on the Constitution states that the free movement of persons is strongly protected by international law, including the European Human Rights Convention—which of course, thanks to this Government, has been patriated by means of the Human Rights Act. Therefore, the examples of the two non-European countries given in the letter, which operate in a totally different legal system, cannot be applicable. Paragraph 11 of the letter explains that the main reason for introducing an administrative passport ban is to ““take quicker and firmer”” action against the non-resident parents for not fulfilling their obligations, whereas paragraph four, to which I have already referred, states that the withdrawal decision will not take effect until the person to be affected has time to appeal. Obviously, in those circumstances, it will defeat its very objective. Does the Minister really believe that anyone placed in the position of an administrative order for the withdrawal of a passport will not appeal? I cannot. Paragraph 12 does not do the Minister's defence of this disgraceful proposal any good at all. Of course, tackling child poverty is one of the Government's priorities. Although that is clearly right—we have referred to it several times during the course of our debates—there is no link between the smoother flow of maintenance and introducing a passport ban, whether or not achieved administratively. Also, it is claimed in the paragraph that non-payers should understand how serious the consequences of evading their responsibilities may be, but it does not show why exactly an administrative passport ban should result in such greater awareness. The passport ban ordered by the court would just have the same effect. I am not objecting to the introduction of a passport withdrawal per se, but to the inappropriate way of achieving it. To sum up, administrative travel authorisation withdrawal would be an exceptional way of interfering in civil rights, but I am afraid that the Government's explanations are not yet convincing enough to allow them to put this administrative modus operandi in the Bill. Unfortunately, we are in Grand Committee and neither my noble friend nor I can do anything about it at this stage. However, I observe the threat with which my noble friend concluded his speech, and am in total agreement with him.