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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

Does my noble friend the Minister agree that perhaps a third of the debt is uncollectible, as with local authorities and arrears of council tax or rates liability? The obvious example is where the person is dead, although that may already be covered by regulations. They may have moved abroad, and you have spent five or seven years trying to trace them without success; you have exhausted reasonable avenues of pursuit. Yet, as I understand it, Sir John Bourn and the NAO, perfectly properly under the rules, would not allow that debt to be written off. It is like an incubus on the organisation. If I am wrong, I will be glad that the noble Lord tabled his probing amendment, but I take it that this puts uncollectible debt on to the same basis on which local authorities work. They have to use their best endeavours and act reasonably, but there comes a point at which it is not reasonable: it clutters up the books and the bodies held responsible for debt that is not collectable, and appears to cloud and muddy the financial figures. If that is the situation, as I would expect, I hope that my noble friend can give us those reassurances. If it is not, then the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, has a point of real substance here.