---

Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

Although Clause 33 is a peculiarly Scottish clause, the fact that a minute of agreement that has been in force for fewer than 12 months will exclude a person in Scotland from making an application for a maintenance calculation reflects on the discussion that we had earlier, on whether one year was the correct time in which to have the ability to overturn a court’s decision. To that extent, it applies equally to England as to Scotland. I do not want to repeat the arguments that I adduced last time, but it has been put to me since that one way to solve this problem would be that once a court has become active in a divorce case, for example, any alteration of that court’s decision should not go to CMEC at all but continue with the court. Another way in which to solve it, which was the one that I adduced earlier, was to have a much longer period than the one year stated much earlier in the Bill, which Clause 33 reinforces. I am beginning to come round to the second solution rather than the first.