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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

moved Amendment No. 196: 196: Clause 35, page 34, line 43, at end insert— ““( ) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the costs incurred by both parents in caring for the child or children.”” The noble Lord said: This is a probing amendment which I hope the Minister will at least consider between now and the next stage of the Bill. Again, it is tempting to return to earlier discussions or even make a Second Reading speech, but I shall resist that temptation. However, it is only fair to put on the record that, during the long discussions that we had on the subject of sanctions, I came to the conclusion that it is probably a mistake to have ““enforcement”” in the title of the commission. I therefore give notice that on Report I will move an amendment to that effect. Having got that off my chest, I say that this amendment proposes the obverse to sanctions and is designed to probe the shared parenting agreements that are not altered in any way by the Bill as far as I can see, although Clause 33 allows for a new ““special case””. What happens now is that maintenance is decreased by one-seventh for each day up to three that the child stays with the non-resident parent and this raises to half for four days or more—that is a précis of the situation. The problem is that these provisions encourage parents to associate the level of child maintenance payments with the amount of ““staying contact””—for want of a better phrase—that a child has with the other parent. These parents are placed in immediate financial conflict with each other, with the parent with care possibly attempting to minimise overnight contact to maximise maintenance payments, and the non-resident parent seeking to maximise contact to minimise the child support maintenance payable. As such, there is a complete manipulation of what should be considered to be the natural contact arrangements between a parent and a child. In court cases, contact applications are often less about what contact should or should not take place, but more about the impact of child maintenance payment responsibilities on either parent. The courts have always strongly, and quite rightly, discouraged the association of child maintenance payments with contact. The present shared-care provisions completely undermine that principle and encourage both mothers and fathers to connect these two issues. It is inconsistent to state on one hand that a parent’s obligation to maintain a child is not dependent on whether they have contact, but on the other hand to provide in legislation a provision that encourages parents to limit the amount of contact a non-resident parent has with the child in order to maintain a certain level of financial support. The children—it is them that we are all concerned about—are caught in the middle of the financial conflict between their parents and often their future relationship with a parent is detrimentally affected by the argument over child support payments, which are now so inextricably linked to contact. The current and proposed shared-care provisions allow the parents to be motivated by financial, not welfare, considerations, which is not conducive for the unfortunately disparate family unit. This detrimental impact on the family and the child outweighs any benefits provided to the parent with care or the non-resident parent and, unless there is significant shared care, should not impact on maintenance payments. Why not raise the shared-care threshold? That would reduce the financial conflict currently caused between the parents and children and allow the parents to deal with co-parenting without having to consider financial incentives for one or other parent. I beg to move.