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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

Not for the first time, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has encouraged me to think. When I first saw this clause, I wrote by the side of it ““but not their children””. Although Section 1 of the original 1991 Act on child support deals very happily with the duty of each parent to support their child, the Act that we are talking about, the Social Security Administration Act 1992, goes very much wider than that. If it is, as I fear, an all embracing provision, it does not apply to this Act, this Bill or indeed the 2000 Act at all. It applies to other parts of the social security system. I hope that I am wrong and that the noble Lord will be able to satisfy me of that error.