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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My Lords, I agree with noble Lords that our deliberations start in a good place by focusing on how this legislation can be relevant to the most vulnerable. As to the lateness of the hour at which we are considering our business, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, will be aware that I have no influence over the powers that be, but I agree with him that it is right that we should take the time that we need on Report. We had a good Committee stage and should not skimp on time if that is what noble Lords think is necessary. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for our rather hurried start. I, too, had anticipated that we would have the full hour of the dinner break before the business was called. I should perhaps have intervened at that stage. I apologise to the noble Lord and was pleased to see him in his place to be able fully to participate. Before I discuss the detail of the amendments, perhaps I may respond to one or two of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, raised. Substantial progress has been made on the OIP. We could go through the detail of the statistics, but he will be as aware of them as I am. I highlight that, in the period to March 2008, in excess of £1 billion was collected. That is a significant sum and in excess of the target of £970 million. I agree that there is a way to go in terms of maintenance outcomes, but the outcome of 67 per cent was again in excess of the target for that period. Progress is being made. The noble Lord referred to the build-up of debt. The latest internal CSA figures show that arrears grew by around £10 million per month during 2007-08, which is down from £16 million a month in the previous year and £23 million a month in the year before that. That is another indication of real progress. The noble Lord quite rightly referred to IT upgrades, as he did in Committee. Another readiness assessment will take place shortly, but the agency is determined to learn from the mistakes of the past and is making sure that it undertakes the additional round of testing necessary to ensure that PR1 is fully effective when it is implemented. Changes proposed in the Bill will not be impacted by any delay to PR1. The noble Lord referred to the costs of the Ventura contract. The figure of £23 million is indicative and does not represent the final value of the contract. That will be known when the contract is signed. In the mean time, we are working with the supplier to prototype and build the service. The noble Lord referred also to clerical cases. The increase in the clerical case load is not evidence of any new failure in the IT system but a consequence of the agency’s success in reducing uncleared cases, which masks the number of cases needing clerical process. It is worth noting that 37,000 cases is less than 3 per cent of the total. Amendment No. 1 would remove the commission’s two subsidiary objectives, leaving it with the single objective of maximising the number of effective maintenance arrangements in place for children who live apart from one or both parents. Amendment No. 2 would add a third subsidiary objective to Clause 2, which would require the commission to encourage parents with care in receipt of income support or jobseeker’s allowance to apply to the statutory maintenance service. The underlining rationale of both amendments is the same and I know is favoured by One Parent Families/Gingerbread, which has discussed it with the DWP. Both amendments address the concern that, in meeting its duty to ““encourage and support”” appropriate voluntary arrangements, the commission will fail to support such parents for whom a voluntary arrangement may not be appropriate and thus risk their entirely dropping out of the child maintenance system. It is argued that such a bias would disadvantage those parents with care who are not well equipped with information and knowledge to secure a fair voluntary arrangement for their children or who are at risk of intimidation. To address this concern, Amendment No. 1 would place voluntary and statutory arrangements on an equal footing in statute. This is to ensure, for example, that future boards that have not been involved in drawing up the legislation are none the less clear about their obligations with respect to both types of arrangements, rather than systemically favouring voluntary over statutory arrangements. Amendment No. 2 would address this concern by adding a third subsidiary objective, which would specifically require the commission to encourage parents with care in receipt of income support or jobseeker’s allowance to apply to the statutory maintenance service. Both amendments are eminently well intentioned, but I hope that I can persuade noble Lords—I can see that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, is persuaded already—that neither is necessary. It is true that the Government favour voluntary arrangements when these are appropriate, in both level and type of maintenance. Research shows that such arrangements are the most durable and are associated with higher compliance rates, which is also because they can be tailored to the individual circumstances of both the parents in question. The first subsidiary objective, therefore, requires the commission to encourage and support both parents to make an arrangement that they, not the commission, judge is in the best interests of their child and that is most appropriate to both parents in respect of the level and terms of the arrangement. An appropriate voluntary arrangement must therefore be suitable to the needs of both parents and would, of course, be negotiated in the shadow of the statutory service, the services of which should be widely known and highly functioning to both parents. There no question of the commission pressuring parents, either explicitly or implicitly, to trial or to attempt a voluntary arrangement before an application is made to the statutory service. The information and support services provided by the commission will support parents to make an effective arrangement. This means that the commission will explain and support the statutory service to parents as part of an overall discussion of their options. Furthermore, placing a requirement on the commission to encourage appropriate voluntary arrangements does not in any way diminish the commission’s duty to support applications to the statutory service. The second subsidiary objective already requires the commission to support applications to the statutory service. This, incidentally, is one of the main reasons why we do not believe that a third subsidiary objective is necessary. I shall come back to the other reasons shortly. The statutory service is already to be the preferred route when there are imbalances of power between the parents in negotiation—for example, when the parent with care has no knowledge of the non-resident parent’s income, or when there is a history of intimidation in the relationship. However, the statutory service is important as an element in the mix for all separating parents, since, as I said, it provides them with the benchmark on which to base their decisions on child maintenance. As I made clear, support for applications to the statutory service is not to be the default position only when voluntary arrangements cannot be made to work. Rather, statutory arrangements will be the preferred route from the outset for many parents in many circumstances, including those that I have just set out.