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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My Lords, I welcome this group amendments and I have put my name to most of them. They all prompt further discussion as to the definition of child maintenance. This is in part because it was not until we started in Committee to consider the concept of maintenance that our discussion became animated for the first time. I have no doubt that even with so few noble Lords in the Chamber at this late hour this issue could have that effect for a second time. Moreover and more importantly, I was very disappointed by the Minister’s response in Committee that the emotional part of child maintenance is, "““specifically, directly and deliberately””—" I repeat, deliberately— "““not part of the Bill””.—[Official Report, 31/1/08; col. GC 412.]" I agree with Amendment No. 3 moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and Amendment No. 5 to which she spoke. They are very sensible. As I will discuss more extensively on my Amendment No. 6, I do not believe that child maintenance is or should be just financial. Furthermore, financial commitment to a child is a consequence of emotional commitment. Not to put too fine a point on it, if the parent believes they have a duty towards their child, then they are more likely than not to be financially committed to that child. We live in a society in which one-in-three separated families receive no child maintenance. This is a situation that needs to be reversed for the sake of child welfare. As I shall say tomorrow during the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Bilston, reversing that situation will help to reduce child poverty. It is an important duty of the Government to protect the citizens of the country. If parents are made fully aware of the great responsibilities that having a child entails, then maybe the number of parents who maintain their children will be improved. This amendment recognises that CMEC will be in the perfect position to fulfil such a task, becoming, as it will, an interface between parental and state intervention through the activities of Ventura. Such proactive work will decrease the amount of cases that come through CMEC and free up some of its precious resources. We must never forget the old adage that prevention is very much better than cure. I am afraid that Amendment No. 4 does not quite muster the same level of support from me. Development and welfare are important, but I fail to see—and I suspect that the Minister will fail to see—what ““health”” has to do with this Bill. We would all be delighted if CMEC could be a body with miraculous ““Jim’ll Fix It”” powers, but it cannot. Further, it is even less likely to achieve what the Bill proposes if its remit is widened to the impossible. The child’s health, although arguably indirectly linked to his maintenance, cannot be considered within this Bill and must not be made an obligation of the commission. I spoke to my amendment so that I could talk a little longer about what I believe to be the very character, or characteristic, of maintenance—a subject which essentially defines the Bill. There is an important fact that we must not ignore: maintenance is more than money. I am glad to see through their Amendments Nos. 7 and 8 that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, see maintenance in the same way as I do. While securing appropriate payments is an essential element in supporting a child’s development—and I would not disagree with what the Minister said on that in Grand Committee—it is most certainly not the only one. It is impossible to reduce the filial relationship merely to pounds and pennies. With children there is a profoundly important relationship, different than that of a fund manager—which, in a sense, is how CMEC could be described—that must be maintained and encouraged. For a child to have a happy, successful upbringing, parents must be committed to providing emotional support, time and, above all, love. Helping with schoolwork can be as important as paying school fees—even though there are not supposed to be any within the state system; and there are, of course. I am not quite so naïve as to suggest that it should be CMEC’s duty to make this ideal a reality—although it would be wonderful if it could. But I believe that CMEC should have more than just the financial role that its predecessor the CSA had. The CSA was notoriously unpopular and resented for its intrusion into parents’ lives because it was deemed little more than a money-extracting body, hounding those of limited means. For CMEC to succeed, I believe it is essential that it has a very different image from the one that preceded it. If parents transfer their hostility towards the CSA on to the new CMEC, then however many improvements the Bill may propose, they will, alas, not be completely fulfilled. I do not want to sound all doom and gloom. I am encouraged that, despite what the Minister said to me, CMEC will not only be concerned with financial maintenance but will point parents towards emotional and educational resolutions for their current hardships. In March 2008, as has already been mentioned, the DWP awarded a £23 million contract to Ventura to run a call centre designed to provide an information and support service to help parents to arrange and keep child maintenance arrangements. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell me more details of how extensive this information and support service will be. I can only hope that it will be modelled on the very successful Australian model of child maintenance, in which the financial management system is backed by a network of family relationship centres to help to resolve disputes. Can the Minister confirm to me that that is the case? How will parents be alerted to this new service and will it be accessible to all parents, whether they live in Edinburgh or Penzance? After all, we were told by the noble Lord in Committee that there would be face-to-face contact. This is important because many parents with care will not be computer-literate or perhaps even telephone-literate. To be honest, I am not sure that I am the latter. Although I support the amendments, I would not advise the noble Baroness to divide tonight, when the prospect of failure is high. However, I would push the Minister towards the meetings that he promised in Committee with his noble friend Lord Adonis on this whole subject. I hope that he will be able to report on them. Even though he may not have had meetings himself, he assured us that discussions were to take place between officials of the two relevant departments.