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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My Lords, following on from that, the Bill makes provision for increasing the current £5 to £7, which in a sense makes the situation even worse. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, rather anticipated my scepticism about this amendment, which originates with Gingerbread. I am sure that the Minister had this costed out and will proclaim the results of his investigations. I am told that the full cost of the amendment would be some £180 million. The noble Lord may say, ““But it is only £40 million more””. The £40 million has to come from somewhere and I did not hear him tell me where he would get it from. I would like to express my party’s congratulations to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on his latest Budget because as the noble Lord himself remarked, the Government have already announced a new full disregard in the case of housing benefit and council tax benefit. It is not coming in straightaway, we have to wait for two years for the full effect, but it will be £20 a week from next April. Over and above that, he has proposed to increase the child element of the child tax credit by £50 a year above indexation. He has done a lot in this area. I am all for opposition parties, whether it is I and my colleagues or the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and his colleagues, pushing a little further, but quite honestly, in the straitened circumstances of the public finances at the moment, I think that he is asking for a bit too much.