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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My Lords, on lump sum payments, I cannot resist quoting Lord Justice May—who, as the Minister knows, is a very distinguished Court of Appeal judge—in a recent case involving the rules governing the treatment of a lump sum payment of child maintenance. He said that they were so complex that they were ““obscure to the point of near darkness””. The Minister is wrong about the ability of Jobcentre Plus to do this and I hope he will go away and carefully cross-examine the interlocutors who bring him this information because it is a real problem. The other thing is that it is not safe to say that 90 per cent of the client group is outwith the 40 per cent ceiling, because lump sum payments come underneath that, as do the different payments for different families from different non-resident fathers. I ask the Minister—and I know he will do this, because he is conscientious—to go away and ask the people who have been briefing him to give him some further and better particulars about both of these points. Both the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who is not without experience in these matters, and I share misgivings that require further investigation.