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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My Lords, some time between 2010 and 2013 there will come a date for all parents with an existing child support case when liability for child maintenance under an existing assessment or calculation will end. On that date, depending on the choices made, their case will either be transferred to the new third child support scheme, detailed in Schedule 4, or be moved to their own voluntarily agreed one, or they will have opted for a continuation of their current arrangements under a new cash transfer service. I suspect that the last of these three options will be the least chosen—in fact, I would be surprised if it were chosen at all—but obviously the Minister must give them that option in the legislation. That date will differ depending on when their particular case is dealt with by the commission. The Minister will recognise these words, taken from the three-year business plan of the Department for Work and Pensions for the period 2008-11: "““The launch of the Commission will help to transform our system of child maintenance by enabling and encouraging more parents to reach their own child-maintenance arrangements””." It is therefore important that the Bill contains no hidden administrative disincentives. Against a background where child maintenance arrears continue to grow at the rate of, I believe, £16 million a month, an enormous sum, the current Child Support Agency has made little headway in collecting accumulated child maintenance arrears, even with the improvement plan. With the transfer of existing cases to the new commission for maintenance and enforcement, we remain concerned that insufficient priority will be given to the recovery of the £1.5 billion of child support regarded by the agency itself as collectable. Hundreds of thousands of parents raising children on their own still need the maintenance they are owed. Hundreds of thousands of parents bringing up children alone are owed considerable sums of maintenance. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, mentioned that under the improvement plan the agency has in the past year successfully increased its collection of arrears by £35 million, from £91 million to £126 million. The Minister may be able to update my figures, we shall see. However, this, alas, is not even keeping pace with debt growth. I suspect it was on that sort of basis that Amendment No. 19 states that on, "““the date when … liability under””" the existing scheme ““has ceased to accrue””, both parents should receive a full and final statement from the commission showing, "““the amount of child maintenance liability that remains outstanding””," including amounts owed "““to the Secretary of State and to the parent with care””." Alongside that, the amendment proposes that the commission should, "““prepare in respect of each case””" a personal "““debt recovery and debt management plan””" for any child maintenance arrears, which it should then supply. I think that it is only reasonable to ask the Minister whether the arrangements currently in place are either appropriate or sufficient to collect debt. If they are not, then I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, on this rare occasion, probably has the right approach.