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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for this amendment and his interest in the transfer arrangements. The movement of cases will be one of the most significant challenges for the commission and it is important that this process is carried out efficiently and supports existing clients as much as possible. This amendment would mean that the commission would have to provide each parent with a statement at the point of transfer and each statement would have a breakdown of any debt and who that was owed to. Any outstanding debt would then be subject to an arranged debt recovery plan. Although the Bill provides an outline of the process, it will be for the commission to develop the detailed plan that the Secretary of State will need to approve before the transfer process begins. In that plan, we will expect the commission to set out details of how existing clients will be supported through the process. As noble Lords may be aware, I have tabled an amendment to give Parliament the opportunity to debate the regulations in the first instance. To provide details in the Bill at this early stage in the process may restrict the commission and would not necessarily provide the best outcome for the parents and children concerned, although I would be surprised if the thrust of what the noble Lord proposes should not be encompassed within that. At the time of the transfer to new arrangements, which will undoubtedly be a busy time, the commission will know best how it wants to deploy its resources to meet client needs. Therefore, I suggest that it would not be prudent to commit the commission to such detail at this stage. I shall try now to deal with the questions raised by noble Lords. The agency’s debt is now the cumulative total of its 15 years of operation, and since 100 per cent compliance is impossible to achieve, arrears will continue to accrue. The agency’s efforts are therefore aimed at slowing the rate of growth of debt. The agency has been successful at reducing the rate of growth from around £20 million per month during 2005-06 to around £16 million per month during 2006-07. I think that those are the figures I gave last week. Other agency figures show that it has decreased again to around £10 million per month during 2007-08. On that basis it would be £120 million during the course of a year, which is less than the arrears that are being collected. So I think that the noble Lord’s proposition would be right; there is some eating into the backlog. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, asked whether the arrangements in place for collecting debt were appropriate. Clearly, there is a challenging legacy. Part of that debt comes from interim maintenance assessments, which in a sense are assessments that are not necessarily based on fact but were made at the time when further details were not forthcoming from the non-resident parent. All of those will have to be sorted out, with discussions and negotiations around them, which is why we have some of the provisions in the Bill. We also have in the Bill extensive compliance powers and the ability to collect on a more rigorous basis than we have in the past. We will be debating one of those powers in the next group of amendments. I believe that that suite of arrangements is appropriate but it will be a significant challenge. As for the priority given to it, that will be very much up to the framework and targets imposed on the commission by the sponsoring department and the Secretary of State. I know that there has been concern that rigour will not be applied to collecting old arrears of debt, but that is certainly not the intent. We need to ensure that that is not the outcome. I hope that that has helped noble Lords and that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, will be able to withdraw the amendment. There will be a chance to look in detail at the transfer arrangements under affirmative regulations closer to the time once the commission has developed its plans in some detail.