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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

There is no great mystery. The most important thing that the Bill introduces is the commission, which will be a non-departmental public body. We opted for NDPB status because we think it important to put the operation of the commission, and therefore the delivery of child maintenance, at arm's length from ministerial involvement. That argument has been rehearsed exhaustively throughout all stages of the Bill's consideration, and I thought that both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had accepted that this was the right way in which to proceed. Normally when a body takes on non-departmental status the civil servants who work in that body also take on a different status, but when Ministers discussed the issue with staff, they made clear their concern about it. Having listened, we reached an understanding—as I have already announced—allowing the commission to be a non-departmental public body but allowing its staff to enjoy Crown status. That is not a unique solution; there are precedents.