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Child Support (Miscellaneous and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2009

My Lords, this is a very different statutory instrument from the other three we are discussing today. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made a surprisingly emollient speech and chose his words much more carefully than I am going to. Gallia, if I remember my Caesar correctly, in tres partes divisa est. So, too, is this order, or almost. One and two halves might be a better way of putting it. Taking the last part first, the Minister will remember that during our proceedings on the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill last year I told him of reports I had had of absent parents willingly reducing their disposable income by increasing their pension payments. Under both the old and the current child support schemes, this means that they will be due to pay less towards the upkeep of their children to the parent with care. The policy of all political parties is that it is a sine qua non that both parents should give financial support to their children, whether they are living with them or not, even when the parents live apart. The three formulas for assessing the amount that the latter should pay depend on the income of the non-resident parent. This is where the non-emollient comes in. I consider it a cheat for someone to reduce their income when approached by the CSA, now the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission. I believe that it was always intended that this should not be allowed, although, as we have heard, a recent judicial decision in the upper tribunal found that it was perfectly legal. So it is a legal cheat, if you like. Quite rightly the Government have decided to reverse that decision for the future. This is where my two halves of the order, to which I referred earlier, come in. Regulation 2 applies this revision to the old scheme and Regulation 4 to the current scheme, or, as my noble friend Lord Eccles questioned—and I am grateful to him for the enormous work he has put in to scrutinising this subject—do they? And that question was repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. From 2011 there is to be a third scheme, as set out in last year’s Act. Regulation 4 seems to cover both the current and the new schemes. I hope the Minister will confirm that when he winds up. Listening to my noble friend Lord Eccles caused me to wonder what the position is of someone who has already intentionally reduced their income before the tribunal finding. Will variations be initiated and enforced by the commission or will they have to be instigated by the parent with care? This is a valid point. I go along with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, but I have a strong suspicion that this order will be tested in the courts sooner or later. He knows much more about the courts than I do but that is my suspicion. So in 2011 there could, and I suspect will, be three schemes in operation. This is confusing for everyone, not least the parents in question, the CMEC which has to operate them, and advisers in such organisations as Citizens Advice. Both opposition parties have encouraged the Government to migrate non-resident parents onto the newest scheme. How is this proceeding? How many people are still paying under the original old scheme? By how much has this number fallen over the past few years? For those that remain, will they skip the current scheme altogether and be migrated onto the much simpler new CMEC scheme? The Government intend to halve the number of children living in poverty by 2010. One of the instruments for achieving this goal is the child support mechanism which is the background to this order. On the figures I have, the Government will miss their target by 500,000. Not, perhaps I may gently suggest, a very good omen for what will almost certainly turn out to be an election year. Of course, there are other mechanisms in place such as encouraging disabled people, lone parents and the long-term unemployed into work, as we will be discussing at length in the forthcoming Welfare Reform Bill. None the less, this is not going to be easy in the short term with the unemployment figures going up by the thousands on an almost daily basis and which must now stand at more than 2 million. Before I leave the issue of child support, I am grateful to your Lordships’ Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee for pointing out a small difference in terminology. The old scheme uses the word ““departure”” when referring to legitimate reasons for having the non-resident parent’s income reassessed; the newer scheme uses the word ““variation””. The committee is worried that there could be some confusion between the two words and recommends careful communication from the department for the elucidation of both parents and practitioners. What, if any, are the Minister’s plans for this? The third plank of the regulations ensures that elderly non-resident parents will continue to pay maintenance up to the new pension age, which will be gradually increased for women between 2010 and 2020 and, ultimately, when the pension age of the two sexes is unified, up to 2050. This is pertinent for those parents who receive an allowance within the formula maintenance assessment if, for example, they are eligible for the disability premium in income support. I am grateful for the Explanatory Notes here, but I do have a question: surely the provision should be that they are ““receiving”” the disability premium rather than just being ““eligible”” for it. Despite my questions, like the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, I believe that these are very good regulations and I give them my blessing.