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Child Support (Miscellaneous and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2009

My Lords, I was going on to say that the changes to the regulations do not apply only to deploying income by way of pension contributions. They would apply equally to other payments that gave rise to a reduction in income for the purposes of the assessment. In effect, the process is substantially what the noble Lord is suggesting. There is an opportunity for the commission to make changes to the assessment. Those changes can be appealed against: there is a process whereby the non-resident parent, or the parent with care, can contest the evaluation. I think that that is what the noble Lord is seeking and that, in large measure, is what we have. The challenge that we faced with these provisions was not that they were ineffective in capturing income that was diverted: it was access to the provisions, because they required—and still require—a claim for their use, typically by the parent with care, before they can be put into effect. That was the issue that we discussed and I cannot recall that we spotted that deploying income to reduce an assessment could not be caught by these regulations. I understand the issue of having two systems and two sets of terminology. We should recognise that we are very much in transition. As the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said, we will move on in 2011 to what will be, in effect, a third system. Once we have gone through the transition and everyone has been migrated, we will end up with one system and one set of regulations common to all of those who are dealt with by CIMA.