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Mr. Heald: The hon. Gentleman proposes changing the name--very much a new Labour policy. Would he like to change the logo?
Mr. Wicks: I am almost floored by that one. No doubt, we shall soon hear about the new Conservative party, so hon. Members should not knock changes of name. I am arguing a serious point, if the former Minister can cope with a serious point. If we introduce a radical reform programme and try to win a new public consensus behind what we are trying to achieve, we may have to signal that by changing the name of the agency. The term "CSA" may for ever be associated with the chaos that has been described.
I have seven recommendations in my strategy for reform. First, we should start with care, not cash. When the former Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, launched the expedition back in January 1990, she said that no father
should be able to escape his responsibilities. Her great mistake was immediately to speak about maintenance and cash. She should have asked a more challenging question: in turbulent family times, when possibly as many as half of our children will not spend all of their childhood living with both natural parents, how can we ensure that as many of those children as possible are brought up by both of their natural parents, and that fathers play a full role? That is the aspect of family diversity with which the debate should have begun. We should not dodge it. Only afterwards should we get on to the issue of child maintenance.
That has implications for the Family Law Act 1996, which I welcome--for example, the move towards mediation when a couple are contemplating divorce. How can a divorcing couple ensure that, in difficult times, they are thinking first about children, and not about themselves, so that contact is maintained? It also has implications for the Government's thinking on access orders. Many male constituents come to me and say, "The court said that I should have access to my child every weekend, but the mother will not let me see the child." They are then told by lawyers that they can go back to court, but that it will cost hundreds of pounds. That is not right. If a judge makes an access order, it must be implemented and there should not be a price on implementation. So there is an agenda of family policy that we need to relate to the debate about the CSA. If the Government could break some of the departmental boundaries and start discussions going, I would welcome that. That would be the start of my reform strategy.
Secondly, we need a fairer deal between mothers and children and the taxpayer. I support enthusiastically the call for a maintenance disregard. The Labour party document stated that it would be introduced when more resources were generated by the reform programme. That has to be the right approach. People are justly cynical that the Act is an Exchequer support Act rather than a child support Act. How can it be a child support Act when the vast majority of children and 70 per cent. of one-parent families on income support do not get a penny extra as a result of it? That is a misuse of English language. There should be a maintenance disregard. It is socially important and it would generate more money by winning more public confidence. Treasury officials, who can think about social policy only in the short term, will argue against it. They have to be confronted because, in the longer term, it makes financial and social sense.
Thirdly, the Government should revisit the formula. I am not certain about this, but I think that I would put my money on a far simpler formula in which clear percentages of net income are deducted. We should look at the Australian example and consider whether we should implement it. I know that a simpler formula is rougher justice. I am not a populist who calls for simplicity for the sake of it. People may say that they want a simpler formula because they do not understand it, but when they are affected by it, they want the system to cope with their peculiar family circumstances. I understand the issue, but I urge the Government at least to examine critically the case for a simpler formula.
Fourthly, we need a CSA with a human face. If parents telephone the CSA, they must have the right to talk to one named official--Mr. Brown or Mrs. Brown--who deals with their case and acts in a sense as their general practitioner, tells them where things are and has a duty to
report back to them. There should be speedier access to the appeals system. We should establish an independent child support advisory council, chaired perhaps by a family judge and including some critics of the system, to report to Parliament and the Secretary of State on how things are.
We should examine the interface between the Child Support Act and the Family Law Act 1996. It is naive not to have child maintenance issues at least on the table in the mediation process. People should be told when they contemplate divorce what the child maintenance settlement might look like.
I argue, as I have argued before, that in specific and difficult circumstances with which no formula or system of departures can cope, people should have a day in court and a judge should decide whether there should be a departure from the formula. That is the only matter on which I come close to Liberal Democrat colleagues. In a small proportion of cases--for example, where a child has special needs--there should be an opportunity to have a day in court.
Fifthly, my colleagues are right in saying that we should not pursue only the soft targets. We should devote special energy to pursuing the tough targets. It makes a mockery of the system when men can openly brag that they have never paid a penny for several children. I am sometimes in despair, as are mothers, when they tell me, "The agency said that it did not know where the father was. I found out where he was. I did detective work which the agency could never have done. I told it his address and where he worked. Two or three years later, the father has still not paid a penny." Why are we not getting the people who pose as victims but who are actually villains of irresponsibility? We shall never win public confidence until we tackle those dads.
Sixthly, the Government should consider the issue of collection. Australia preceded us in creating such an agency, and the Australia tax office was made the collection agency. It did not want to do it, just as our Inland Revenue said that it did not want to. In Australia, they said, "You are going to do it." We were not tough enough to say that to the Inland Revenue. How can it be that we got former employees of the Property Services Agency into the business of collection when the Inland Revenue had the records and the expertise? Even now, I urge the Government at least to look at this question.
Seventhly on my strategy for reform, we must relate the agency to the welfare-to-work strategy, and consider the issues that relate to guaranteed maintenance. It is difficult for mothers to make the jump from income support into work if maintenance is not paid regularly. It is a difficult question, and it may have financial implications. As part of the welfare-to-work strategy, the Government must examine the interface between child maintenance and irregular payments.
I have two general concluding points. First, we would fool ourselves if we believed that this will ever be anything other than a controversial policy area. Even if the CSA, or whatever it was called at the time, won prizes for bureaucratic competence and became a watchword for human sensitivity, it would still be controversial. This is an attempt by the state to intervene in the most personal and bloody matters, where emotions are raw and there is jealousy, and old battles are fought over. It will always be difficult and controversial for the Government--as they
must, on behalf of the community--to try to get some fairness and balance into the system between the needs of men, women and children, and of first and second families. That is a reason to pursue the matter, not to avoid it.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (North Essex):
I agree whole-heartedly with the two concluding remarks of the hon. Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks). This is an inevitably controversial area of policy, and it will always remain so. Our priority must be relief of poverty and family insecurity, which are a legacy of a period in which individualism and laissez-faire moral liberalism combined to create a new irresponsibility throughout society. The first step in restoring a sense of responsibility in society is for the welfare state to cease to insulate those who have from those who have not. The responsibility of taxpayers for the poor does not end with the posting of a giro cheque from the Department of Social Security. Our sense of responsibility for the less fortunate may begin with that relationship, but it certainly does not end there.
I had some difficulty comparing the wish list of the hon. Member for Croydon, North with what the Secretary of State said. Many of the things that he wants used to be demanded by the Secretary of State when she was in opposition. Now that she is sitting on the Government Front Bench, she is finding things much more difficult. The reality of office is much more difficult than producing the weekly soundbite, so she has retreated from many of the comments that she used to make.
It is good to say, "Care, not just cash," but I note that the hon. Member for Croydon, North immediately went on to the issue of the disregard which is, if anything, a cash question. He premised his party's commitment to the disregard upon the success that the agency will have collecting the cash. Then, he went back to the old canard of the simpler formula. The truth of the simpler formula is not just that it leads to rough justice, but that we then need to introduce into the system the discretion to deal with the rough justice. That is why he advocates a simpler formula, combined with an appeal to some judicial process. Again, that does not solve any of the problems that the agency has. Indeed, it will probably make them more complicated.
I heard many echoes of our joint visit, with the Select Committee on Social Security, to Australia when we studied the Australian system. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said, it is important to examine other systems, which show that there are no panaceas for the awkwardness and pain of the state intervening in this sector.
I do not apologise for the fact that this is about collecting money to relieve the burden on the taxpayer because that is the taxpayer's legitimate interest in this.
The taxpayer should not underwrite the proliferation of people in a system, where the benefit system can be used to insulate individuals from the consequences of parenthood. We must keep that unashamedly at the forefront of our minds.
I join the hon. Member for Croydon, North in congratulating the hon. Members for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) and for Northavon (Professor Webb) on their maiden speeches. They both paid handsome tribute to their predecessors, whom Conservative Members miss for their personal qualities, not just for their political loyalty to the Conservative party. I thank both hon. Gentlemen for those tributes. I also congratulate them on breaking with what has become a rather tiresome tradition. When we came into the House five years ago, many of us were told to make uncontroversial speeches: that is the tradition of a maiden speech. Both hon. Gentleman demonstrated that it is a rather silly tradition. They both made real points of substance, which illuminated the debate and set the seal on their opening speeches.
The Secretary of State set out a broad philosophy of the Child Support Agency. In that philosophy, her renewed emphasis on the responsibility of parents and on the intentions of the agency to help children in poverty is identical to the philosophy that launched the agency under the last Conservative Government. I whole-heartedly agree with her invocation that this should not become a party issue. In the previous Parliament, we succeeded in maintaining, underneath the inevitable sparring across the Chamber, a solid consensus that the agency was going in the right direction. However, I am going to press her on some of her retreats, particularly that on the disregard. When we were in office, we said that it was a damaging policy because not only would it cost money, but it would act as a disincentive to single parents to return to work as they would lose the disregard the minute they started earning enough to disqualify them from benefit. That can only increase the poverty trap.
It is important to have a seamless web between dependency on welfare, work and maintenance payments from the CSA. Maintenance payments can provide a platform. While benefits are removed from the single parent pound for pound in benefit withdrawal, maintenance is not removed when the single parent returns to work. If half the income comes from benefit and half from maintenance payments, that is a considerably lower barrier to entry into the sort of part-time work that might be suitable for a single parent.
I want to make some general points about the Secretary of State's speech. She said--she can check this with the record--that no targets had ever been set for the CSA. As I said in my intervention, the Social Security Select Committee commented on the CSA's targets.
During the debate, I have been flicking through the CSA's excellent business plan for the current year, 1997-98. It is worth the right hon. Lady having a look at it as it shows that the targets that she thinks should be set have, in fact, already been set. In that plan, Ann Chant, the chief executive, said that it was part of
The chief executive also said that she wanted
In the business plan, the chief executive talks about
The business plan also states:
I appreciate that the Minister without Portfolio has given instructions to Ministers to spend time slagging off the previous Conservative Administration and to keep up pressure on them to try to hide the inadequacies of the Government's policies. That will work for a while, but sooner or later the Government will have to take responsibility for what is happening. The right hon. Lady will have to say whether she thinks the Child Support Agency is working under her direction or, if it is not working, what she intends to do about it.
I shall conclude with a little hindsight. Indeed, the right hon. Lady indulged in a little hindsight. I shall make reflective points that are not designed to cause anybody any embarrassment. We should reflect, with hindsight, on two main points. The first is that the Child Support Agency was very much a big bang reform. The equivalent agencies introduced in Australia and elsewhere started by taking new cases and not by assuming old case loads. This Government, or future Governments, may well wish to consider other reforms. In dealing with such a sensitive issue, it is worth remembering that changing current arrangements is far more difficult and challenging than applying new rules to new arrangements. The departure formula and changes to the general formula were introduced not because of new cases in the system but to deal with the changed circumstances that have been imposed on people. Nevertheless, we understand why it
was necessary and desirable to challenge current arrangements--because they were ill serving both children in single-parent families and taxpayers.
The second point is that the architects of the Child Support Agency--in some ways reflecting the main objections to the Child Support Act 1991 during its passage--took the perspective of the parent with care, who might not want to give information and receive the money. We thought that we were establishing a payment agency and that money collection was incidental to making payments--because, after all, the Department of Social Security is predominantly an organisation that makes payments.
"our major objective to bring all maintenance assessments up to date by April 1999".
If that is a good target, the Government will accept it; if it is a bad target, they will change it--yet we heard nothing on that from the right hon. Lady.
"greater reductions in our unit costs";
that the CSA planned
"to further improve the quality of service provided to all our clients";
that the agency had extended its accuracy target and
"introduced an Independent Case Examiner to provide clients with an impartial investigation service into matters of administration";
that the CSA had made
"a commitment to achieve the Investors in People . . . standard"--
that is an important role for an employer--and that the agency would make a
"quantum improvement in performance".
That is all part of the bipartisan consensus and it ill behoves the right hon. Lady to harry the Opposition as though none of that was happening while my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden was in office, and she had inherited nothing but a blank sheet of paper.
"Providing the service our clients expect"
and the implementation of the programme of change. Under the heading, "What we will deliver", she refers to:
"A step change in performance and efficiency."
All the necessary figures are given.
"We will collect or arrange for direct payment from the absent parent . . . to the parent with care . . . child maintenance of some £500 million in 1997/98."
Is the Secretary of State planning to increase that target, is the target sufficient, or is it over-ambitious? That is the sort of qualitative analysis on which we expect to hold the Minister to account. She should not simply come out with inaccurate generalities about the previous Government.
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