| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
1.2 pm
Mrs. Jackie Ballard (Taunton): I am pleased to follow the excellent maiden speech by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne). He spoke with great eloquence and humour, and gave fulsome praise to his predecessor, for whom he obviously has great respect and affection. It may surprise the hon. Gentleman to know that there is yet another Scot in the Chamber this morning, albeit that I do not represent a Scottish constituency.
I hope that the public do not view the lack of attendance by hon. Members in this debate as a sign of lack of interest in the topic. The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said that the protests and difficulties associated with the CSA had diminished. The protests on the streets may have diminished, but the difficulties have, if anything, increased, as other hon. Members have said when talking about their advice surgeries. Every week, we all have a steady stream of people who have had problems with the CSA.
To those people, the Child Support Agency seems to be an agency that was set up primarily to reduce the benefits bill or to pursue absent parents who had already made voluntary agreements for maintenance. It is not seen by most people as primarily an agency set up to support children, which is what it ought to be.
I hope that the Secretary of State will consider, as my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) has said, the benefit penalty for non-co-operation with the CSA. I hope that it will be removed or reduced, because all it does is put more children further into poverty. Under the guise of punishing single parents, children suffer. Many women are
frightened to pursue absent fathers, not just because of a fear, perhaps, of physical danger, but because of a fear that their relationship with the children or the absent parent will grow worse, and that their children will suffer indirectly as a result.
I use the terms "absent parent" and "parent with care" because they are in the legislation, but they are offensive to many absent parents who continue to care for their children. I hope that we can find better terminology.
The next area that I wish to touch on is that of the absent parent who is self-employed. I do not think that other hon. Members have mentioned that so far. There is a desperate need for effective assessment and enforcement in regard to the self-employed. It should be a high priority. Although I, too, would like to return to a system of family courts, I know that pursuing self-employed fathers for maintenance was no more successful under the previous system than it is now.
I know of one instance in which a self-employed sole proprietor was able in court to claim allowances for purchasing new computers and a new company car, and was finally assessed as having to pay maintenance of£1 a year for a teenage child. Even if that assessment had been reasonable--I should not think that anyone in the land would think that it was--the enforcement was not there. The enforcement system for children of self-employed fathers is still failing those children.
If the CSA is really an agency for child support, we need to look again at the formula for assessing maintenance, to acknowledge the needs of children of first and second families. Some hon. Members may think it irresponsible to go on to have a second family if the first family is not properly supported, but in neither family is it the fault of the children. They should not be punished.
I should like the Secretary of State to give an answer on this point--I should like him to consider when the CSA will start to deal with voluntary applications from people who are not on benefit. Again, their children also deserve a reasonable standard of living.
Each hon. Member who has spoken today mentioned three or four--perhaps even seven--things that they would like changed about the Child Support Agency and its operations. If all those changes took place, the CSA would not be recognisable as the agency that it is today. I believe that it is fundamentally flawed. The public perception of it is so bad--many parents with care are not receiving the maintenance to which they are entitled, and many absent parents are driven to despair or even to suicide by faulty or unfair assessments.
Dr. Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak):
I congratulate hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today. It must be a great relief to them to have got them over with and to have acquitted themselves so well.
I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on her decision, which she announced yesterday, I think, not to implement the housing benefit regulations
which would have meant that single people up to the age of 60 would have qualified for benefit only if they were in shared accommodation. That is one inheritance from the previous Tory Government, and the new Secretary of State has dealt with it promptly and effectively. I congratulate her on that. I do not underestimate the problems that will be caused in her Department, not least on the budgetary front.
Sadly, the poisoned chalice that my right hon. Friend has inherited in the form of the Child Support Agency will not be dealt with quite so quickly. I am pleased that today's debate will allow hon. Members to put their point of view, which I am sure my right hon. Friend will take on board.
The Child Support Act 1991 is probably the best argument for fundamentally reforming the procedures of this House. As the former Secretary of State pointed out, it was passed without opposition, which the Labour party should live to regret. I happen to know that, at the time, the Opposition spokesperson wanted to vote against the Bill, realising how fundamentally flawed it was, but was barred from doing so by collective responsibility. There was consensus that absent parents should have to contribute to the maintenance of their children, and we were reluctant to be portrayed as wishing to disagree with that concept by opposing the Bill. That made for poor legislation. Had we used the Special Standing Committee procedure, we could have taken evidence from expert witnesses and ended up with much more effective legislation.
Mr. Kirkwood:
I generally support what the hon. Lady says. I was there at the time and, by way of an alibi, may I suggest that we all pointed out that it was an enabling Act? The vast majority of the real damage was done by statutory instrument. There was all-party support for the principal legislation. I hope that the hon. Lady will discourage her Government from getting into the habit of passing brief, enabling legislation because all the damage is then done by secondary legislation.
Dr. Jones:
The hon. Gentleman makes a telling point. He will be aware that the Government are reviewing procedures of the House and I am sure that they will learn lessons from some of the past failures.
Despite the fact that the Act came into operation just over four years ago, it has been amended by primary legislation on no fewer than two occasions since. So many changes have been made to the regulations that what began as a simple way to get parents to take on board their responsibilities is now extremely complex. In an Adjournment debate at the end of the last Session, the former Minister almost proudly talked about the 140 changes that had been made to the operation of the Child Support Agency. That just shows the chaos that has reigned.
When those changes were implemented, all hon. Members hoped that they would lead to improvements--that the backlog would be dealt with and that we would begin to get to grips with the problem. My experience, however, is that things are getting worse again. I do not know why, but lately the number of people coming to me with problems has started to rise again. More than half
the cases are not in payment. In the Dudley office, which covers my area, on 23 May this year, there were 52,221 incidences of outstanding payments--probably 52,000 incidences of misery, let alone cases in which an assessment has not yet been made.
Most of the cases presented to me are of working women who are struggling to bring up their children but getting no help from the children's fathers who have, at every opportunity, tried to ensure that they do not contribute. The Secretary of State is well aware of that from the cases that she has cited.
My latest referral to the ombudsman is a case where the maintenance inquiry form was issued on 16 March 1994 and not a penny has yet been paid. Another case dates back to October 1993; it is another example of an absent parent denying paternity. Although paternity was established last October, no money has yet been paid because the man in question is wriggling out of his obligations in other ways. I could cite other cases but time is short.
From the perspective of parents with care and absent parents who pay their way and wish to contribute to the well-being of their children, the Act and the CSA do not work. It is not the fault of the staff, who face an impossible task. Given present circumstances, I have little confidence--notwithstanding the skill of the new Secretary of State and the new Government--that the targets will be met without fundamental change. The problem is that every time we change the way things operate and introduce new regulations, the more complexity and delay we create.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |