| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Rooker: This group of amendments serves two purposes. First, it improves the Bill's drafting, to ensure that the Bill does what we intended and its provisions work. Secondly, it makes some consequential amendments to other Acts. Some of the changes are more significant than others, and I shall spend a very short time describing in some detail the amendments that I think will be of interest.
Amendment No. 38 will close a loophole that allows non-resident fathers of children whose birth was registered in Northern Ireland to delay payment of child support by denying that they are the child's father. It makes changes to provisions that enable the Child Support Agency to presume paternity. Articles 14 and 18(1)(b)(ii) of the Births and Deaths Registration (Northern Ireland) Order 1976 mirror provisions in sections 10 and 10A of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, which applies in England and Wales. Clause 15 of the Bill aligns English and Welsh provisions with those in Scotland. That is why we intend to allow the CSA to presume that any non-resident parent living in England and Wales is the child's father if he was registered as the father in Northern Ireland.
Amendment No. 44 replaces the existing subsection (3) of the new section 55A on declarations of status, inserted into the Family Law Act 1986 by clause 76 of the Bill, with a new provision that achieves the same effect, but in a much clearer way.
The rest of the amendments in this group fall equally into three broad groups. The first group is composed of minor drafting changes that ensure that the Bill works as we intended and picks up minor errors in the text.
The second group is composed of consequential changes that make necessary amendments to other Acts in England, Wales and Scotland, to reflect the new provisions of the child support legislation. Some other Acts refer to child support. The Army Act 1955, for example, provides for how child support will be deducted from a serviceman's pay. Changes in the child support provisions must, therefore, be reflected in that legislation.
The final group deals with legislation that is being repealed. It is usual practice to repeal provisions in other Acts that are made redundant by new child support legislation.
I hope that the House will accept that these amendments are sensible and necessary to ensure that the legislation works properly and as intended. I commend them to the House.
Amendment agreed to.
Mr. Andrew George:
I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 3, line 1, leave out Clause 2.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 77, in clause 2, page 3, line 9, at end insert--
Mr. George:
The Minister said, perhaps correctly, that there was a possibility that amendment No. 76 was not technically up to standard. With this opportunity for sober second thought, we should ensure that, while we are trying to put right past mistakes, we do not maintain the current legislative fiasco--which is what Parliament has achieved on the past few occasions when we have addressed the issue--in child support.
The purpose of amendments Nos. 1 and 77 is to provide us with every opportunity to ensure that pressure is taken off the CSA, and that the court welfare system can be used not to replace, but to aid and support, the CSA. Use of the court welfare system should at least help in preventing the CSA from taking the full brunt and burden of child support work. Current CSA legislation allows for an agreement between the parent with care and the non-resident parent to be incorporated into a court order where the two parents are able to reach an agreement. This is a valuable and greatly used provision, which allows for negotiation between parents and relieves the CSA of work. Clause 2 would effectively remove that provision. Any agreement reached and fixed in a court order will be capable of being overturned after a year, which would make a mockery of the court order.
The new clause would allow parents who believe that they can do better out of the CSA to break the agreement in the court order. This runs counter to developments in Europe, and in matters relating to children and finances generally. The overwhelming trend is towards mediation and discussion, and the use--as far as possible--of agreement between both sides.
There are numerous situations where parents may want to opt out of the CSA system. One might be when parents agree that the payments for the children would be greater
than the CSA would assess. Often, this is as a result of a trade-off. The parent with care may make no maintenance claim for herself in return for a better payment regime for the child or children. A second example might be where parents agree to a lesser sum than the CSA would prescribe; for example, the non-resident parent may transfer capital or the house to enable the parent with care and the children to remain housed, with the mother accepting a lesser level of maintenance in return.
Approval by courts for parental agreements protects both parents from being pressurised and provides an established and straightforward system. There are no apparent benefits from building into a court system a get-out provision which can produce reasonable and realistic maintenance agreements.
In amendment No. 77, we seek to retain the court as a viable option, while not denying the powers of the CSA, by giving the court the power to vary a court order and thus giving the court order a longer shelf-life. Some families will insist that they wish to base their financial arrangements not around the hazards of the CSA system as they see it--certainly, past practice would suggest that they would be right--but around an assumption, for example, that they will look at the global costs of a child from time to time, and meet them in certain percentages.
The scheme is increasingly common, particularly as more and more settlements result from mediation; a trend which is to be welcomed. This is a way in which parents can continue to be involved in the parenting of their children after separation, and it is a child-centred scheme. Such parents will be advised that they cannot opt out of the CSA scheme. Either has the right, after one year, to approach the CSA--a process that will lead to a standard assessment and the termination of the court order. Such parents may wish to make legally binding promises to repay any sums above--or, for other parents, below--the court order, with penalties. That will be a powerful disincentive to approach the CSA.
Mr. Burns:
What confidence does the hon. Gentleman have that his amendment would not lead to a return to the problems before the CSA, when courts awarded different amounts, some of which were ludicrously small and not in the interests of the mother?
Mr. George:
The hon. Gentleman's intervention is fair and reasonable, and it is clear that these amendments provide an opportunity for a second thought before proceeding in the rather draconian way that is proposed. We do not propose to go back to the vagaries and failures of the past, but, rather, to go forward to a system that takes into account the failures of the CSA. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that the CSA is providing a sound basis for child support and represents a success, most hon. Members would disagree.
Mr. Burns:
Success is a difficult thing to assess accurately but, with all its flaws, the current CSA has been a better mechanism for calculating a more realistic level of child maintenance than the old court system was. It is not a question of going back to something that has failed. If we go back too far--to the courts--mothers would be infinitely worse off than they are even under the existing regime.
Mr. George:
That is a fair point, but we are not talking about going back. Many of the criticisms of the past
Angela Eagle:
Would the hon. Gentleman share with the House how the Liberal Democrats are proposing to move forward? The hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) is quite right; the court system has failed in the past to provide adequate maintenance for many children. Could he spend a little time letting us know how on earth the Liberal Democrats propose to make the courts work?
Mr. George:
That is rather outside the terms and the spirit of the amendment. The Minister may like to reflect on the broad points before we simply hand too much work to an agency that has shown that it is incapable of coping with its present work load. We have tabled probing amendments, which should be welcomed if they provide a caveat to the Government to take some of the pressure off an overburdened CSA.
Mr. Dismore:
Bearing in mind the hon. Gentleman's comments about the CSA's ability to cope with the volume of work, what discussions has the hon. Gentleman had with the court service about its potentially having to handle a million-plus cases? What discussions has he had with the Lord Chancellor's Department about how such cases should be financed--for example, the burden on the legal aid budget?
'(4) In section 8(3) of the 1991 Act the word "vary" shall be deleted where it appears after the words "it would otherwise have to make,".'.7.45 pm
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |