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Mr. George: We have had discussions with a variety of organisations. I have laid out the justification for our proposals, and Conservative and Labour Members have sniped at that. The purpose of the amendments is clear and, before this House passes the Bill to another place, it is right for us to give an opportunity for reflection on whether the court welfare system might come to the support of the CSA.
Mr. Burns: I listened to the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. George) with great interest and care. He rightly said in his concluding remarks that he is entitled, at this stage in the Bill's proceedings, to put forward suggestions for us to consider and accept or reject. I suspect that Ministers will reject them, and I hope that they do. I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman means well, but the amendment would turn back the clock to the bad old days.
That would not help carers of children, most of whom would be mothers on benefit. However, it would be very popular with those absent parents--usually fathers-- who want to escape or to minimise their financial responsibilities. Before I say any more, I should declare an interest. I pay child maintenance. I do not do so under the auspices of the CSA, although sometimes I wish that I did.
Labour and Liberal Democrat Members may have criticisms of the CSA as it was set up before this Government reformed it, but the formula was devised with the best of intentions. It was complicated, but the intention was to secure as fair a deal for parents as was possible in the circumstances. That applied both to absent parents and to the ones who looked after the children. The self-evident problem was that, in trying to be fair,
the previous Conservative Government devised a system that was so complex that it fell into disrepute almost from the beginning. That was partly because of its complexity, and partly because certain people wanted to ensure that the system did not work.
The Government's alternative is based on the principles of the CSA. Its benchmarks are simplicity and transparency. Over the coming months and years, we will find out whether that finds greater acceptance among parents of children who have to pay child maintenance through the auspices of the CSA. The jury is out, and will remain out for some time, on the question of whether the Government have got the thing right.
The hon. Member for St. Ives wants to change the Bill to reintroduce a court service. His aims and aspirations may be well intentioned, but he risks doing a great disservice to parents who care for children after a marriage or relationship breaks down. I say that because the courts were singularly inept in their calculation of child maintenance under the old court regime. That was owing to wide variations across the country in the cost of bringing up children. The extent of those variations was not proportional to distance. People ordered to pay £10 a week to bring up a child--even in those days, that was a ludicrous amount--felt aggrieved when they discovered that others in similar or better financial circumstances in terms of income were expected to pay even less. The disparities between awards were ludicrous.
Furthermore, the enforcement of the awards that were made was haphazard. Courts sometimes made realistic assessments of the amount of money that absent parents should pay towards bringing up their children, but those absent parents often paid no money at all, or only a little. As a result, mothers had to face the expense and the time-consuming problems associated with going back to court to get an order enforcing payment.
In addition, if absent parents were emphatic about dodging payment, they could string the court system along with 101 explanations of changed financial circumstances. That archaic system could easily be abused or interfered with by people determined not to pay, and it is not a good idea to return to it.
The courts have to make decisions using evidence about income and other matters that is given to them on the day of a hearing. The hon. Member for St. Ives said that guidance and guidelines could be set down, but they would not help to establish a system that most of the people involved would perceive to be fair and workable.
The hon. Gentleman then said that, after a year, parents could go to the CSA for what in effect would be justice. Why delay for a year? A year is a long time for a parent bringing up children on a low income and with all the anguish associated with the break-up of a relationship. Parents in that position would have to go to court to try to secure an income for their children, and they would also have to go through the nightmare of watching their former partners refusing to pay or front-loading their expenses to ensure that only an insultingly small amount was paid in the end.
According to the amendment, after a year of that, parents would have the option to revert to the CSA. I point out to the hon. Member for St. Ives that the Government's proposals mean that they could have turned to the CSA immediately--as they could have done under the slightly different provisions introduced by the previous Conservative Government.
When courts determine child support levels, the amounts vary significantly between families. The system put in place by the state ensures that the taxpayer does not have to foot the bill that one parent in a relationship does not want to pay. It also ensures greater consistency in the amounts being paid. That consistency will appear fairer to those who resort to the state system.
The proposal is well meaning but it does not address the difficulty. It would pose infinitely more problems for parents with care than the hon. Member for St. Ives either cares to admit or believes would be the case. Such a retrogressive step--going back to a system that was thrown out because the country would not tolerate it--would help no one.
Mr. Webb:
The hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) raises some important concerns about a court-based system. They need to be answered, and I hope to build my response on the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. George).
This issue is central to the Bill. When we debated it first, I recall that the Secretary of State said that only lawyers and Liberals want to go back to the courts. Yet the Department of Social Security pays academics such as Professor Jonathan Bradshaw of York university to do research on lone parents and absent parents. Professor Bradshaw is probably the country's leading academic expert on the problem of absent parents. Speaking about the Bill, he said that the Government had got it wrong. He said that it was a mistake to go for a rigid approach and that a court-based system allowing flexibility in individual cases was the right option.
When the Secretary of State tried to rubbish our proposals on Second Reading, he put a costing on them. Given that there seems to be some uncertainty as to what our proposals are, how did the right hon. Gentleman tell his civil servants to cost them? It shows how far-fetched that exercise was. For the benefit of the House and of the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), who raised some perfectly legitimate concerns, let me flesh out our proposals.
The hon. Gentleman raised two justified criticisms about the court-based system--relating to variability and enforcement. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives mentioned guidelines, which the hon. Gentleman did not believe went far enough. The courts are used to deciding on the merits of an individual case within guidelines--sentencing is the relevant analogy. The courts use guidelines to decide a specific sentence for a specific case. Sentencing guidelines can be wide, and we may not want such wide parameters for child maintenance, but an absence of variability would not produce the fairness that the hon. Gentleman seeks. He said, if I remember rightly,
that the system must be seen to be fair. Although wide variations do not create a sense of fairness, neither does treating unlike cases in a like manner.
Let me give the hon. Gentleman an example, which is loosely based on a constituency case. I have talked about this in the House before, and have never had a clear response from a Minister. A father in a couple enters into a commitment in anticipation of his marriage continuing. He gets a new job which he has to drive to, so he takes on a car loan. The couple then splits up. He has the continuing obligation of the car loan debt to service. If he cannot keep the car, he cannot keep the job and he cannot pay the maintenance. The formula will take no account of that burden. [Interruption.] I think that the hon. Member for Stockport (Ms Coffey) is saying from a sedentary position "Take a bus." I assume that that is a facetious remark.
That is an example of how one can take on a commitment in good faith during a partnership that continues after the partnership is over. The new, very rigid formula does not take that into account, but a court, or some other discretionary process, could, without giving carte blanche for variations, allow for people who have good reasons why 15, 20 or 25 per cent. is in nobody's interest. If the person in my example has to pay 25 per cent. after the car loan has been paid, he may have to give up his job. That would be in nobody's interests, and we all care about the interests of children here.
We do not want to return to the old court system. The proposed system would give firm guidelines about the base figure, but would leave scope for limited variation in difficult circumstances.
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