 House of Commons |
Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill |
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Chris
Shaw, Committee
Clerk
†
attended the
Committee
WitnessesProfessor
Nick Wikeley, John Wilson Chair in Law, University of
Southampton
Janet
Allbeson, One Parent
Families
Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 17 July 2007(Afternoon)[Mr. Christopher Chope in the Chair]Child Maintenance and Other Payments BillWritten evidence to be reported to the HouseCM 1 Professor Nick
Wikeley
4
pm
The
Committee deliberated in
private.
4.8
pm
On
resuming—
The
Chairman:
Good afternoon. Thank you for coming, Professor
Wikeley, and thank you for your paper, which has been circulated to our
members and others. It would be best if you introduced yourself briefly
and explained your background involvement with previous reports leading
up to this piece of
legislation.
Professor
Nick
Wikeley
:
My name is
Nicholas Wikeley. I am a law professor at the university of
Southampton. My research specialisms include social security law and
child support or, as we should now call it, child maintenance law. I
have done both qualitative and quantitative research in the area, and I
have written extensively on the subject. I sit as an appeal tribunal
chairman in a part-time judicial capacity, although I do not hear child
support appeals, and I am also a social security and child support
commissioner. Therefore, I should make it clear that I am giving
evidence in a personal academic capacity, rather than a part-time
judicial
capacity.
The
Chairman:
We cannot go on any later than 5.30 pm
with your evidence so I hope that you will tailor the length of your
answers
accordingly.
Professor
Wikeley:
Certainly.
Q
104
1
Albert
Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab): I have read your paper, but
will you give us a general reaction to the Bill? Which parts do you
think will work and which will
not?
Professor
Wikeley:
My general reaction was that, although I was
expecting what I saw in the Bill, I was rather underwhelmed. A lot of
it was well trailed beforehand so it would be fair to say that there
were no huge surprises. In terms of what will work and what will not,
that is the fundamental question because operational efficiency is what
the system has been lacking. I am clear in my own mind that there need
to be changes to the enforcement procedures. Whether they are the
changes that I suggest is a separate issue, but clearly there need to
be changes.
The big question is whether the
emphasis on what academic lawyers would call private ordering will
deliver in encouraging people to make private arrangements. I am afraid
that I am a bit of a sceptic on that, but would like to be proved
wrong.
Q
2
Albert
Owen:
To push you a bit further, do you think that we need
a new Bill to see something out of it? You are saying that we are not
in a perfect situation, but you are underwhelmed by the Bill. What were
you looking for that is missing from the
Bill?
Professor
Wikeley:
I would like to have seen a Bill that
went back to first principles—to the basic principles of child
support, which the Bill does not do. The root of some of our problems
is that the Child Support Act 1991 simply says that non-resident
parents have a duty to pay child support. It does not say that children
have a right to child support. It does not say that parents with care
have a right to child support on behalf of their children. That seems
to me a fundamental issue and it is sidestepped
completely.
Professor
Wikeley:
It is difficult to see how you could step
much further backwards, given the mess that we are in at the moment. I
would like to say that it is a step forward, but maybe only one step.
However, as I say, I remain sceptical about the emphasis on private
ordering. I say that because when the 1991 Act was passed, we all
assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that the agency would take over the
role of the courts. That has not
happened.
What
has happened is that private arrangements, or private absence of
arrangements, have taken over the role of the courts. Obviously it is
better if people can make private arrangements and compliance rates are
better. However, the reality for most people—well, those that
are not on benefits—is that they have had that option for years
and have or have not been doing it as the case may be. I do think that
there is a huge pool of people out there desperate to do private
arrangements who have somehow been frustrated by the existing
system.
Q
4
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
(Mrs. Anne McGuire):
What would be the
difference in outcome if the Bill accepted your premise of the
child’s right to support rather than the non-resident
parent’s duty to pay
maintenance?
Professor
Wikeley:
I am not saying one instead of the other,
but that one is a correlative of the other. If you have a duty to do
something, presumably someone else has a right. It is a question of
articulating that right. That is part of ensuring that one creates a
culture of compliance. Children have a right to maintenance and you
must establish a societal acceptance of that right. The way that
existing legislation is phrased, it is seen simply as an onerous duty
imposed on non-resident parents as a means of saving the Treasury
money. We are obviously moving away from that, but it is a question of
building a culture of
compliance.
Q
5
Mrs.
McGuire:
It would be more a cultural issue in terms of
rights and responsibilities of parents and children than a change in
the outcome. Is that what you are saying?
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes, although if you change the culture,
hopefully you change the outcomes. There is a limit to what more it can
do,
obviously.
Q
6
Andrew
Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con): Could I press you
on the matter of what you call private ordering or private
arrangements? You said that that was the area you were most sceptical
on.
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes.
Professor
Wikeley:
They need things that are inherent in the
private arrangements, but there is also the question of the external
environment—it is a combination of the two. So far as things
that are internal to the private arrangements are concerned, I do not
think that they will work unless people have proper, adequate advice.
The Bill is promising us information and guidance—not advice. At
the end of the day, we are talking about people’s legal rights
and duties, and that will require, at times, legal advice. Carrying on
from that, there is also a point about the relationship between the
parties. We know from existing research that parents with care will
take what they are offered, regardless of whether it is a fair and just
outcome for the children. That is because of the imbalance of power in
relationships. Having an external source of advice, rather than simply
information and guidance, is one way of redressing that power imbalance
so that you protect the interests of vulnerable people. Contrary to
popular misconception, that is largely what lawyers are about,
certainly in family law. Family lawyers do not like conflict—it
is parents who like conflict.
There are also issues about the
external environment. You would have to have an efficient agency that
is an adequate threat, which will step in if the private arrangement
breaks down.
Q
8
Andrew
Selous:
I have one more brief question. The Government
line, we heard this morning, is that the big stick to make private
arrangements work is the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission
system. From your experience of looking at child support around the
world, is that sufficient? Does it need more teeth, or is the threat of
being dragged into the tender embrace of CMEC going to be enough to
make non-resident parents in particular keep the money flowing on a
regular
basis?
Professor
Wikeley:
As I said, we need to look at
the enforcement system. It is a mistake to concentrate on the big
stick, because that sends the wrong message about compliance. It says
that anyone involved in child support is, by definition, a bad dad or a
deadbeat dad. It is about creating a culture in terms of responsiveness
towards people and their circumstances—for example, making sure
that direct payment from salary is seen just as something you do like
paying utilities by direct debit, not as a punishment for someone who
has not performed their duties. Yes, there is a place for extra
sanctions, but it certainly is not the be-all and end-all.
Over-emphasis on that sends entirely the wrong message.
We are all
in this because we want compliance to be better, and there are various
strategies that we can use, one of which is to focus on deterrents.
However, it does not seem to me, from past experience, that that is
necessarily the most efficient way, either in child support or other
fields. You are much more likely to improve compliance if you build a
consensus about what is socially acceptable and socially unacceptable.
My recollection is that 20 or 30 years ago people used to drink and
drive and it was not really regarded as a serious problem, but it is
now. Other examples are the wearing of seatbelts and smoking in public
places.
Q
9
Mrs.
Nadine Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con): You said that
parents tend to take what they are offered. We had a conversation this
morning about parents being allocated a key worker or case worker who
would see their case through. The case worker would probably deliver a
better service, because they know that they will deal with that parent
on an ongoing basis, and the parents would be offered some additional
comfort. However, we were told that that is not possible. I would
imagine that one reason why parents take what they are offered is that
they feel vulnerable and think, “Let’s take this now
while it is on the table, because it may go off the table and there may
be nothing else.” Would you support the case for parents having
one person within the department who deals with their case? It would
give them the additional confidence that they might need if they knew,
that if they did not take what they were offered, someone would be
there, continuously dealing with the case and helping them to get a
better
deal.
Professor
Wikeley:
In common-sense terms, I can see the force
of that argument. Thank heavens, I am not a Child Support Agency
manager. But if I were, I would say, “I have staff who are
trained to a certain level to do certain jobs and there is an issue
about how far I can reasonably expect them to do all the tasks that the
agency does.” Having said that, it is certainly the
case—empirical research shows this—that a frequent
complaint, which you have doubtless heard in your constituency
surgeries, is, “Every time I ring up, assuming I get through, I
speak to someone
different.”
Q
10
Mrs.
Dorries:
That just exacerbates the complaints and the
ongoing situation. There would be a much better outcome for everybody,
including the employees, who would get to know clients over the
telephone, and the clients, who would know who was looking after their
case. Then, perhaps, there would be swifter resolutions and better
deals and it would work better all
round.
Professor
Wikeley:
I do not wish to pour cold water on what is,
on the face of it, a common-sense idea, but look at the staff turnover
in the agency and think about holidays and sick leave. You have to
provide some sort of system that can deal with that. One way of doing
that might be—off the top of my head—to have a smaller
number of people dealing with a case than is sometimes currently so.
You might wish to have one person or one part of a team dealing with
assessment and someone else perhaps dealing with
enforcement.
Q
11
Natascha
Engel (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab): I want to talk to you
about the David Henshaw review, in which he talks about avoiding
cross-
contamination and so on. Do you think that the Bill provides the clean
break proposed by David Henshaw in his
review?
Professor
Wikeley:
No, I do not think it does. However
carefully you try to present it, so far as Joe Public is concerned,
this will look like the CSA under a different name. Joe Public is not
going to appreciate the difference between an Executive agency and a
non-departmental public body. He will know that it is basically the
same people in the same building using—or perhaps not using, one
hopes—the same computer
systems.
Sir
David Henshaw, of course, recommended two bodies: one that would take
forward the new system and a residuary body to deal with the past
cases, handling those as they saw their time out, as it were. Clearly,
that is not what is proposed here. We are going to have one
organisation, which, if people wish it to, will take on the old case
load. If that is a clean break,
well—
Q
12
Mr.
Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP): We have already touched on this
issue, to some extent. In your paper you say that you are not
optimistic about the operation of the information guidance service.
From what you were saying earlier, you almost seem to be arguing that
we need to go back to the old position, where each party had separate
legal advice before coming to an agreement. Is that your
view?
Professor
Wikeley:
There will be many cases where that is
appropriate, but given the way that the legal aid system has gone over
the last 20 years, that is clearly pie in the
sky.
Q
13
Mr.
Weir:
Given that it was suggested on Second Reading that
things would be web-based and telephone-based and this morning we heard
some evidence that there would be, to some extent, a face-to-face
service, how should the service operate to get the best out of the
system?
Professor
Wikeley:
First, you have to make the distinction
between offering information and guidance and offering
advice—they are very different functions. In terms of
information and guidance, one can see that that could be done through a
number of methods and it has to be done in ways that meet the need of
the client group out there, whether by telephone, a web-based service
or face to face. Of course, the most vulnerable people will probably
need a face-to-face service, for whatever reason: they may not be able
to access either the telephone or the web-based service, or comprehend
the full import of what it involves. The best advice on specific
circumstances is always face to face, from someone you can exchange
with.
Q
14
Mr.
Weir:
In that scenario you are effectively going to have
double the number of people involved. Each party will need separate
advice on the terms of any agreement that they are entering into. The
parent with care can obviously go to CMEC. Do you envisage a situation
where the other parent will also get advice from CMEC? Is there a
conflict of interest immediately there?
Professor
Wikeley
:
Ultimately that is a matter
for CMEC to determine, but if it is providing services only to one
party to the dispute, that has implications in terms of compliance and
what the public perception is. There is widespread belief among
non-resident parents that the agency believed only what the parents
with care say. If you speak to parents with care they will tell you a
different story.
Professor
Wikeley
:
Maybe I am wrong, but my
understanding was that it was envisaged that CMEC would not itself
offer this information and guidance. A lot of it would be contracted
out. Then there are issues about whether the capacity is there in the
private or voluntary sectors to do that sort of
work.
Q
15
Mr.
Weir:
Even if it is contracted out, it is contracted by
CMEC to a third party. Therefore, it would still be done under the
auspices of CMEC, albeit not directly. Are you concerned that in a lot
of cases CMEC might be seen as acting not only as an adviser to one
party, or perhaps both parties, but as the enforcer in the event that
the agreement breaks down or one cannot be
reached?
Professor
Wikeley
:
Yes. Let me put it another
way. We have heard several times from Ministers and from the previous
Prime Minister that the problem with the child support system is that
the CSA is involved with assessment, collection and enforcement and
that it cannot do those three things. Well, the Inland Revenue does
those three things and CSA Australia does those three things. It is
possible for the same organisation to assess, collect and enforce.
Whether it is appropriate for the same organisation to advise is, I
agree, a separate issue. Would we necessarily expect the Revenue to
offer me impartial advice about my self-employed tax position? I think
I can rely on it to give me some sort of information and guidance, but
if I want advice, I will hire an
accountant.
Q
16
Mr.
Weir:
Picking up on what Mrs. Dorries was
asking earlier, do you think that there will be pressure on parents
with care to make private arrangements that may not be in their best
interests as a result of
this?
Professor
Wikeley
:
There is a risk that that may
happen. If we look at the Bill it is quite clear that CMEC’s
role is to encourage and support private arrangements and to support
applications for
maintenance.
Q
17
Mr.
Weir:
We had a discussion this morning on the possibility
of having a register of agreements and some sort of monitoring of
private agreements that are entered into. Do you think that that is
necessary to see whether this is working in the interests of parents
with
care?
Professor
Wikeley
:
I am conscious that
they do things differently in Scotland, for example, with minutes of
agreement. We do not have a similar system south of the border. I have
seen some of the research on that, which suggests that it is not always
entirely satisfactory. People feel, even in that sort of environment,
forced into an agreement. They accept
the best that is on the table, going back to our earlier conversation.
If you try to create something like that nationwide, the problem is how
will you monitor it. How will you police
it?
Q
18
Mr.
Weir:
That comes back to the point. There is nothing in
the Bill that says specifically, although it may come in regulations,
that agreements even have to be in writing. If we just allow people to
go out and make agreements, if there is no monitoring and quality
control, how do we know whether they are working in the best interests
of parents with care and children? Is there a need for some sort of
monitoring or quality control?
Professor
Wikeley:
I certainly think there is a case for laying
down certain basic standards or criteria, basic terms or templates,
that the agreements could meet. I think of the Australian experience.
Unlike us, Australia has a universal system. Basically, everyone is in
the agency. More than 90 per cent. of eligible people are in the
agency, but of that huge pool about half are in only at the beginning
for an assessment. After that, they deal with collection privately. The
problem is that no research has been done, so we do not know how
effective those private agreements are. No one has asked. If you ask,
the agency will say, “Well, if they weren’t being
complied with we’d hear about it, because they’d apply
for agency collection.” That may or may not be true. People
might settle for a quiet life rather than do
that.
Q
19
Mr.
Weir:
I have one final question. It has been
suggested—was it on the web?—that there will be a
standard template agreement. Are people going to adopt that template
and fill in the appropriate percentages? Is that likely to be the
outcome?
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes. Indeed, there is some evidence that it
is going on already. Certainly practitioners say that 15, 20 or 25 per
cent. is understood—a huge advantage on the old
formula—and that people accept that that is the rate, so that is
what they operate on. The number of hits on the agency website suggests
that, to some extent, people are already doing
that.
Q
20
Andrew
Selous:
You spoke earlier about the importance of changing
the culture in a positive and responsible way in order to make a
success of child maintenance. From your knowledge of the Australian
system, do you think it would be useful for us to adopt any of its
practical guidance and support in order to help non-resident parents to
be good parents from a distance, and do you see that as part of the
change needed to lead to the willing provision of reliable financial
maintenance?
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes I do. It is fair to say that the agency
and the Department are aware of what the Australian agency has been
doing in that regard.
I preface my comments by saying
that the Australian system is deeply unpopular—it is as
unpopular as ours. The difference is that, by and large, it works,
although it has some wrinkles. For instance, it is not that good on
self-employed cases, but show me a child support system that is. The
difference is that although Australia has a system that works, it is
hugely unpopular
because, of course, it requires people to pay money in circumstances in
which they would rather not pay.
Q
21
Andrew
Selous:
You say that the Australian system is
unpopular. I have just been looking at the comments of separated
parents on the back of the guides to long-distance parenting published
by the Australian support agency. I do not know whether it is a highly
selective sample of quotes, but separated parents, both mothers and
fathers, are hugely appreciative of the practical nuts-and-bolts,
week-by-week guidance on how to make their relationship with their
children work. People never like parting with their money for all sorts
of reasons, but I am keen to see such advice and guidance being given
here, and we need to establish that now. What is your take on
that?
Professor
Wikeley:
I have two things to say. First, when I say
that the Australian system is deeply unpopular, the Australians say
that in customer satisfaction ratings the agency rates quite
highly—roughly an 80 per cent. satisfaction rating, which is
very high. Having said that, the agency still generates a lot of bad
press in Australia, and it still generates a lot of complaints to the
Commonwealth ombudsman. Yes, there is a hard core of seriously
disgruntled people.
Secondly, I
accept the appreciation of the new initiatives that have been
undertaken, but it is not simply putting leaflets on the web. The
agency’s people go into workplaces to talk to workers about how
the system works. Again, it is part of a bigger system. It is too early
to know how it is working, but, as I am sure you know, the Australian
Federal Government have set up a system of family relationship centres,
which is part of a wider development in family law. Again, family law
judges here receive a lot of criticism about secrecy and so on, but
Australian family law judges take far more criticism. The family
relationship centres are part of an initiative to nip those sorts of
problems in the
bud.
Q
22
Mrs.
Siân C. James (Swansea, East) (Lab): Do you think
it right that CMEC should have the ability to charge fees for its
services and, if so, where and when should charging be applied? For
example, should charges be used only in cases of
non-compliance?
Professor
Wikeley:
At one level, you can see the argument that
CMEC should have the power to charge fees for providing a public
service. If you go to court, you expect to pay fees. In some ways, this
is an alternative to court, and so you can see the Treasury’s
argument for fees. On the other hand, we know that the difficulty in
child support is getting the money out of people, and getting
additional fees out of them would add to the problem. If the purpose,
or the primary purpose, of child support is to try and attack the child
poverty targets, we cannot levy fees on parents with care, because that
will be a disincentive to them using CMEC, if they cannot reach a
private agreement. The question is whether you just charge non-resident
parents, but there is the parity of treatment
argument.
Q
23
Mrs.
James:
Sir David Henshaw said that you should apply it to
both sets of parents, which would be more equitable. Do you think that
any charging system should be delayed until CMEC has bedded in, proven
its worth and been effective?
Professor
Wikeley:
My view is that we should not even think
about it until then. I am pretty sure that the Australian system does
not operate fees. It is paid for by the taxpayer. Obviously, it levies
penalties in the same way that the Revenue levies penalties here if you
are late with your payments, but it does not operate
fees.
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes.
Q
24
Mr.
Weir:
What do you think will be the effect of the removal
of compulsion for those on benefits to apply to the CSA by the repeal
of section 6 of the 1991
Act?
Professor
Wikeley:
I wish that I knew. Recent research
published by the Department suggests that non-resident parents, in
those circumstances, might be happy to enter into private arrangements,
but parents with care do not seem to share the same sort of
enthusiasm.
Q
25
Mr.
Weir:
Do you think that there is a real danger of more
parents with care not having any child maintenance in place as a result
of that
change?
Professor
Wikeley:
That is what lawyers call a leading
question. The answer is
yes.
Q
26
Mr.
Weir:
Does this not take us back to our earlier discussion
about monitoring the effects? Do you feel that a system has to be in
place to monitor the effects of the changes on the receipt of child
maintenance by parents with
care?
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes, and I am sure that the Department will
be commissioning research on a regular or intermittent basis to monitor
those changes, but I assume that you are talking about the
administrative machinery to monitor what is going on in private
cases.
Q
27
Mr.
Weir:
It seems to me that although the movement to private
agreements has been widely welcomed, there is a danger of people
falling through the net. I am trying to get at whether safeguards
should be in place to monitor whether some people fall through the net
where there has been a separation and maintenance is being paid. Do you
have any idea how such safeguards could be put in place? Or should we
not be repealing section 6 at
all?
Professor
Wikeley:
Clearly, the repeal of section 6 is the one
really radical step in the Bill. It is quite clear that it has been
widely welcomed by those who represent parents with care, so I think
that it would be churlish to say that section 6 should stay on the
statute book. Having said that, the repeal of section 6 will not help
to establish the payment of child maintenance as a primary obligation.
Potentially, it will undermine that cultural acceptance of the payment
of child support. It would certainly put us out on a limb as being
fairly exceptional; so far as I am aware, in Europe only Belgium and
Denmark have systems in which welfare claimants are given a choice
whether to apply. Most systems worldwide require claimants to make an
application.
Q
28
Mr.
Weir:
You are sceptical about the estimates of the fall in
the number of people from those using CSA to those using CMEC. You seem
to suggest that the estimates are slightly inflated and that CMEC will
be dealing with more people than it imagines. Can you tell us more
about
that?
Professor
Wikel
e
y:
Yes. Sir David
Henshaw’s report quoted a figure that I must admit was contained
in research that I did some years ago with a number of colleagues at
Southampton and elsewhere. That suggested that, if the compulsion were
removed, something between a third and a half of those subject to it
might choose not to use the agency and might go private. More
recently, small-scale research commissioned by the Department suggests
that that figure might be lower—more like 15 to 20 per cent. If
we consider the current eligible population, we know that the divide is
actually something like half and half—as far as we know, about
half of the eligible population have no child support arrangements in
place. That means that there is a risk that, if section 6 is removed,
those people will enter the pool of those with no agreement, rather
than a private
agreement.
Q
29
Mr.
Weir:
Given that one of the CSA’s problems from the
outset was that it seemed to be under-resourced, do you feel that CMEC
will have sufficient resources to cope with the additional demand, if
it turns out that you are correct in your estimate and that the
official estimates are somewhat
inaccurate?
Professor
Wikel
e
y:
Well, my day job
is in a university, so I know that the public sector does not have
enough
resources.
Q
30
Natascha
Engel:
I have a slight issue with your central thesis. As
I understand the Bill, part of it is about moving things into voluntary
arrangements, which, by your own admission, are far more successful and
far more likely to be adhered to. It is also about stopping things from
just falling by default into the remit of the CSA or in this case CMEC.
That shift is what David Henshaw’s report was fundamentally
about, and the voluntary arrangements were one of the radical
departures mentioned in it. I would like to find out whether you think
that the proposals are fundamentally a move forward or backward,
because I feel that there is a slight contradiction in your evidence.
Professor
Wikel
e
y:
I am sorry that
it appears that way, and I shall try to explain my concern more
clearly. Let us return to the point that there is already a substantial
opportunity for people to make private arrangements, which private
clients enter into or not, as the case may be. It is difficult to see
that the reforms will necessarily encourage more private cases to make
an
arrangement.
Q
31
Natascha
Engel:
They will do that by taking away the default. There
will no longer be a default that people will fall into. That is exactly
where things like the removal of section 6 might
assist.
Professor
Wikel
e
y:
Yes, but I am
thinking of genuinely private cases in which there is no issue of
claiming benefits. At the moment, those cases are in a sense outside of
the scope of the agency anyway, and a
private agreement can be made in relation to them. Clearly that does not
happen in a substantial number of cases, because something like 50,000
cases a year do not make a private arrangement and end up with the
agency or
CMEC.
Q
32
Natascha
Engel:
When you refer to private arrangements, do you mean
situations in which both parents are working and neither is on
benefit?
Professor
Wikel
e
y:
In practice,
yes. At the moment, the agency gets some 50,000 such cases through its
doors each year. These are people who do not need to use the agency,
but they end up there because they cannot make a private arrangement
themselves. I am not convinced that that number will fall
substantially—it is just a fact of life. They have the
opportunity to make a private arrangement, and they, or one of them,
will not take
it.
Q
33
Albert
Owen:
May I move on to benefit disregard? In your opinion,
should the Government introduce a full benefit disregard, and if not,
what level should it be set
at?
Professor
Wikeley:
That is a very difficult
policy question. It seems strange that under the existing system there
are parents with care under the old scheme who have no disregard
whatsoever, there are parents with care under the new scheme who have a
grand £10 a week disregard, and there are parents with care who
may also work on the checkouts at Asda for more than 16 hours a week
and claim working tax credit who have a complete disregard, although
their actual circumstances are not significantly different. It seems
difficult to justify giving the person working 16 hours a week a
complete disregard, so that all their child support is cash in hand,
whereas the parent with care who works 15 hours a week is subject to a
disregard of £10 or even nothing. That seems unsustainable, and
I simply do not buy the labour incentive arguments. I think that there
are all sorts of other reasons why people want to be in
work—partly monetary, partly social—and those are much
more powerful than the level of the
disregard.
That would
seem to suggest that I speak in support of a complete disregard.
However, there is obviously a cost attached to that which the Treasury
can doubtless calculate. If a particular figure is set, there is
clearly a danger that that becomes the maximum amount of child support,
even if the circumstances are actually such that more should be paid. I
know that Professor Parkinson from Australia, who chaired the
Australian taskforce and inquiry, is very critical of the British
proposals. His argument is that the only people who will benefit from a
large, fixed disregard are well-to-do non-resident
parents.
Q
34
Albert
Owen:
It is clear from what you have said that you favour
the full disregard, although you do not accept it as a disincentive to
work. Do you accept that the Government are trying to help alleviate
child poverty, and that 100,000 would be taken away from
that?
Professor
Wikeley:
I do not have the statistical competence
either to agree or disagree with the figures.
Q
35
Albert
Owen:
You said that it was a difficult policy area. Is
that not a clear aim and
objective?
Professor
Wikeley:
That is clearly the aim and
objective, but there are other issues about whether that amount will
become the maximum in all cases, even though there may be cases where
more money should be paid. There are issues about equity with other
families who are not separated and who do not see that benefit, which
is why I say that it is a difficult policy question. However, it seems
strange to take away section 6 before increasing the
disregard.
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes.
Q
37
Andrew
Selous:
Moving on from the discussion about the disregard,
I see that in paragraph 18 of your useful paper, you criticise clause
40, which takes away the ability to recover public expenditure on
benefits in other areas. You have made the point that that measure
would overturn some 400 years of British social security custom. Can
you elaborate a little on that, and perhaps give a general perspective
on the fact that the taxpayer as such will no longer be compensated for
the costs of feckless behaviour by others? Should we shed just a small
tear in the passing of
that?
I have a second,
slightly separate point about the disregard from the point of view of
equity. I was wondering about the position of widows in relation to
separated mothers and the disregard, in cases where there is a
£10 disregard. Do you hold the view that they should move
together, from the point of view of
fairness?
Professor
Wikel
e
y:
In so far as
widows and widowers are concerned, my recollection is that the figures
show that they have much higher employment rates than, for example,
lone
parents.
Q
38
Andrew
Selous:
I was being specific. There is a £10
disregard on the widowed parent’s allowance that matches the
£10 disregard for separated parents in the new system. Were the
Government to move from an equity perspective, I wondered if your view
would be that they should move equally in both
classes?
Professor
Wikel
e
y:
Yes, I can see
the argument for that, although you may not be comparing like with
like, so I would reserve my opinion. In so far as clause 40 is
concerned, there is not much doubt that one of the agency’s
major presentational problems over the years is that it has been seen
as simply a Treasury recovery mechanism. Personally, I welcome the
change, as combating child poverty will be seen as one of the major
objectives of the child support system—if not the major
objective. It seems wrong to throw away completely, in all
circumstances, the issue of benefit recovery. Partly that is with a
view to creating public acceptance for the scheme; we know that most
people will form relationships with people of the same socio-economic
class—that is the way that the world works. However, there may
still be situations where the parent with care ends up with the
children, on benefit and on a very low income, and the non-resident
parent has a substantial income.
If the parents do not make a
private arrangement, because they cannot or do not want one, for
whatever reason—the mother may not want the father in the
children’s lives any more—then clause 40 is saying that
the state has no interest. That is even though the state is directly or
indirectly supporting the parent with care and the children, when the
man—if it is a man—has a substantial income which is not
being used to support the children. That seems difficult to justify to
the population at large, let alone to the Public Accounts
Committee.
Q
39
Mrs.
James:
As an add-on, could you envisage a time when a
woman might agree under duress to an arrangement? I am thinking of
people who have been in abusive relationships, who do not want the
hassle any more, and who would agree to anything that their partner
proposed.
Professor
Wikel
e
y:
The research
tells us that that is what happens already. I see no reason why it
should
change.
Q
40
Dr.
Desmond Turner (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab): Are you happy
with the new formula that changes the basis of calculation from net to
gross
income?
Professor
Wikeley:
I do not have a huge issue with whether it
is net or gross. I am slightly intrigued by the change to gross,
because the point was discussed in 2000, and the Government White Paper
said that the net figure would be used, because it is closest to what
people actually have in their pockets—it is what people
understand. Obviously that argument has now been put to one side, and
the link with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs means that we
have gone over to
gross.
The fundamental
question is what we mean by income, and how income is calculated. I am
not privy to the discussions between the Department and Her
Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but it is clear to any outsider
who knows anything about the system that Revenue and Customs already
operates different methods of calculating income for different
purposes. Income is slightly different for income tax and national
insurance contributions and certainly for tax credits. We already have
problems within the child support scheme in defining income. Under the
old scheme, all income was counted as income unless it was disregarded.
Under the new scheme, it is counted only if it comes within one of the
specified categories. We, therefore, have major problems with benefits
in kind, dividend income and so on, which are not taken into account
under the new scheme
formula.
Q
41
Dr.
Turner:
You can see lots of problems and yet more
opportunities for the self-employed to get around the
system.
Professor
Wikeley:
I am not confident on the basis of what has
happened so far with the new scheme that those loopholes will be dealt
with.
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes, moving the cap from
£2,000 to £3,000 a
week—
Professor
Wikeley:
I suppose it is to do with the
interrelationship with the courts. They still have jurisdiction to deal
with child maintenance cases in very special circumstances, such as
where the child has a particular disability that creates needs or where
very high-income families are involved. So, I suppose it is part and
parcel of that. It is fair to say that this has never been a large
proportion of the agency’s
work.
Q
43
Dr.
Turner:
What is your feeling about the increase in the
flat-rate payment from £5 to £7, which does not, on the
face of it, seem to be that significant? Do you really think it will
make an impact on child poverty?
Professor
Wikeley:
I thought your question was going to be
slightly
different.
Professor
Wikeley:
No. The argument could be that it will have
a significant impact on the income of the non-resident parent on
benefit, who is on a low income to start with and who may have a second
family. It is a 40 per cent. increase. I do not believe that the retail
price index has gone up 40 per cent. in that period—I certainly
do not believe that benefit rates have done so.
Professor
Wikeley:
It could be, but I am pretty sure that it is
higher than the equivalent Australian flat rate. If you consider the
basic rate of jobseeker’s allowance, £5 is quite a
lot.
Q
44
Andrew
Selous:
The 25 per cent. income variation has aroused a
certain amount of comment. Do you think that there is perhaps a case
for reducing it in terms of lower-income non-resident parents? If you
are poor and you have a 24 per cent. fall in your income, this is a
pretty significant rule. If you are on a hefty income, it does not make
so much difference, but it is a blunt instrument for people who are
counting the pennies week by week and trying to do the right thing.
Would it be possible to have some sort of scale, perhaps even varying
things a bit more at a higher level, so that overall this is not a cost
to the Exchequer and just helps people lower down the income
scale?
Professor
Wikeley:
You have to remember why the suggestion has
been that we move to a 25 per cent. tolerance and to think about the
problems that we have with existing schemes. Those problems are that
both the new and the old schemes are built on the social security
model, so frequent changes and frequent reassessments occur, and you
get on to a hamster wheel where assessment chases assessment and change
chases change within the system. There is a trade-off between dealing
fairly with people’s circumstances, making the system
operationally manageable and not having too many changes of
circumstances.
The question then becomes a
judgment call as to where you fit that level. As I indicated in my
evidence, the Australians use a 15 per cent. tolerance. If your income
is 15 per cent. or more down on the year, you can get a change. Another
way of doing it, rather than having a universal figure, would be, as
you have said, to have bands. For example, under £20,000 your
tolerance level would be lower; between £20,000 and
£25,000 it might be intermediate; and above £25,000 it
might be higher. The problem is that you then introduce extra
complexity into the system, and we know from experience that more
complexity makes the system more difficult to
administer.
Q
45
Andrew
Selous:
So overall you are comfortable with administrative
ease, if we may call it that, taking precedence over some pretty rough
justice at the lower ends of the income scale. Can clever computer
programs not work this sort of thing out without tying up the agency in
knots? None of us wants to see CMEC staff back on that hamster wheel. I
want to probe you a little more on your experience from around the
world. Can we do this in a slightly less blunt fashion for people who
will be significantly
affected?
Professor
Wikeley:
As I have said, the
Australians use a 15 per cent. approach, and I have not heard from
those working in the agency that they are flooded with changes of
circumstances. Perhaps there is something about the economic position
of non-resident parents there that is different from the position here.
I would be more comfortable with a lower figure. I am not sure whether
that should be a banded figure, because that is a difficult operational
judgment.
Q
46
Mr.
Weir:
We touched again on the self-employed. One of the
things that we often hear in our constituency cases is the allegation
that someone’s lifestyle does not match with their declared
income. Now we are going on to HMRC figures, do you think that will be
sufficient to allow this to be addressed, or is it just entrenching it
in the
system?
Professor
Wikeley:
I do not see how moving to HMRC figures will
address the problems in the variation scheme—the lifestyle
inconsistent cases. Obviously, it will depend on what you mean by gross
income and how far you take into account business expenses, capital
allowances and so on. I return to the point that I made in the paper
that I put before the Committee: income is not a scientific process;
income is what you want it to mean—it is a bit Alice in
Wonderlandish.
Q
47
Mr.
Weir:
But we are asked to accept HMRC as being the arbiter
of what an income is. Is it possible to design a system that will get
round a perceived problem that the self-employed are able to have an
apparently lower income than their lifestyle would suggest?
Professor
Wikeley:
I am not expert on the tax system. I have
talked to those who are, and my understanding is that the Revenue, not
surprisingly, concentrates its investigative resources on the cases
that it thinks are the most serious and that will produce the most
return to the Exchequer. That makes good sense. Such cases will not
involve whether a plumber is
earning £15,000, £20,000 or £25,000 a year. For
self-assessment purposes, if £15,000 or less were involved, we
would be talking just about three-line accounts, which could hide all
measures of things. Even above that figure, if it is in the band of
what one might expect a plumber to earn, HMRC will leave it and will
not look at it from a tax point of view. I do not see how HMRC will
suddenly undergo a cultural shift and start examining these relatively
small cases from a child support
perspective.
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes. CMEC will say, “Well, we have
got the figures from HMRC. What are you going to do about it? Show us
the evidence.” Of course, a parent with care may have
suspicions, but getting the evidence is rather more
difficult.
Q
48
Mr.
Weir:
Let us move on to another matter. Obviously, there
are proposals to transfer cases to the new rules, but one of the gripes
that we often hear from constituents is the fact that there are already
two systems running in parallel within the CSA, providing totally
different outcomes depending on when the case first went to it. We will
now have a third system, and it may be some time before things are
transferred over. Are you confident that there can be a successful
transfer of cases from the CSA to the new maintenance calculation of
CMEC?
Professor
Wikeley:
No. On the basis of what happened after 1993
and after 2003, you have to say that the history—the
precedents—does not look good.
Q
49
Mr.
Weir:
Is there a danger that we will be running three
different systems, with even more unhappiness among those who are
subject to CMEC or child maintenance? Is there a way around
that?
Professor
Wikeley:
I wish that I knew the way around it. The
answer might be that there is clearly no intention for existing old and
new cases automatically to transmogrify into brand new CMEC cases.
People will be given a choice. The options will be explained to them:
they can stick with the amount that they have and come into the new
system on that basis, or make a fresh application. That is my
understanding.
Q
50
Mr.
Weir:
There will then be potential for disputes between
the parties. Many non-resident parents who are subject to the old rules
might wish to come under the new CMEC rules, but that might not
necessarily be in the interests of the parent with care. How will CMEC
balance the views of both parties and arrange for a transfer? Should
not there be one rule for transfers? Otherwise, we will end up
in the position that we are in now, with two systems running in
tandem.
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes. I have only recently seen the very long
document about delegated powers that the Department produced. I must
admit that I have not yet gone through it in detail, because it has
only just become available. I do not know how it is proposed that it
will be done, but I am quite sure that I will not
get the answer from reading the Bill. I am not 100 per cent. convinced
that, when the regulations are available, I will get it from reading
them, either.
Professor
Wikeley:
The obvious riposte is that the agency
already has extensive enforcement powers but, historically, has not
used them. In the debates on the 1991 Act, the complaint was that a new
agency with Gestapo-type powers was being created. There was a lot of
debate about that, especially in the House of Lords. What happened,
certainly in the first 10 years or so, is that, by and large, the
agency simply did not use those powers. The figures show that there has
definitely been a change in the past two or three years. The agency has
begun to put more resource into
enforcement.
It is a
perfectly respectable argument to ask why the agency should have any
new powers until it has proved that it can use its existing ones.
Having said that, we know from overseas regimes that different systems
use different sanctions, so there might be other appropriate penalties
in particular cases. When I gave evidence to the Work and Pensions
Committee in 2004, I put the case for withdrawing passports, or
something similar, in very extreme cases. The Australians use a
slightly different system, but it is basically the same sort of idea. I
can see the case for that as a high-order sanction that might be more
effective than imprisoning people or taking away their driving
licences, for
example.
Q
52
Mrs.
James:
One of the problems that I pick up on regularly in
my surgeries is that enforcement is pretty draconian for those who are
within the ambit of the CSA and therefore already in the net, but it
does not seem to affect at all those who have not yet been tracked down
and who remain outside the system. People are sceptical about what
enforcement
means.
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes, and they are right to be sceptical,
given the track record. There are clear signs that that is beginning to
be turned
around.
Q
53
Andrew
Selous:
I understand that, at the moment, only 19,000 of
the 247,000 non-compliant cases are with the enforcement directorate. I
am broadly in favour of the new enforcement powers, because I have had
too many parents in my surgery with woeful tales of not getting the
maintenance, and I recognise the need to do something about that. It is
crucial to ensure that the enforcement directorate is able to up the
proportion of cases being investigated. What is your feeling on how
CMEC would cope with that as it goes
forward?
Professor
Wikeley:
My understanding is that, certainly in the
past, the agency itself had real problems in identifying what the most
serious cases were that needed enforcement action. Again, that is
beginning to be turned around, which may be shown in the figures to
which I referred earlier. In answer to your question, I would simply
say that it will depend on the calibre of the staff and on the
resources that they have available. We know that the tax inspector is a
pretty efficient enforcer.
Q
54
Andrew
Selous:
What is your view on deduction from earning orders
as the first way of proceeding. Are you in favour of that? We
understand that it happens in other
jurisdictions.
Professor
Wikeley:
Deduction from earning orders in this
country have always been seen as a penalty or sanction. There is clear
evidence from both the United States and Australia that, if a direct
deduction from salary is offered at an early stage as simply a
compliance mechanism—one way of paying—it helps boost
compliance. I am certainly in favour of it being used more widely. It
will not be a panacea. People change jobs and it is a burden on
employers, but it is certainly an important part of an effective
collection strategy, not an enforcement
strategy.
Q
55
Andrew
Selous:
Are you confident about CMEC’s ability to
use administrative liability orders fairly, given the problems that we
have had with assessment in the
past?
Professor
Wikeley:
Regarding the problems that we have had in
the past, if one speaks to practitioners in the field, they will give
you stories of cases where the agency has failed to take enforcement
action and to make applications for liability orders when it should
have done. Equally, there are other cases where it has taken action
precipitously or on the basis of inaccurate assessments. Either way, it
has not worked out. If the decision is that the liability order should
be an administrative mechanism, we must have proper accountability and
a proper and efficient appeals system, and I am not convinced that the
model in the Bill is necessarily the system for
that.
Q
56
Andrew
Selous:
How would you improve the appeals system, so that
it is fair but does not take for ever to produce a
result?
Professor
Wikeley:
You say “does not take for
ever”, but the argument in favour of taking the power away from
the courts—or, at least, removing the obligation on the agency
to make an application to the courts—and bringing it in-house
within the agency is that the courts take too long, as stated in the
White Paper. I have not seen the empirical studies on which that was
based, and it is not clear to me whether that delay was caused by the
courts delaying the processing of the cases or by the agency’s
inefficiency. Cases sometimes get more than one adjournment, and that
may well be the agency’s responsibility and not the
court’s problem. There is an issue about the basis on which the
decision is made.
It
seems strange to me that, in the proposal on the right of appeal, there
is a right of appeal to a tribunal. I can see the point of that, given
that tribunals have expertise in the child support field, but the
tribunal is denied the right to look at the underlying assessment. On
the top of page 18 of the Bill, proposed new section 32K(3) states:
“On an appeal under this section, the appeal tribunal shall not
question the maintenance calculation by reference to which the
liability order is made.” That seems to me to be
nonsense.
Q
57
Andrew
Selous:
I shall move on to the issue of disqualification
from holding or obtaining travel authorisation. There were some
comments on Second
Reading about the different attitude towards
removing a driving licence, which could stop someone from being able to
earn their living, as opposed to removing their passport. What would
happen with an ID card? As far as I understand it, the experience from
Australia and America seems to suggest that these sanctions work. What
comments do you have on
that?
Professor
Wikeley:
The evidence from both
Australia and the US shows that that can be a valuable weapon in cases
in which other types of sanction have not worked. Having said that,
they operate different system. The Americans operate a passport
revocation system. The Australians, on the other hand, do not revoke
passports; they simply stop you from leaving the country. The advantage
of that is that it applies to everyone, regardless of their
nationality.
Revoking
or withdrawing people’s passports is not going to stop people
with dual nationality from travelling—they will travel on the
other passport—and it certainly will not stop non-British
nationals from travelling. Presumably, there is no suggestion that we
start taking away the passports of French citizens who are working in
London. Therefore, a departure prohibition process casts a wider
net.
Q
58
Mr.
Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con): Following on from the
issue of sanctions, what is your comment about the way curfew orders
work in
practice?
Professor
Wikeley:
That of course was not
something that Sir David Henshaw proposed. To my knowledge, curfew
orders are not used in other systems worldwide. I am slightly hesitant
because I suspect that there are probably some American states that use
them, but I simply do not know. I have not seen any literature on their
effectiveness.
It
seems that you can use curfew orders for two reasons. One is to keep
track of people; to locate them. I assume that that is not the purpose.
The other reason is as a simple penalty and an alternative to
imprisonment. We all know the problems with prisons. Anything that
keeps people out of prison—if they are not a danger to
society—is presumably a good thing.
Having said that, I am slightly
concerned that curfew orders are part of the big stick mentality, which
may not necessarily help to engender a culture of compliance. There is
also an issue here of parity of treatment. Curfew orders were an option
that was considered for parents who unreasonably refused access to the
non-resident parent. That measure was dropped from what is now the
Children and Adoption Act 2006. There is a question here of treating
people equally in like circumstances. If the sanction is inappropriate
there, why is it suddenly appropriate
here?
Q
59
Dr.
Turner:
There is often a problem with arrears.
Sometimes part-payment of arrears is accepted as payment in full. Do
you think that that process should involve a parent with
care?
Professor
Wikeley:
I do and although it is not mentioned in the
Bill, my recollection is that either the White Paper or the regulatory
impact assessment says
that there will be consultation with the parent with care. Personally, I
would be happier if that was built into the Bill rather than left to
regulations, especially when one is dealing with private cases in which
there has never been any state involvement. It seems that,
fundamentally, it is a private dispute between two parents. If that is
the case and if there is going to be any partial satisfaction, the
person entitled—the payee—should have their rights
protected in primary
legislation.
Q
60
Dr.
Turner:
I feel some amendments arising from that.
Do you have a view about the amount of debt that it is legitimate to
write off? Should there be a requirement to prove before it is written
off that, in practice, it really is absolutely beyond
recovery?
Professor
Wikeley:
I do. Having said that, we need to be quite
careful about the different types of debt. Some of the debt total
relates to interim maintenance assessments, which were a completely
unsuccessful attempt to wave a big stick and make people comply. All it
meant in a sense was that rather artificial arrears just built up. I
can certainly see a case that interim maintenance assessments should be
revalued on that basis. When talking about proper maintenance
assessments—if I can put it that way—based on
people’s actual incomes, writing off is more
problematic.
Q
61
Dr.
Turner:
What about the CSA’s old mistakes? Should
it be pursued by ombudsmen for
maladministration?
Professor
Wikeley:
At present, the agency operates a financial
address system as a Department for Work and Pensions agency. It is not
entirely clear how that would operate in the context of a
non-departmental public body. The legal route appears to have been
closed off in that the Court of Appeal decided quite recently that the
agency owed no duty of care to parents with care or, indeed, their
children. Therefore, there is no possibility of parents with care or
their children suing the agency for negligence for poor administration.
The only way would either be presumably through the Department’s
financial address scheme or through the ombudsman. If a system has
promised to deliver, and it has failed to do so, it hard to see why
people should be denied compensation.
Q
62
Dr.
Turner:
Do you think that there should be an element in
the Bill that covers that and which would prevent Appeal Court
rulings?
Professor
Wikeley:
The Appeal Court ruling was on the basis of
both the statute and the common law. The Court of Appeal was quite
clear that there was no duty of care and therefore no liability for
negligence. Whether it is appropriate for such a duty of care to be
imposed is a difficult issue, both on a policy and political
basis.
Q
63
Dr.
Turner:
Does that relate back to the point that you
made at the beginning of your evidence that the Bill does not provide
for a right of
care?
Professor
Wikeley:
A right of
support?
Professor
Wikeley:
Yes, it
does.
Q
64
Dr.
Turner:
If that were to appear on the face of the Bill,
would it resolve the legal problem that you have been
describing?
Professor
Wikeley:
It would help in that process. I am not sure
that it would actually resolve it, but it would be a step on the right
road.
Q
65
Mr.
Weir:
There is power in the Bill to factor debt to private
debt collection agencies. Do you think that that would be a right
approach for the Government or CMEC to
take?
Professor
Wikeley:
It is an approach that has already been
taken in terms of contracting out the process of debt recovery under
the existing system, although there is not as yet a power to factor the
debt itself. There is something intrinsically uncomfortable about
factoring debts in that way, but if the object is to recover the money
for children—and if that is a more efficient method of doing
so—perhaps it is an option that should be
considered.
Q
66
Mr.
Weir:
Is there a danger of an historic debt, which is
factored out to debt collection agencies, impacting particularly on
low-income or vulnerable
families?
Professor
Wikeley:
One could run an argument to the effect that
private sector debt collection agencies might not take full regard to
all the circumstances of a case in the way that we might expect a
public service agency to
do.
Q
67
Mr.
Weir:
Do you think that there would be much demand in the
private sector to take on that
business?
Professor
Wikeley:
You would have to ask those who operate
those services in the private sector. I simply do not
know.
Q
68
Natascha
Engel
:
I am particularly interested in the
retrospective impact with the mesothelioma payments. Should the
compensation recovery process be a retrospective payment for
mesothelioma sufferers or their
dependants?
Professor
Wikeley:
Although I have done research on this area
in the past, I have not looked in detail at the Bill’s
provisions on mesothelioma. However, a significant number of people
certainly have no adequate form of redress at present. For whatever
reason, they are unable to establish a claim in tort or under the
industrial benefit system. Obviously, making it retrospective opens up
a significant number of
cases.
Q
69
Natascha
Engel:
The delegated powers memorandum states that
“the recovery of lump sum payments is significantly different
from the existing recovery of benefits scheme” and “it
would require major changes to and modification of the 1997
Act”. That, by itself, gives the Bill quite sweeping
regulation-making powers. What do you think the Government should
include in those regulations?
Professor
Wikeley:
I am afraid that I have to refer back to my
earlier answer: I have not looked closely enough at the part 4
provisions. I have been concentrating on child
support.
Q
70
Natascha
Engel:
On a more general point, the Bill also provides for
regulations to set out the amount to be paid. That varies according to
circumstance. What do you think those circumstances should
be?
Professor
Wikeley:
Well, it depends what the objective of the
scheme is. We already have a scheme under the 1979 Act, whereby people
are compensated primarily according to age. Age is a crucial factor.
There are factors that will always be relevant: the person’s
age, the number of dependants and the earning potential that they have
lost. All of those things are clearly significant. I would say that the
awards under the 1979 Act, which are apparently going to be the model
for these awards, are definitely at the low end of personal injuries
awards.
Professor
Wikeley:
It is better than
nothing.
The
Chairman:
That brings us to the end of the questions. On
behalf of the Committee, may I say how much we appreciate your coming
here and helping us with our
work?
Professor
Wikeley:
Thank you for your
time.
Thank you for
coming along. I think that you have been listening to earlier parts of
the proceedings as a member of the audience. We have until 7
o’clock. I am not sure whether we will take all of that time,
but please address your comments on the basis that that is the maximum
time that we have. You have not submitted a formal memorandum, but some
hon. Members have pieces of paper, which may have been circulated in
some form of briefing. Rather than invite you to make a preliminary
statement, perhaps you will say who you are and where you come from and
from where your interest in the Bill emanates. We will then move on to
the first
question.
Janet
Allbeson:
I am Janet Allbeson. I am a policy advisor
at One Parent Families, and I am responsible for its work on child
maintenance. One Parent Families has had a long-standing interest in
getting a decent child maintenance system in this country, right from
its founding objectives of 1918, which we are still trying to
fulfil.
We support the
Government in trying to get the child support system right, and we have
been involved since Sir David Henshaw’s review was announced. We
run a series of seminars that bring together front-line
advice
workers, family lawyers, civil servants and anyone
with an interest in child maintenance to give their views on future
reform. We ran four seminars that looked at different aspects of child
maintenance. We have been fully engaged and are keen to help the
Department to get it right, although we have a lot of questions and
issues to be addressed.
Q
71
Albert
Owen:
In moving forward and getting things right, as you
put it, do you think that the Bill will work? Which parts of it do you
favour and which parts do you think do not go far enough?
Janet
Allbeson:
The Bill is a skeletal document. A lot of
the issues that will determine whether or not the new scheme is
successful relate to big questions that are hard for Parliament to
address. For example, the Department’s budget will have a 5 per
cent. cut, year on year, between 2008 and 2011. There are big issues to
do with resources and delivery mechanisms, such as procurement policy,
IT systems and project management. Delivery has been the big failure of
child support. In the past, a lot of time was spent discussing policy
questions and getting the policy absolutely right; far too little
attention was paid to how it worked alongside effective delivery. A lot
of the big issues are not mentioned in the Bill, such as the transition
from two schemes running side by side to one new scheme or, in fact,
three variations. There will be an information and advice service to
support voluntary agreements, a cash collection service in another
tranche and a new scheme. That transition is a huge mountain for CMEC
to climb, but there is very little information in the Bill about any of
that.
Janet
Allbeson:
There are certain things in the Bill that
we are pleased about, such as the priority that the Government are
giving to child poverty. They are looking at the child maintenance
disregard, which they want to maximise. Debates are still going on with
the Treasury about the level of that disregard, but there is a clear
interest in recognising the importance that child maintenance can play
in combating child poverty, which we are pleased about. Children in
lone-parent families are more at risk of poverty than other children.
There are good things in the Bill, and getting an effective child
maintenance system really matters for children in lone-parent
families.
Q
73
Albert
Owen:
In your opinion, is the movement from the Child
Support Agency to CMEC a step forward or a step back?
Janet
Allbeson:
I think that it is too early to say, to be
honest. The intentions are good, but a lot of the detail of delivery
still has to be worked out. On the new assessment process, everyone is
enthusiastic about using tax data from HMRC, but there is a danger of
everyone saying, “Oh that’s jolly good—tick,
let’s move on.” That is what has happened in the past
with child support. Everyone has agreed with the principles and turned
away from considering how it will work in practice. Is HMRC up to it?
Is it going to deliver? We are still making up our minds, and it is too
early to tell whether it will work or not.
Q
74
Albert
Owen:
I am sure that colleagues in the Committee will
agree that we do not say, “Great, let’s tick the
box,” because we get the casework. I think that
you are saying that you agree in principle to many parts of the Bill,
but that you are cautious about the delivery, because of past
experiences.
Janet
Allbeson:
Yes. We are in favour, for example, of the
abolition of section 6 and the requirement automatically to use the
agency if you are on benefit. We think that it is right that all
parents are given a choice about how they make the best maintenance
arrangements for their children. We are sceptical about the degree to
which voluntary arrangements will work for a large number of parents
who are bringing up children on their own, so we are keen to see a
really good statutory scheme for parents who need to use it, whether
they are parents with care or non-resident
parents.
Q
75
Natascha
Engel:
When David Henshaw did his review of the Child
Support Agency, as it is now, one of his key recommendations was to
have an absolutely clean break within the new system. Did you support
the idea of a clean break from the CSA?
Janet
Allbeson:
We can certainly see the need to rebrand
the whole business of child support and child maintenance. The old
system—the CSA—had really lost the trust of parents and
the public. There is clearly a need to say, “We’re new,
we’re different, we’re going to do things
differently.” As to whether that will be achieved—there
is a window of opportunity but various things remain the same, as
Professor Wikeley has pointed out. It is the same staff, the same
computer system and a lot of the rules will be the same.
Will it be a clean break? There
is an opportunity to show that it is different. One thing would be to
give more through the child maintenance disregard, so that what you are
saying from the start is that the scheme is about money going to
children, not to the state. That gets the public on board and makes it
clear that, if a non-resident parent does not pay, he is cheating on
his children, not outfoxing Gordon Brown or, now, Alistair Darling.
That is very important. Can there be a clean break, for instance, from
the debt that is owed? We are concerned that CMEC should not walk away
from the legacy of non-payment and of children being brought up without
that money. We want more attention to be paid, in terms of the
objectives of CMEC, to recovering that money.
Another issue about whether
there can be a clean break will be whether it is seen to work right
from the start. In the case of both the last schemes, they went wrong
right from the start. It should not happen again this time. People will
be looking to the new scheme, and they are quite hopeful. Parents and
the staff, too, are hoping that it will work. The scheme started to
fall apart in 1993 and then in 2003, when the delayed new scheme came
in, and it was clear almost straight away that it was stumbling. If
there is going to be a fresh start, we are keen that the Department
should frontload and should not make the mistake of trying to pull
staff and resources too early out of the new department. It should put
the resources in at the start, and only after 2013, once it is really
starting to work and once it is over the mountain of transferring
cases, will it see whether it can reduce the staffing and resources put
in. Yes, let us make a fresh start, but a lot needs to be done to do
that.
Q
76
Mr.
Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): I think that we all will be
fairly familiar from our constituency postbag with cases—I want
you to confirm that there are such cases—where the absent parent
resorts to various tactics, such as physical mobility, job mobility,
redefinition of employment as self-employment and so on. You are
nodding, so I take it that you confirm, at least, that it is not
unfamiliar to you. Clearly, the result for the parent with care is
pretty ghastly. Can you give us any indication—it might be
relevant to the future of the new scheme—of how much you think
that is related to what might be termed “malicious
contacts”, whereby people take advice on the internet or
otherwise on how to subvert the existing system? Do you have any
confidence that the new system will be robust against such an organised
attack? Ministers have clearly given some attention to
that.
To single out a
particular case in which there is an inequity, what about the situation
in today’s world of complex families whereby a parent is
paying maintenance in respect of a child from a previous relationship
but failing to receive it for a child whom they are now maintaining?
That seems to aggravate the sense of unfairness and unacceptability
about what has been happening and what none of us wants to happen in
the
future.
Janet
Allbeson:
There is a huge spectrum of non-compliance.
Non-payment is part of it, but there are also all the other ways in
which NRPs can avoid paying, such as by readjusting their financial
affairs, so that they seem to have little income. At one end of the
spectrum there are people who would cut off their right arms rather
than ever pay, but there are people at the other end who maybe do not
have much money or who have a lot of debt. They may be in a new
relationship and have a new family, and they might be in and out of
work and casual employment. It can be very hard to
pay.
We think that
CMEC has a role to play in a lot of circumstances. There could be a
situation in which someone is willing to pay but relations are so bad
between a couple, particularly about money, that both agree,
“Let’s get CMEC to sort it out, to take some of the
bitterness out, and we can deal with sorting out contact more amicably
without having to argue about money.” So CMEC does have a
role.
It is incredibly
hard to get money from people who duck and dive and are reluctant to
pay, and there has been a sort of naivety about the ability to do that.
Sir David Henshaw, for example, said that it was a bit like collecting
electricity costs or parking fines. Well, it is not, because there is a
degree of emotion and bitterness that can build up and that we have to
acknowledge. That goes for some of the contracted-out things lower down
the line. We have to recognise that the case load is quite
specific.
CMEC must be
more than just a big stick, being hard-edged and going after people. It
must acknowledge that there is often a sense of bitterness and
grievance, to do with not seeing your child any more and having to
parent from distance. People need support in how to do that, and they
need their grievances addressed. They might need good information and
advice. They might have a sense of grievance that turns out to be
misplaced.
There was a departmental report
on compliance, and what became apparent from reading it through was how
many non-resident parents were really angry about their assessments but
had not appealed against them. They had not realised that they were
interim assessments, which was clear from looking at them, even to me.
They assumed that that was how much they had to pay; they never
realised that they could go back and sort it out. Those people may have
debts.
If you can
deal with some of the wider problems about why an NRP is not paying,
you can maybe get the maintenance flowing again. Ideally, a good
information and guidance service would offer that. As Professor Wikeley
was saying, that is not just information; it is advice. It is about
sitting down with someone and sorting out some of their problems, so
that you unplug the gaps and help them pay. CMEC can also be a good
service for people who find it difficult to pay regularly and have
chaotic lives. Let us offer it as a service, not just a big
stick.
Q
77
Mr.
Boswell:
Thank you for that. As a follow-up, may I ask you
for a quick comment on your take on what happens when this begins to
break down? It may be that the parties have good faith and, through the
mediation or intervention of CMEC, have entered a private arrangement.
If one party to that arrangement either disputes its terms or is just
not compliant, or maybe gets into difficulties, will that be a CMEC
function? What is the best way of handling
it?
Janet
Allbeson:
Ultimately, if a voluntary agreement breaks
down, CMEC must be there to step in. That is the simplest way of
dealing with it. We want CMEC to focus on running a good statutory
scheme. In our view, that is its primary responsibility, and if it can
get an efficient statutory scheme going, voluntary agreements will be
encouraged in the shadow of it, because people will know that, if they
do not stick to their voluntary agreement, the agency will step in
smoothly and efficiently—not necessarily
belligerently—and get the money going
again.
On offering a
really good service of information and advice for parents, often when
they are at the point of separation and relationship breakdown, there
will be a lot of bitterness and pain. There will be many issues to sort
out, of which child maintenance will be just one small part. There
might be debt, housing, and rights on cohabitation and contact
to sort out. CMEC is stepping in to a wider spectrum
where that maintenance arrangement will work only if that wider picture
is dealt with properly. The DWP cannot do that on its own.
We are proposing, at least,
that pilots be set up. Let us consider advice services run by other
Departments: we have a relationship breakdown programme run by the
Ministry of Justice and the Department for Children, Schools and
Families. The DCSF also runs a parent know-how fund, which gives advice
on parenting. The Department of Trade and Industry runs financial
inclusion of debt services. There are a lot of different pots of advice
and information out there.
We wrote to the Chancellor, to
the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and to the
Secretary of State for Justice saying that we wanted some pooling of
resources to pilot a service for separating and separated families that
would help them manage and support them in order to get the best
outcomes for
children. Research suggests that non-resident
parents are more likely to pay maintenance if there is some parental
involvement. There has been a lot of fuss about lone parents supposedly
refusing contact. Well, lone parents have said to us: “We want
more contact. Why does he not get more involved?” There is a
sort of consensus that, if non-resident parents can be more
involved—providing it is safe, of course—it has very good
outcomes for children. We wrote a joint letter with Fathers Direct, and
got a lot of other parents organisations to sign up with us, asking for
cross-Government funding and backing for a new service for separated
and separating parents.
Returning to CMEC, we are
sceptical about how effective the information and guidance system will
be in supporting voluntary arrangements. A telephone line and a website
are a start, and we know from our own research into the advice needs of
lone parents that they like the telephone, because they can ring when
they get home from work or after they put their kids to bed. So it is a
good start. Often you can get a diagnosis over the phone about your
problems and advice on where to go, but where do you
go? There is a lack of capacity, because parents also want face-to-face
discussion about their options. Should they go for the mortgage being
paid or for child maintenance? What about getting their debts paid off
first? Would that help? People have individual situations that need to
be sorted out. There is a need for advice and information, but given
the limited resources that the DWP has to devote to this, we are
sceptical about whether it can do what is necessary in order to really
increase voluntary
arrangements.
Q
78
Mrs.
McGuire:
You said earlier that you have come across
non-resident parents who would rather cut off their right arms than pay
maintenance. Another issue that many of us have come up against as
constituency MPs is an unrealistic assessment by the non-resident
parent of how much it costs a week to support a child—how much
of a contribution should be made. Sometimes it is not only how much the
assessment is but whether they think it too high. I have had parents
telling me that the CSA assessment was unrealistic and that £30
a week was more than adequate to keep a child. Can we reconcile that
perception through CMEC or some other mechanism?
Given what you said
about managing all the other issues—I do not disagree that there
is a mishmash of them: the breaking-up of relationships, or
non-resident parents thinking that they should have different access
arrangements and all the rest of it—how should we manage that
sequence of events, that process which reconciles all the other things,
yet at the same time ensure that the resident parent still has adequate
resources every week to maintain the child?
There are two issues. The first
is people’s expectation of how much it takes to keep a child.
The second is how to deal with all those other things—the
priorities of the non-resident parent, who may think that paying for
their car is more important than contributing to the upkeep of their
child. I say that with some experience, and I am sure that my
colleagues have had similar discussions with non-resident
parents.
Q
79
Chairman:
Before you answer that extremely long question, may I point out the
danger of questions—and answers—getting longer? It is
likely
that we shall lose 15 minutes of our allocated time to a Division, and
we may lose even more than that, so if we are to make the necessary
progress we will have to be much more succinct.
Janet
Allbeson:
The statutory scheme is obviously there as
a back-up; it gives the amount that the state says you should
contribute to your children. It is the backstop. If the non-resident
parent in negotiations comes up with an amount that does not reflect
the true cost of raising children—there can be a debate about
the extent to which the full cost is recognised, including paying the
bills and housing costs as well as the pocket money and the
clothes—the state will step in and say, “This is the
amount that we consider reasonable.” To a large extent, the
amounts set under the 2003 scheme have not attracted much controversy
in terms of affordability.
Q
80
Mr.
Harper:
I have two questions. You said in your reply to
Mr. Boswell that you wanted an efficient CMEC as an
alternative to private arrangements, as people would know that there
was a backstop. If CMEC is efficient and deals with things competently,
will not people go to it as the first port of call? It would be more
straightforward than the CSA. Their experience of the CSA may not be
good, and they may not want to get involved, but if they went to CMEC
it could end up dealing with all cases. Alternatively, do you prefer
the Henshaw view that CMEC should deal with the smaller number of more
difficult cases, and that it would be better if the bulk of cases were
dealt with through private arrangements? Which of those two visions do
you agree
with?
Janet
Allbeson:
One has to look pragmatically at who is
able to reach an agreement and who is not. Research suggests that those
who can reach agreement tend to have been married or to have been in a
long-term relationship. There is usually some degree of parental
involvement, and the break will have been reasonably amicable. Sadly,
that is not the case for a large number of couples, as there has been
tension and they do not get on. We cannot expect them to make voluntary
arrangements. CMEC has to be there for them. It has to be a decision
for them—for the people who use CMEC, or at the moment the
CSA.
Cases in which
people choose to use the CSA tend to be those in which there is a lack
of trust between the parties or in which they do not want contact with
each other. The CSA has a valuable role as an intermediary in ensuring
that the money is paid in those cases.
Q
81
Mr.
Harper:
May I briefly follow that up? Do you see there
being a significant difference between the number of cases that CMEC
will handle and those handled by the
CSA?
Janet
Allbeson:
The big unknown is the number of current
benefit cases in which people might choose to make their own
arrangements. We are keen for the Department to estimate that number
quite conservatively, because in the past the danger was over-optimism
about the willingness of non-resident parents voluntarily to agree to
pay money over. By all means let us offer the facility and give
information and advice, but let us not count our chickens before they
are hatched. There is a culture of non-compliance in this
country—although I hope that it will change. Time and again, the
CSA has suffered disappointments. The attempts at a system that assumed
that NRPs would co-operate have failed.
Q
82
Mr.
Weir:
My question has probably been covered. I was
interested in what you were saying about your view of the operation of
the advice and assistance scheme. Given your vision of that advice
scheme, do you think that CMEC can act as both adviser and
enforcer?
Janet
Allbeson:
It can provide information, and it clearly
has a role in telling people how the system works, what their options
are, and perhaps even in giving them model agreements and useful
information about how best to manage their finances in order to pay.
Beyond that, the detailed information that people need to make sure
that arrangements can work relates to more than just child maintenance;
it relates to a lot of other issues as well. People need access to an
independent person whom they can trust. Given that it will be
collecting money and enforcing, CMEC will not necessarily have that
relationship of
trust.
Q
83
Mr.
Weir:
Normally, in a separation or divorce, people might
go to see a lawyer to deal with the other aspects of the break-up, and
enter into some sort of agreement or go to court to deal with that,
while the child maintenance is dealt with by the CSA. Are you
suggesting that we are looking at having two agencies: one to deal with
advice and one to deal with collecting and enforcement of
maintenance?
Janet
Allbeson:
I think that CMEC is planning to contract
out its information and guidance function. Our view is that having a
source of impartial and independent information, advice and guidance is
a good idea as far as it goes. However, there is a capacity need beyond
that. Beyond the call centre and the website there is a need for a
comprehensive, face-to-face service, and we are sceptical about the
ability of DWP to fund that, because there is a capacity issue with
existing resources. We know that citizens advice bureaux budgets are
being cut, along with budgets for lawyers and legal services. Family
lawyers are very unhappy at the moment about the extent to which they
can deal with services.
Q
84
Mr.
Weir:
Even if CMEC contracts out its advice section, the
advice will still be given under its auspices. There are two parties to
any agreement. Non-resident parents often need advice and assistance as
much as the parent who has care. Will CMEC be able to offer advice to
both sides impartially in such
situations?
Janet
Allbeson:
I definitely agree that both parties need
advice. Citizens advice bureaux currently deal with, and wrestle with,
the issue of both parties needing advice. There can be conflicts of
interest here. So that would have to be handled very
carefully.
Q
85
Mr.
Weir:
Finally, do you think that the new system
will put pressure on parents with care to make private arrangements
that may not be in their best interests or in the best interests of the
children?
Janet
Allbeson:
We are certainly worried about the
potential institutional bias where the organisation has a business
interest in steering people away from using its services because of the
cost. The Government’s response to the Henshaw review was to say
that too much money is spent chasing too-small sums of money from poor
people. Of course, potentially, poor lone parents stand to benefit from
this system. We do not want to see children in lone-parent families, 50
per cent. of whom are poor in terms of the children, in any way steered
away from using a system that offers them the potential to get
maintenance. The regulatory impact assessment says, at paragraph 117,
that every 10 per cent. increase in case load would cost £20
million. Potentially, there is a risk of that business imperative
pushing people towards voluntary arrangements, which we know will only
work for some.
The
research looking at voluntary agreements shows that there is an
imbalance of power. In all the agreements that were looked at,
overwhelmingly it was a non-resident parent who was in the driving seat
when it came to deciding the terms of the arrangement. That is
worrying.
Q
86
Mr.
Weir:
Given that, do you feel that there needs to be at
least initial stages of monitoring and some sort of quality control
about the type of agreements being entered into, to see if those are
working in the interests of parents with care—especially those
more vulnerable parents with
care?
Janet
Allbeson:
We suggested that, in the Bill, there
should be no institutional bias towards voluntary arrangements and that
the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission should have the job of
getting child maintenance per se and should be helping parents work out
what is the best option for
them.
On monitoring
voluntary agreements, the Bill talks in clause 2 about the
commission’s obligation to set up “appropriate voluntary
maintenance arrangements”. There is a question about what that
means and, if there are any objections to the commission’s
achieving that, how it will judge whether it has achieved it or not.
There has to be some monitoring, simply to know whether it is reaching
its
objectives.
Q
87
Andrew
Selous:
I was heartened by what you said about wanting
CMEC to be a service, not just a big stick. You also talked about the
cross-departmental collaboration and said that you had written a joint
letter to the Chancellor about that with One Parent Families and
Fathers Direct. That was all music to my ears. However, I am concerned
that none of that is in the Bill. When CMEC is under pressure, the Bill
will be driving its priorities. Would you agree that to get an
all-round concept of child support that is financial—but more
than just financial in terms of the distance parenting and so
on—you would like to see something in the Bill about CMEC being
responsible for ensuring that that type of advice is provided in an
all-round sense, if not providing it
itself?
Janet
Allbeson:
We are a bit torn really. That service is
definitely needed, but the question is whether CMEC is the right body
to provide it. In response to the December 2006 White Paper, the
Secretary of State said that the information and guidance service would
come out of the DWP budget and that he would have to fund the whole
thing from his budget. That instantly limits what can be achieved. So
there is a need for such a service, but we are not convinced that the
right place to locate it is solely within the DWP’s budget. With
child maintenance, the service that is needed requires a greater
stretch of public funds, apart from the DWP. CMEC has to focus on
getting the statutory system
right.
Q
88
Andrew
Selous:
So you would agree with the main critique of
Professor Parkinson in Sydney that this will work only if it really
follows through what is happening cross-departmentally, in terms of
family policy, and supports the objectives that you were talking about
earlier?
Janet
Allbeson:
Yes. One should not underestimate the task
of getting a good, efficient statutory scheme going. It is an enormous,
challenging task that has not been got right yet. We are asking CMEC to
do that while running an information and guidance service and a cash
compliance service somewhere in the middle. We are asking an awful lot
of CMEC, but our priority is to get the statutory scheme right. Yes,
information and guidance is definitely needed, as there is a real
shortage, but let us be realistic about what the new body can do, and
let us consider other ways of getting Government funding to provide a
proper service for separating and separated couples. That is a bigger
project than
CMEC.
Q
89
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry (Portsmouth, North) (Lab/Co-op): There is
provision in the Bill for CMEC to be able to charge fees. What is your
view on the principle of charging fees? Where do you think it is
appropriate, if at
all?
Janet
Allbeson:
I suppose that we have a pragmatic response
in that the obvious place to levy them is against non-resident parents
who fail to pay. It is hard enough getting them to pay, let alone pay
fees. That is what interim maintenance payments were,
essentially—a kind of penalty. In the past, fees were charged,
but had to be stopped because the service was so appalling. The
Minister spoke this morning about possibly levying fees against parents
with care who want to use the statutory system when the non-resident
parent says that he wants a voluntary arrangement.
All the research suggests that
voluntary arrangements are much more popular with non-resident parents:
the arrangements are more flexible, they can pay lower amounts and
there is no mechanism to step in instantly and enforce the arrangements
if they do not pay. Is it surprising that parents with care are not
quite so happy about voluntary arrangements, because flexibility means
that they do not get the money regularly, and reliable maintenance is
quite important? Of course they want a decent amount to support their
children, and ideally they want a firm hand, so that the non-resident
parent knows that if he does not pay, someone will step in and make
sure that he does.
We
would be very reluctant to deny a parent with care the right to use the
statutory system, because who decides? If she thinks that she needs it
because she does not trust him, is CMEC going to tell her that she is
wrong? Fees sound good in theory, but in practice
we could end up having a whole new enforcement machinery simply to
collect the fees, which could be a
diversion.
Q
90
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
One argument for charging fees to parents
with care is that it would deter them from using it as a weapon against
the non-resident parent. In your experience, is that large number of
people? Is it something that should be
considered?
Janet
Allbeson:
It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of
the negotiations that go on around maintenance. It can be quite hard to
get a non-resident parent to pay up, so you say, “Okay, if you
won’t pay up, I am going to CMEC,” and put in the
application. Once there is recognition that you are serious, you might
get somewhere in getting the maintenance. Sir David Henshaw thought
that that was misuse, or frivolous use, of CMEC, which
underestimates the weaker bargaining power of the person with the
children who is trying to negotiate an
arrangement.
Q
91
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
You mentioned that, in the old system, fee
charging had to be abandoned because the process was so appalling. If
CMEC could prove that it was able to provide an efficient service, do
you think that there might then be a case for charging a fee?
Janet
Allbeson:
Conceivably there might be, if there was a
humming, efficient machine that everyone was clamouring to use. You
would have to means test it, which would be more bureaucracy. Could you
charge people who were above tax credit level or perhaps getting just
the family element? I do not know; it is hard to say. It is quite hard
to imagine how it would work. It is a long way
off.
Q
92
Mr.
Weir:
The repeal of section 6 has been widely welcomed as
part of the Bill, but what do you think will be the effect of the
removal of the compulsion for those on benefit to go to the CSA or
CMEC? Do you think that there is a danger that some parents with care
who are on benefit will end up with no maintenance agreement at
all?
Janet
Allbeson:
There is that risk. There is a choice,
which means that you have the choice of not getting anything at all.
You might take that choice because you want to be independent and stand
on your own two feet and you decide that you can manage without. You
might also do it for more worrying reasons, or there could be a
clean-break agreement in which you make your own settlement and you
keep the house. The worrying cases are those in which the parent with
care might decide not to seek maintenance because she wants to keep the
peace, or because she wants to safeguard the father’s
relationship with the children but he has threatened to cut off all
contact with them if she seeks it.
That is where the promotion of
child maintenance in clause 4, which relates to CMEC’s role in
campaigning on the importance of maintenance for children, is very
important. Parents with care who are not getting maintenance need to be
repeatedly told and retold that CMEC is there for them, that it will
help them and
make it as easy as possible, and that maintenance will make so much
difference to their children. It needs to make the case for child
maintenance, not through any particular arrangement, but by telling
parents with care that it is important and by using all the outlets to
which they might go, such as health visitors, the children’s
information service, which deals with childcare, and Sure
Start.
CMEC needs to
make conversations about child maintenance part of the conversations
that you have with separated parents. The same applies to non-resident
parents. They should be asked, “You’re a father. Are you
paying maintenance? If not, why not? Do you realise what a difference
it makes to your children?” That promotional active role, along
with the financial incentives to parents with care, will let them know
that it is worth their while to seek
maintenance.
Q
93
Mr.
Weir:
Sir David Henshaw’s report estimated that
significantly fewer people would use CMEC than use the CSA. What is
your view on
that?
Janet
Allbeson:
Nick rightly talked about that research. My
take on the DWP’s latest attempt to get a figure—it
really does not know—suggests that a third of parents with care
who are on benefit would consider making their own arrangements. One
has to be aware that they may decide to make their own arrangements,
but this is a very long financial relationship that is going to go on
for 15 or 16 years. All sorts of tensions can creep in, say if one
partner re-partners, or if someone changes job or moves away. Someone
may decide on the voluntary option but come back into the system later.
It would be unwise to overestimate the number of people who will end up
in voluntary
relationships.
Q
94
Mr.
Weir:
Given that one of the problems with the CSA was that
it was generally acknowledged to have been under-resourced from the
outset, are you confident that CMEC will have the resources to deal
with the number of people who are liable to look for its services in
the early
years?
Janet
Allbeson:
There are lots of reasons why the previous
systems failed. The assessment process was not right; it was too
complex and too geared to minor changes of circumstances. Computers
were a key factor in the failure on both occasions. I would be cautious
about saying that it was because too many people wanted to use
it.
Getting rid of
section 6 of the 1991 Act works for CMEC for very pragmatic business
reasons, in that two thirds of cases that come through the benefit
channel never get to an assessment. From a business point of view, that
is an enormous churn of resources for very little result. It makes
sense to have an organisation that deals with people who want to deal
with it. The job of CMEC is really to encourage people to use it or to
make voluntary arrangements. The case for maintenance
will need to be
made.
Q
95
Albert
Owen:
Should the Government introduce a full benefit
disregard? If not, what significant level do you think it should be set
at?
Janet
Allbeson:
One Parent Families has nailed its colours
to the mast on that, and we are very keen for a full maintenance
disregard because we think that it could make the biggest difference to
relieving child poverty in this
country.
Janet
Allbeson:
Research shows that the vast majority of
lone parents by far want to work, and maintenance does make a
difference to that. Research looking at a group of lone parents, a
cohort, between 1991 and 2001, shows that receipt of
maintenance—disregarding other things, such as education, home
ownership or other factors—is a positive indicator of going into
work. Getting maintenance actually assists people in getting into work.
That is not surprising when you think about it, because the big hurdle
for going to work for a lot of lone parents is insecurity. If
maintenance is already flowing, that helps them begin to make decisions
about putting together a package of part-time earnings, tax credits and
maintenance, which can carry them over the hurdle into work and all the
expenses of starting work. They are having to pay child care, of
course. You only get a certain amount of help with child care—I
think that it is 80 per cent. now; there is another 20 per cent. to
pay. Child maintenance can really make work a viable
proposition.
Q
97
Andrew
Selous:
I shall put to you briefly what I put to Professor
Wikeley earlier about widows, in relation to separated parents.
Presumably, One Parent Families has the interests of both groups at
heart. There is a £10 disregard on widowed parent’s
allowance at the moment. We know that there will be changes in that
area. Would you like to see the two move together so that there is
equity between
them?
Janet
Allbeson:
I do not recognise a £10 disregard
on widowed
parents.
Q
98
Andrew
Selous:
I checked it in the social policy section of the
House of Commons Library before I came this
afternoon,.
Janet
Allbeson:
Widows and widowers are a group of single
parents for whom national insurance makes provision. They get a
non-means-tested contributory benefit based on their deceased
partner’s contributions. One of the reasons that so many of them
work is because they have access to that extra national insurance
income, whereas lone parents on means-tested benefits get only
£10. I should like to go away and think about
it.
Q
99
Andrew
Selous:
I do not want to tie you down to the details,
because it is a technical area, but I wondered if you thought in
principle that there should be some parity between single women who are
single for different reasons, but who still have children to look after
and bills to
pay.
Janet
Allbeson:
There is not parity at the moment; I
suppose that that is my initial reaction. I might come back to you on
that. Widows get a non-means-tested contributory benefit, while lone
parents who are not widows have access to means-tested benefits. The
position is quite different.
Q
100
Andrew
Selous:
Some of them are time-limited, but it is probably
inappropriate to go into further detail. Briefly, I have a final
question on clause 40. It is the same one that I put to Professor
Wikeley. The clause will prevent the Department from being able to
recover money spent on benefits where a liable parent has not paid
child maintenance. Do you have a view on its inclusion in the
Bill?
Janet
Allbeson:
I think that it is a very interesting view
for Professor Wikeley. It is a bit of an academic point of view. Once a
decision is taken to abolish section 6, effectively, it will become a
choice, for very pragmatic reasons. Obviously, one should do everything
that one can to encourage parents to seek maintenance and to pay
it.
Q
101
Andrew
Selous:
You do not see it as a small contributory means to
helping the departmental budget, about which you expressed concerns
earlier?
Janet
Allbeson:
The advantage of, for instance, giving a
full disregard would be to incentivise parents with care to seek
maintenance and help them go into work. That will help relieve the
budget a
bit.
Q
102
Dr.
Turner:
The formula for assessing maintenance has changed
from net income to gross income. Are you content with that
change?
Janet
Allbeson:
In itself? I am similar to Professor
Wikeley. The way that the percentages are changing was designed, at the
end of the day, not to change much of the amount being paid over. It is
being done to try to use HMRC to get over the problem of identifying
the income of NRPs. Whether it can do that is another matter, but we
applaud the intention to work more closely with
HMRC.
Q
103
Dr.
Turner:
What is your feeling about the upper earnings
limit? Do you think that there should be
one?
Janet
Allbeson:
By definition, our client group tends to be
lone parents on low or middle incomes. We do not really have a view
about the highest level. It is not an issue that we come
across.
Q
104
Dr.
Turner:
What is your feeling about flat-rate benefit? Is a
£2 increase adequate, or do you think that it is
excessive?
Janet
Allbeson:
Income support rates, particularly for
single non-resident parents, are quite low—£59 or
£60 a week. It is a lot of money. The principle is
right—one is seeking to establish NRPs’ duty to
contribute to their children—but the actual amount seems high.
The problem at the moment, looking at assessments, is that 55 per cent.
of NRPs are paying £5 or less. We are sceptical about that
figure, to be honest. We think that there are a lot of people who have
never been reassessed. Nevertheless, one must be realistic about how
much money one can get from people who are very
poor.
Janet
Allbeson:
Unlikely. Apart from possibly just
reminding people of an obligation to pay, but we would be very happy
with a fairly minimal contribution while people are on benefit. If you
can get them into the
system when they are on benefit, you can reassess them once they are
going to
work.
Q
106
Andrew
Selous:
The 25 per cent. income variation level for poorer
non-resident parents seems quite large. I wonder what your reaction is
to that. Is it a bit of rough justice as far as people at the lower end
of the income scale are
concerned?
Janet
Allbeson:
There is a balance to be struck between the
operational considerations—what is workable from the point of
view of CMEC—and what is affordable from the points of view of
the NRP and the parent with care. Looking at the Government’s
response to the White Paper consultation, my reading is that
operational considerations have determined the 25 per cent. amount.
Issues about affordability have not really played a big part. It is
about how many cases, pragmatically, CMEC thinks that it can
reassess.
The figure
needs to be kept under review because One Parent Families has no
interest in a system where non-resident parents feel that they have a
legitimate grievance about the amount. This system can work only if the
public back it. We want non-resident parents to be able to afford their
maintenance. We do not want them to become martyrs; that is not in
anyone’s interests. It has to be a system that the public back
as fair, so the 25 per cent. figure needs to be
watched.
One also has
to recognise that income changes are not the only changes of
circumstance. Income changes are not the only things that bedevil tax
credits. Other things change in family circumstances. Relationship
breakdown is a time of enormous flux: people re-partner, there are new
babies, teenage children move between households. All those changes
cause reassessment so I would urge a lot of care to be taken in
bottoming out the changes of circumstances with what is the quite
volatile group of separated
families.
Q
107
Mr.
Weir:
One of the problems that we often come across as MPs
is the situation where the non-resident parent is self-employed and
there are arguments about what their real income is. The Bill proposes
moving over to information received from the Revenue. Do you think that
that will help with that problem or will it continue under the new
scheme?
Janet
Allbeson:
The self-employed are a real problem.
People have said that they are only 7 per cent. of cases and we have to
devise a scheme for the majority. We are very unhappy with that because
the self-employed are the group that cause the most problems to the
agency and to tribunals. They cause the greatest problem in terms of
the public profile of the agency because the employed non-resident
parents have a real sense of grievance that they are the easy pickings
and that there are all of these chaps laughing at them, who have
managed to conceal the money or put it all into rental income that is
not touched and they are getting away with it. That brings the whole
system into
disrepute.
If you
tackle the self-employed, you are sending out a very clear message that
evasion will not be tolerated. Gross income is quite problematic for
self-employed
people because if you have your own little company,
you can give yourself the profit in a whole variety of ways: you can
give yourself a small wage or dividends, you can have a partner in the
business—perhaps your new wife—that you give some money
to, you can take out a loan and pay yourself dividends through that.
You can be quite creative in ways that may be perfectly legitimate for
tax purposes, but which minimise your income for child maintenance
purposes.
Q
108
Mr.
Weir:
How do you suggest that the Department deals
with that? It is a perennial problem that everyone will recognise, but
no one has yet come up with a workable solution to deal with it when
working out child
maintenance.
Janet
Allbeson:
We had a seminar on the assessment of
income and the agency people who were there admitted that they lacked
the skills internally and the confidence to tackle the accounts that
they got from self-employed people, which they did not really
understand. At tribunals, there are financially qualified members who,
just from looking at the accounts, can say, quite simply, “It is
quite clear that this person is paying this amount to this person and
it is clearly a device to get round their
income.”
Q
109
Mr.
Weir:
Does not that highlight a problem? If CMEC
looks behind the information from HMRC, what does HMRC then do if the
income for child maintenance and tax purposes is
different?
Janet
Allbeson:
What we are concerned about is maintenance
for the child. HMRC’s interest is in getting tax in for the
Revenue. There is a different interest. We think there should be a
scrutiny and verification unit inside CMEC that has the job of going
after NRPs who appear to be hiding income and also dealing with the
variation procedure. A scrutiny and verification unit would look into
that.
Stephen
Geraghty was saying this morning that it was up to the parent with
care: “If she can prove it to us, we do it.” When you
think about it, that is ridiculous. It is one of the big avenues of
avoidance. CMEC has enormous powers to go to credit reference agencies.
Instantly—at a glance—you can see if someone who says
their income is £50 a week has all sorts of credit and
commitments. There are ways that it could go into bank accounts and
look at the income. The NRP should be obliged to disclose his bank
statements and that kind of thing so that you can see where the money
is going, in and out. One of the ways in which child maintenance works
is that the NRP will try to minimise his liability. If you do not
tackle that, in a sense, you are cheating the children who need the
money.
We want a
scrutiny and verification unit and an obligation on the NRP to prove
his income, because if you go through the variation procedure, the onus
is on the parent with care to prove their income, not on the NRP to
prove his income, which does not make sense.
We would also like greater use
of the information that the courts hold. In a lot of cases where there
is money, there will be separate financial ancillary proceedings going
through the courts to decide about the house, the pension and the
capital settlements of
various sorts. They have very strong powers to require the disclosure of
information on the threat of going to prison. That is very useful
information, but at the moment there is no procedure for it to be
shared with CMEC. It is not in schedule 6, and we think that CMEC
should be able to have access to all the financial information that has
been disclosed to the courts to get a better idea about the real
financial circumstances of the NRP.
Q
110
Mr.
Weir:
Surely the person who is a party to the court
action would have access to that information and could pass it to CMEC,
could they
not?
Janet
Allbeson:
There are prohibitions on that information
being shared and on CMEC making use of it. There are legal restrictions
on it at the
moment.
Q
111
Mr.
Weir:
On the transfer of cases and the new rules,
another point that is often raised is that many people are not happy
because the non-resident parent is on the original system rather than
the new system. We are now going to have a third system running in
tandem. There might be a choice to transfer to that system. However,
will that not increase the feeling of unfairness among many
non-resident parents?
Janet
Allbeson:
The whole business of how to get from where
we are now to the new system is very hard. You are right—who
will want to go on to the new system quickly? Where will the pressure
come from? It will be parents with care who are not getting anything at
the moment who will think that at least they can get £5, so that
is a start. Then there will be NRPs who feel hard done by as they are
on the old scheme and are paying far more than they would pay under
what is currently the new scheme, and they will think that they might
benefit.
What the
Bill actually says in schedule 5 is that where there is a decision to
be made between two parties, and one of them wants to go statutory and
the other voluntary, the one who wants the statutory system will
prevail. That is what it says—I do not know whether that would
help. The pressure would come from the NRP to switch over, and the
issue will be whether the parent with care wants to switch over. It is
a real problem, and I am not sure whether the way the system will
operate has actually been worked out yet.
Q
112
Mr.
Weir:
I understand from the earlier evidence that we have
received that the parent with care would decide whether they wished to
transfer over to the statutory system or not. It strikes me that that
creates a potential for conflict with the non-resident parent,
especially if he is on the original system, and sees the possibility of
saving quite a bit of money by going on to the new statutory
system.
Janet
Allbeson:
I
agree.
Q
113
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
The Bill gives CMEC additional enforcement
powers to those of the CSA. Do you think that they are
necessary?
Janet
Allbeson:
Yes. The Department and the agency have
thought quite hard about their enforcement powers and whether or not
they are effective. The idea of having routine DEOs has been explored
quite a lot already. It is a very good idea and we should just get on
with it. In the United States, they call it “set and
forget.” You provide an easy way of payment right from the
start—everyone does it and why not? If we are looking into
getting money from the bank accounts of self-employed people where you
cannot do a DEO, why not try it and see if it
works?
Q
114
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry:
Do you think that the outcome of the measure
will be better than the resentment it may
cause?
Janet
Allbeson:
Ultimately, getting money from some people
is difficult. Yes, it will cause resentment, but it has to be done
fairly. One has to be able to justify it. Obviously it is important
that the amount claimed has been correctly calculated and can be
justified, but ultimately the bottom line is that the money for
children has got to be paid, so do it. I feel the hordes of lone
parents at my back as I say that, because there is enormous anger about
the fact that so much money is owed to them, and so little has been
done to collect it. Under the CSA, so few cases got to debt
enforcement. Only a tiny proportion of the amount of cases with arrears
ever reached the debt enforcement section.
In a sense, there have always
been a lot of powers. Our big concern is whether there will be the
staff, the resources, the attention and the project management to make
debt collection enforcement work. The agency had a little legal
enforcement at this end, and the processing of applications at that
end, but in the middle there was a hole made up of people in debt and
nothing seemed to happen. That must be a central focus; it is one of
the things that we are very keen to see in the Bill. Debt collection
and enforcement is an integral part of the basic job of CMEC. It is not
an afterthought once we have the calculation—it is central to
what it does.
Q
115
Paul
Rowen (Rochdale) (LD): It is the intention of the Bill
that deduction from earnings orders will be used as a first resort
rather than later on, as happens at the moment, and that that will be
introduced as a pilot. Do you think that that is a good
idea?
Janet
Allbeson:
Yes.
Janet
Allbeson:
No. The CSA is promoting the orders as a
useful way of paying. They are useful because there is even a protected
earnings floor if your earnings drop down. The orders mean that you can
pay and forget about it as the money is paid automatically. For a lot
of people whose money goes up and down, or who might be in and out of
changing jobs—when obviously it would have to be transferred
over—that is a useful way of ensuring that they meet their
obligations. That is what the orders should be sold
as.
Q
117
Paul
Rowen:
There is a get-out clause that means that the
orders will not be used when there is a good reason for not doing so.
In your view, what would constitute a good
reason?
Janet
Allbeson:
I was scratching my head about that. One
suggestion is privacy, and I found myself saying, “Hang on a
second. What is more important? Is it the
fact that this money is for children, or is it the
fact that a person has not told someone that they have a child?”
Ultimately—and this is one of the reasons why we are keen for
the Bill to stress that this is about getting money to
children—the welfare of children comes first and that has to be
the central
focus.
Janet
Allbeson:
I would like to hear a bit more about what
the reasons could possibly
be.
Q
119
Paul
Rowen:
Obviously, in terms of how the Bill will operate,
we are moving from a court-based system to administering the provisions
through liability orders. Given the CSA’s past record, do you
think that CMEC will be able to administer those calculations and get
everything in order so it is an efficient
operation?
Janet
Allbeson:
It will be tough job. A lot of the old,
historical debt is pretty flaky and one of the huge exercises of this
transition, as well as processing the new applications, is that before
a case can be transferred over, the debt will have to be got up to
date. That is a lot of extra work and it is quite a big project. As
long as that is done and the money is
correct—
Q
120
Paul
Rowen:
There are transition arrangements. Do you think
that enough thought has been given to
those?
Janet
Allbeson:
There is a clause in the Bill on that, but
there are no regulations to go on. There is very little information and
it is being left to CMEC, yet that is one of the crucial areas that
will decide whether the new scheme is a success. When the regulations
come, Parliament will not be able to amend them, yet they will
ultimately determine whether or not the new CMEC is a success. That is
a big
worry.
Q
121
Paul
Rowen:
Another new power is that CMEC can disqualify a
person from holding or obtaining a travel authorisation. Do you think
that is a reasonable
power?
Janet
Allbeson:
Yes, at least through having that power in
the back pocket. Ultimately, this is a serious business. It is about
getting maintenance for children who need it and there has to be no
doubt that in the end CMEC will get the money. That is one end of the
spectrum and obviously CMEC must also have a much broader look. We do
not want CMEC just to be seen as a fierce enforcer because that means
that NRPs who are paying but who might miss a payment here or there
will feel badly treated. However, there has to be a final
resort.
Q
122
Paul
Rowen:
Do you think that the organisation has the
organisational capacity to deal with the new powers, again given the
CSA’s past
record?
Janet
Allbeson:
It is in the middle of a three-year
operational improvement programme, and it is at the end of year one.
The other big determinate of whether the new CMEC will work is whether
the platform that is created by 2009 at the end of the operational
improvement plan works. If it does not work, it is dodgy; if it does
work, it is in with a chance.
Q
123
Mr.
Harper:
Let me just pick up on two things. One is a
question about the curfew orders, and whether you think that they will
be effective in practice. The second concerns, as we have just
discussed, the range of enforcement areas. You have said several times
how important it is that parents accept their obligations. If you look
at clause 4, about the promotion of child maintenance, which was a
point that Professor Wikeley made in his memorandum, do you think that
the language in the Bill about the importance of taking responsibility
for maintenance is strong enough? He raised the point that under
Australian legislation, the parental duty to maintain children was a
primary duty, had priority over all other commitments, and was much
stronger. Given what you have said about comfort with tough
enforcement, because of that importance, do you think that clause 4
reflects such importance in the message that it sends to parents about
their responsibility to maintain their
children?
Janet
Allbeson:
It is certainly an interesting view about
the right of children to maintenance as a primary obligation. I can see
that fitting well within a redefinition. It is essentially about
children and about putting children at the centre of the system. To
that extent, that would be good.
Janet
Allbeson:
To be honest, there is a lot in the Bill
about enforcement and that has been one thing that the Department has
majored on. Our view is that the issue in relation to enforcement is
not about the little bit at the end of legal enforcement, but about
what happens earlier along the line. It is about intervening straight
away when a payment is missed. It is about setting up arrears
arrangements. It is about monitoring and stepping in immediately when a
payment is missed. You should not be getting to curfew
orders—except, obviously, for the small percentage who are
determined not to pay. You should be getting arrangements in far
earlier to collect the money. Ultimately, lone parents want the money.
A curfew will not necessarily help that unless the threat of it means
that someone pays up. A lot of things need to be done earlier down the
line. It is better to get your liability order and consider what you
are going to do. Ultimately, there could be a charge on the house; you
go after the money. That is what it is all about,
really.
Q
124
Mr.
Boswell:
You made two points very clear. The first is the
need for credibility in the system and the second is the centrality of
getting support to children. I do not think that anyone here would
dissent from those. Would you agree that the latter duty should also
apply to the parent who has care of the children? Sometimes we get the
canard that the constituent or correspondent says how much they are
paying and, possibly because of the affluence or otherwise of the new
partner of the parent who maintains the child, all that is going on
holidays or other forms of self-indulgence. Would it not be entirely
reasonable, if we want to stiffen the duties, to make it clear that
that is a duty of both parents, irrespective of their status as
resident or otherwise?
Janet
Allbeson:
Child maintenance is about enabling the
child to share the income of the non-resident parent. That is what we
back. There are other models.
In Australia, they have gone down the road of
saying, “This is the cost of a child. Here’s one parent;
here’s the other. Let’s divvy it up.” As for
re-partnering arrangements for a parent with care, the obligation has
to be between the parents themselves. I do not think that we can start
to bring in partners as that becomes far more complicated. The
Australian system started simple and has ended up more complicated, and
has gone down the road of looking at the cost of a child. We are not in
that position by any means. We are still trying to grope towards a
simple, deliverable system. On pragmatic grounds, we favour sticking
with the income of the non-resident parent and recognising that the
child has a share in that. The parent with care by definition supports
the child financially, because they live with
them.
Q
125
Dr.
Turner:
Arrears are often a problem in the present system.
If there were any question of accepting part-payment of arrears as a
full payment or settlement, how would you want the parent with care to
be involved in that
decision?
Janet
Allbeson:
The Department has made it clear that that
would be done only with the consent of the parent with care, if the
debt were owed to her. Obviously, if the debt were owed to the
Secretary of State, that would be different. However, if the debt were
owed to the parent with care, that money would be owed to her for the
children, and she should have some say on whether a deal is done or
whatever. Most lone parents are fairly pragmatic on that; if there is
some chance of getting some money, they will do it. It is surprising
that that is not on the face of the Bill. We think that it should be,
because it is pretty fundamental that the parent with care should be
consulted about money owed to her.
Q
126
Dr.
Turner:
Do you have any views on the amount of debt that
should be written off? Should it be written off only if it is
in practice completely
irrecoverable?
Janet
Allbeson:
So far, the Department has taken quite a
cautious view about what it is writing off. It is writing off debts
where the parent concerned has died and interim maintenance
assessments. It is saying that the new powers that it is giving itself
in the Bill will give it a chance to see whether it can claw back more
than it has already. That is great. We think that by the time CMEC
takes over—well, by the end of the operational improvement
programme in 2009—it should be looking to make some final
decisions. It should be in a realistic position to decide how much of
the debt is recoverable and how much is not. At that point, it may need
to face up to the fact that some of it is not. Then the issue is to
notify the parent with care about that and, if it is partly responsible
for the fact that the debt is not collectible, invite her to claim
compensation from it.
Q
127
Dr.
Turner:
A lot of people would like to see the CSA pursued
for maladministration in respect of outstanding debts. Would you like
to see that? Clearly, one hopes that CMEC will not get into that
position.
Janet
Allbeson:
It is open to parents to bring a complaint
for maladministration, as you must know. The issue at the moment is
that a lot of people simply do not understand the whole
procedure—they are not
alerted to it. If the debt is going to be written off, there should at
least be some mechanism for alerting the parent with care that in quite
a lot of cases it can be the agency’s fault that debt is
irrecoverable—because, for example, it has delayed taking action
for years and years and the debt is now more than six years old. It
knows that it cannot collect about £760 million using civil law
because it is out of time. A lot of debt is still there. People need to
be alerted to that much more, and invited to make a claim when
appropriate.
Q
128
Mr.
Weir:
The Bill gives the Government the right to factor
out historic debt to private debt collectors. What is your view on
that? Should they have that power? Should they do that?
Janet
Allbeson:
I heard Lord McKenzie this morning; he said
that they did not really see themselves using that very much. You made
points about vulnerable families. It seems hard to envisage it being
appropriate to sell off these sorts of debts. I suppose that I do not
know enough about factoring debt and how it works in practice. I do not
know.
Q
129
Andrew
Selous:
May I take you right back to some of the comments
that you made at the very start of your remarks about the key thing
being delivery, the basic project management? Your experience is now
quite long. You were an adviser to the Select Committee in the previous
Parliament and you have surveyed what has occurred during the past 10
years. What are the keys factors in ensuring that basic, day-to-day
delivery happens? Further to that, what do we as MPs need to do by way
of parliamentary scrutiny of the new body when it comes into existence
to ensure that delivery really happens?
Janet
Allbeson:
The mechanisms for Parliament to do that
are obviously quite restricted, because the relevant functions are
outside of your scope for scrutiny. I suppose that a Select Committee
could usefully call back the officials in a year’s time and in
two years’ time—particularly to grill them on, for
instance, the contract with EDS, the IT contractor, which I think
expires at the end of August 2010. It would be useful to know what is
going to happen to
that system. Will it just be renewed? There might be some pragmatic
reasons to renew it, but the Committee did a thorough and interesting
report on IT and the CSA and the National Audit Office did quite a lot
of work on that subject as
well.
It is a question
of learning all the lessons from that and ensuring that a forum is
found in which to grill the relevant Ministers and officials about it.
The appointment of the CMEC board is another important matter. The job
of chairman has just been advertised at the rate of £100,000 for
two days a week—I do not know if you saw that. That is quite a
lot of money; the job is a big one. Who is going to do it? It would be
interesting to interview the person appointed, and see what they are up
to and what they are going to do.
Q
130
Andrew
Selous:
Finally, do you have concerns about CMEC being
more arm’s length and about it being a non-departmental public
body rather than an executive agency? Does that worry you in any
way?
Janet
Allbeson:
It is quite hard to see why it is
necessary. It will cost a lot, and it will take a lot of time and
resources to set up. It might be necessary to create a new image and a
new brand. In a way, I think that Ministers are quite keen to put it at
arm’s length from them. That might be problematic, because I
think that it was John Hutton who came in and said, “The agency
is not working, I am going to scrap it.” It was not a case of
the CSA saying, “We want to be scrapped.” In some ways
Ministers have quite a valuable role in interfering more and in saying,
“This isn’t working; we know that, and you have got to
change things.” A sort of institutional momentum can build up
that requires oversight from a body such as Parliament. A lot of MPs
know a great deal about the CSA by virtue of their own
postbags.
The
Chairman:
If there are no further questions, that brings
us to the end of our sitting. It remains only for me on behalf of the
Committee to thank you very much indeed for attending. You have given
the Committee some very valuable insights which will be useful in
future deliberations on the Bill.
Further
consideration adjourned.—[Mr. Wayne
David.]
Adjourned
accordingly at one minute to Seven o’clock till Thursday 19 July
at ten minutes past Nine
o’clock.
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