 House of Commons |
Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Child Maintenance and Other Payments |
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Chris
Shaw, Committee
Clerk
†
attended the Committee
Public Bill CommitteeTu esday 24 July 2007(Afternoon)[David Taylor in the Chair]Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill4
pm
The
Chairman:
I welcome hon. Members to the sixth sitting of
this public Bill. I am grateful to my co-Chair, Mr.
Christopher Chope, for taking the first five sittings. I expect to take
the remainder of the sittings, bar one, overlapping into the autumn
period.
Clause 9Annual
report to Secretary of
State
Amendment
moved [this day]: No. 10, clause 9, page 4, line 32,
after ‘on’, insert ‘section 7(1)
and’.—[
Andrew
Selous.
]
Question
again proposed, That the amendment be
made.
No. 11,
in
clause 9, page 4, line 32, at
end insert
‘; and, in respect of
each authorisation under section 8(1), details of the body to whom the
functions of the Commission have been delegated and their performance
in contributing to the Commission’s
objectives.’.
No.
9, in
clause 9, page 4, line 32, at
end insert—
‘(e) the number
of children who live apart from one or both of their parents who are
eligible for child maintenance under the Child Support Act
1991;
(f) the proportion of
those children for whom child maintenance has been paid in the previous
year;
(g) the type of
arrangement—whether voluntary or under the statutory
scheme;
(h) where child
maintenance has been paid, details of the amount; the frequency of
payment; whether paid in full or in part; and whether paid on
time.’.
No.
69, in
clause 9, page 4, line 32, at
end insert—
‘(e) the extent
to which the Commission has made progress regarding the collection and
payment of
arrears.’.
No.
82, in
clause 9, page 4, line 32, at
end insert—
‘(d) details of
any complaints received and how these complaints were
handled.’.
No.
13, in
clause 9, page 4, line 39, at
end insert
‘and must
make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to each such
report.’.
Just before
the break, I was talking about amendments Nos. 10 and 11 and I shall
continue. The Minister said, when we were talking about contracting
out, that it was
highly likely that other Departments may be involved in dealing with
some of the work. I took it from that that he was talking about Her
Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, particularly in respect of some
of the assessments and collecting the money. If HMRC is to be involved
in that process, and if other private agencies are to be involved in
collecting debt or third sector bodies in providing information, it is
important that information about how they are progressing and dealing
with the case forms part of the annual
report.
As I said
previously, we have so little information in the Bill—we do not
even have draft regulations in front of us—and we do not know
how different the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission’s
ways of working will be from those of the Child Support Agency. It is
therefore important that what the annual report will deliver is written
down and agreed early on. It is of major importance to the House and
the public that the new agency gets off on the right foot, sets itself
clear objectives and is held accountable to the House for the progress
that is being
made.
Amendment No.
9, which we support, seeks more detail about the numbers of children
that will be dealt with—the numbers receiving
payments—and the type of arrangements. Because we are talking
about a shift and a move back to more private arrangements, I should
think that the Select Committee on Work and Pensions would want to
scrutinise the operation of the new systems. Again, we would support
that.
Amendment No.
69, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for
Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, reiterates that we will not
let the issue of historic debt go away. As we heard in the evidence
presented by One Parent Families last week, the information about the
current historic debt is extremely flaky. It is important that, in the
interim, before CMEC is set up, we ensure that that information is
firmed up. As I said last week, there is more than £1 billion of
historic arrears, but the current targets for the CSA only deal with
£213 million. We need some clear assurances and clear
information about what is happening to that old, historic debt. That
needs to be dealt with and we need to know how it is to be
done.
I was
disappointed with the Minister’s response to me
that,
“the debt has
arisen because of the lack of co-operation of non-resident parents, who
simply have not faced up to their responsibility....That is
ultimately where the fault of the situation
lies.”——[Official Report, Child Maintenance and
Other Payments Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2007; c.
116.]
I ask the Minister to go
back, pre-CSA, and look at why the CSA was brought into being. I am
sure that the hon. Member for Daventry is in a better position than me
to comment on that. Nevertheless, the CSA was brought into being
because the court system, as it then existed, was not working for the
same reason that the Minister now gives for the CSA not working, and it
is important that we understand and accept that point when we consider
the arrangements for the operation of CMEC.
In my experience as a teacher,
one accepted that certain children were always going to be naughty. One
was not surprised if they were, but one planned one’s lessons to
ensure that they did not disrupt what was happening. When dealing with
non-resident, non-paying parents, we must accept and understand that
many will try every trick in the book to avoid paying. The systems that
we set up must be robust enough to ensure that they cannot do
so.
I welcome the
Bill’s greater teeth and tougher powers. It will enable CMEC to
get stuck in, which is fine with the new arrangements. I said last week
that we do not want the agency to use this clean break as an excuse to
wash its hands of that difficult debt, which has sat there for years
and not been addressed. We want to ensure that Parliament holds the new
body to account, because as I said last week, the Government made a
different decision from that in the Henshaw report. Henshaw’s
recommendation was not that the historic debt should move over to CMEC,
but that it should sit elsewhere. The Government have not taken that
decision; they have said that the historic debt will go with the new
body.
Mr.
Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): I am grateful to the hon.
Gentleman for giving way, particularly as he gave me a slightly
back-handed compliment a while ago. He is making an entirely sensible
set of remarks. Does not he remember that, even in those days of
intervening revolutions, with Boxer bonds or Chinese sovereign debt,
countries that wished to re-borrow on the world market had to be seen
to make some effort before they could restore their credibility?
Although one is business, or possibly politics, and the other is
domestic, is that not a principle worth
sustaining?
Paul
Rowen:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that
comment. Yes, of course, that principle is worth sustaining; it is
hugely important to the credibility of the new organisation. We have
lost a generation of children who have not received the child
maintenance, and therefore the start in life, to which they were
entitled. There are still people who look to Parliament and to the
Government to restore their confidence and ensure that the money that
they are owed is paid. That must be the new agency’s overriding
target. It must address that issue, and I hope that the Minister will
deal with that point. The Bill is all very well and good, but it
contains warm words and it is not specific. The amendments are an
attempt to be specific.
Amendment No. 82 deals with
the details of complaints. Many Members will say that the way in which
complaints are dealt with is absolutely disgraceful. I have not been in
this place as long as many other Members, but when somebody gets a
£25—I hesitate to say—book token or whatever as a
fob-off for a significant period of considerable emotional distress, I
find that it is an insult to people’s intelligence. At the end
of a long process, during which they have had to fight for every penny
and make the CSA admit that the mistake lies with how it has handled
the case, not with the case itself, that is an insult.
I hope that the new agency has
a much better way of handling complaints, and that it will pay
compensation. We had a debate about these matters earlier in the
Committee; the fact that people are not prepared to admit that they are
liable is not acceptable. We want to see in place a really strong
system that will handle complaints and ensure that redress is dealt
with and delivered speedily, and not with the insult that occurs at
present. We want to see some of the
complaints listed in the annual report and a general picture of what has
happened, and we will need to know how complaints were dealt
with.
We would also
support amendment No. 13, which is about ensuring that the House has an
opportunity to debate the report. It ought to be automatic that CMEC,
at least in its early stages, reports to the House annually to
demonstrate why it is a fresh start, and how it is dealing with some of
the historic
problems.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
(Mr. James Plaskitt):
It is a pleasure to have
you chair our proceedings, Mr. Taylor.
All but one of the
amendments would require the commission to report on additional matters
in the annual report. However, the clause contains a wide-ranging
provision that requires the commission to report on all the activities
it has undertaken in the preceding financial year. Such provisions are
entirely standard in the founding legislation for non-departmental
public bodies; almost identical clauses can be found in respect of the
Environment Agency, the Pensions Regulator and the Advisory,
Conciliation and Arbitration Service. The clause goes further, however,
than the standard for non-departmental public bodies because it
highlights in addition four particular areas on which the commission
must focus in its annual report.
Incidentally, following our
debate last week, there might be some confusion about where the
specifics of the annual report will be detailed. To clarify, the
specifics of the annual report will be in clause 9, and not, as I said
last week, in
regulations.
The four
specific areas on which the commission will focus are: first, the
strategic direction of the commission and how that is kept under
review; secondly, the steps it takes to meet its objectives and targets
and the extent to which they have been met; thirdly, how the commission
has monitored its performance in respect of carrying out its functions
effectively and efficiently; and fourthly, the commission will report
on the extent to which it has considered the contracting out of any of
its functions. Substantially more weight is therefore placed on the
annual report than would normally be the case, which underlines the
importance that we will place on the annual
report.
In this
morning’s sitting, the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire
asked whether we expect quarterly performance reports to continue. The
answer is that I do.
Danny
Alexander (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
(LD): Will the Minister comment on the extent to which he
expects CMEC to publish its annual reports in a timely way? A written
statement today states that publication of the CSA’s annual
report, which would, according to normal practice, occur before the
recess, has been delayed until after. I hope that the Minister would
not wish to see CMEC get into such
practices.
Mr.
Plaskitt:
I do not see that as some sort of precedent and
I expect the annual report to come out on a regular basis.
On amendments Nos. 9 and 69, we
believe that clause 9 already places sufficiently comprehensive
reporting requirements on the commission. Of particular importance is
the requirement to report against its objectives and targets.
As we all know, the
commission’s main objective is to maximise the number of
effective maintenance arrangements. In order to report against that,
the commission will need to establish a range of measures similar to
those proposed by amendment No. 9. The measures will be drawn from
studies and surveys such as the family resources survey and the family
and children study. We do not want to define the measures in the Bill
because, among other things, we would be concerned that the measures
may not be available in the exact form stipulated by
legislation.
Amendment
No. 69 would specifically require the commission’s annual report
to cover its progress in collecting arrears. Again, the commission will
be required to report against its objectives, so that is already
covered. As hon. Members know, one of the objectives is to secure
compliance with parental obligations—in other words, to get
parents to pay all, and I stress all, that is owing, which includes
debt. The commission must report on its progress on debt
collections.
4.15
pm
The hon.
Member for Rochdale wanted me to acknowledge the continued importance
that we place on collecting debt. It is one reason why we did not
pursue Sir David’s recommendation, but the responsibility
carries on. Far from being downgraded or overlooked, it is as important
as it ever was. The historic debt built up for a variety of reasons,
only one of which is, unfortunately, the persistent non-compliance of a
large number of non-resident parents. In introducing the commission and
setting out its operational framework, we have to learn lessons from
the Child Support Agency.
We know that some of the debt
arose because of the extraordinary complexity of the calculations that
had to be made to come up with the maintenance assessments in the first
place. In turn, that led to a lot of interim maintenance assessments
that were rather wide of the mark, which added to the problems. We are
learning as we go, and we have certainly learnt from the CSA experience
what should not be repeated in the operation of the commission.
However, that is not to downgrade the importance of continuing to
pursue the debt. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have recently given
the existing agency additional measures to go after some of that long
outstanding debt, and early indications are that they are proving quite
successful.
Andrew
Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con): I would like the
Minister to say something about a matter that arose in an earlier
sitting: how debt is treated after six years. I think there is a legal
change, which worries me greatly, as I have in the past told my
constituents not to worry because their ex-husband or partner has a
lifetime liability to pay the money to their
children, even if he is still doing so when he approaches retirement. I
hope I was honest and accurate in saying
that.
Mr.
Plaskitt:
I think that the hon. Gentleman has given sound
advice to his constituents. My recollection is that in recent cases the
agency has been successful in collecting debt that is more than six
years old, deploying some of the new methods that we have given to
it.
Amendment No. 82
would insert the requirement to report the details of any complaints
received and how they are dealt with. The reasons behind the amendment
are completely understandable, but the clause as drafted requires that
the commission reports the steps taken to monitor its performance in
ensuring that all its functions are exercised effectively and
efficiently.
Customer service including
complaints handling is an important function of any public body and it
is our full intention that the commission will report on the standards
achieved against any complaints targets within the annual report, much
as the Child Support Agency does, without the need for it to be
specified in legislation.
The independent case examiner
will also continue to produce an annual report on complaints received
about child support, with any recommendations taken fully into
consideration by the commission. In addition, the commission is
required under schedule 7 to report on the standards achieved in
decisions relating to child support
appeals.
Amendment
No. 10 would require the commission to report on the extent to which it
has relied on the provision for agency arrangements in clause 7(1).
That would bring it into parallel with clause 8(1)—the provision
for contracting out. We have included the specific requirement to
report in clause 8(1) because of the emphasis that Sir David Henshaw
placed on contracting out in his report. We therefore thought it
sensible to include an explicit provision covering the extent to which
the commission contracts out its
services.
Clause 7(1)
provides for the commission to enter into arrangements with other
public bodies and Departments. That is not exceptional; the provision
is used, for example, by the Welsh Assembly to allow a variety of joint
working across Government. It will also allow for a continuation of the
existing arrangements with Northern Ireland, to which I referred
earlier. There was no case for making explicit provision for reporting
on it. However, it is likely that the commission would report on any
such arrangements in reporting on its activities in the previous
financial
year.
Andrew
Selous:
I asked the Minister whether he could give the
Committee an idea of who those relevant authorities would be. I should
like to see the widest possible co-operation with CMEC across
Government, but I am still a little hazy as to which organisations we
are talking
about.
Mr.
Plaskitt:
A relevant authority in this clause would be any
Minister of the Crown or Government Department, or any public body
specified in the regulations.
Amendment No. 11 would force
the commission to give details of the bodies to whom the functions of
the commission have been delegated and their performance in
contributing to the commission’s objectives. To do so in line
with the amendment could cause problems. It would be very difficult to
report on the performance of any third party against the
commission’s objectives. There is no single function carried out
in isolation that can achieve the objectives, so it would be impossible
to measure the impact of any one organisation on the
commission’s
objectives.
The
commission may include similar details in fulfilling the existing
requirements to report on all its business activities and the extent to
which they were contracted out. Clearly, if a large number of functions
were contracted to a single organisation, it would be possible to
comment on the contribution made by that organisation as part of the
overall reporting
process.
Mr.
Boswell:
Will the Minister comment on a hypothetical
circumstance where the performance of the organisation to which the
work was contracted out changed? It might start very well and then
deteriorate for reasons for which it may not be entirely blameworthy.
If that were to happen, it would seem entirely reasonable for the
commission to draw the public’s attention to
it.
Mr.
Plaskitt:
The commission may want to do so. More
importantly, I hope that it would take action to
correct the problem. We will ensure that contracts
are sufficiently tightly and rigorously drawn. The commission has the
right to step quickly into a situation like that and arrest the
problem. That is the most important thing to achieve in those
circumstances.
That
brings me lastly to amendment to No. 13, which would place an
additional statutory requirement for the annual report to be debated
once laid in Parliament. Of course, we want to ensure that there is
proper parliamentary scrutiny. However, we find it difficult to
understand what the amendment would add; it would certainly be very
unusual for a non-departmental public body’s annual report to be
debated in Parliament as a matter of course. I think there will
continue to be such interest in how CMEC performs right across the
House that we can guarantee that it will remain under very close
parliamentary scrutiny. That will quite conceivably be on the Floor of
the House, certainly in Adjournment debates and most certainly by the
work of the Select Committee. There will be such interest that there
will be no requirement to force a debate as it will come about anyway.
To accept the amendment would take the commission right out of line
with any other non-departmental public body for which there is not the
requirement to hold a compulsory debate. There is also the slight
problem that if it happens just once, hon. Members may find their
applications for debates refused because they will be referred to the
annual debate. Parliament may want to debate that more than once a
year.
Andrew
Selous:
I am disappointed that the Minister does not like
amendment No. 13. Will he give the Committee some assurance that
Department for Work and Pensions Ministers will make a regular path to
the door of the Leader of the House to keep this subject
well to the fore so that it is debated in the Chamber? There was a CSA
debate in Westminster Hall this morning. That is all well and good, but
it rather made by point. I want to see these matters debated in the
Chamber so that everyone can take
part.
Mr.
Plaskitt:
I shall repeat what I said before: I do not
think that I or any Minister will have to force the pace. There is
already a quite sufficient body of interest and concern among hon.
Members on behalf of their constituents, and the whole matter will be
kept under close scrutiny anyway at Question Time and through any other
avenue of debate and means open through the usual channels. I do not
think that there will be any shortage of parliamentary scrutiny of the
process, and I welcome the fact that there will be such detailed
scrutiny, which is right and proper.
Mr.
Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con): The particular
significance of my hon. Friend’s point is that, while we hope
that things will go well, they may not, and a debate on a motion on the
Floor of the House of Commons has the advantage of providing an
opportunity for Members to vote on the motion and express a view on the
performance of the agency. Other forms of debate—in Westminster
Hall, for example, on a motion for the Adjournment—do not,
except in extreme situations of adjourning the House, afford hon.
Members that opportunity.
Mr.
Plaskitt:
I do not think that I would devalue those other
means as the hon. Gentleman suggests. They are extremely important, and
I know that I and all my ministerial colleagues in the Department take
very seriously any form of accountability, whether we are made
accountable in Select Committees, Adjournment debates or elsewhere. The
hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire has not managed to persuade me
that there is a need for the provision. It is not that I do not like
it, as he puts it. I just think that it is not necessary to bring about
the parliamentary scrutiny that he and I want. I hope that the
amendment will not be pressed to a vote.
Paul
Rowen:
I am grateful for what the Minister has said. In
view of most of his comments, we are happy to withdraw the amendment.
We would, however, like to press amendment No. 82, which deals with
complaints and complaint handling, to a
vote.
Andrew
Selous:
I want to move amendment No. 9 formally, but am I
able to reply to the debate, Mr.
Taylor?
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Amendment
proposed: No. 9, in clause 9, page 4, line 32,
at end insert—
‘(e) the
number of children who live apart from one or both of their parents who
are eligible for child maintenance under the Child Support Act
1991;
(f) the proportion of those children for whom child
maintenance has been paid in the previous
year;
(g) the type of
arrangement—whether voluntary or under the statutory
scheme;
(h) where child
maintenance has been paid, details of the amount; the frequency of
payment; whether paid in full or in part; and whether paid on
time.’.—[Andrew
Selous.]
Question
put, That the amendment be
made:—
The
Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes
10.
Division
No.
7
]
AYESNOES
Question
accordingly negatived.
Amendment proposed: No.
12, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at
end insert—
‘(e) information
concerning the historic debt to be collected by the Commission,
including—
(i) the total
amount of historic debt;
(ii)
the numbers of individual
debtors;
(iii) the amounts of
debt owed, broken down by
bands;
(iv) the steps taken to
recover that debt, including the budget and staffing resources devoted
to this activity; and
(v) the
amount of debt considered uncollectable, broken down by the reasons
why.’.—[Andrew
Selous.]
Question
put, That the amendment be made:—
The Committee divided:
Ayes 9, Noes
11.
Division
No.
8
]
AYESNOES
Question
accordingly negatived.
Amendment proposed: No.
82, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at
end insert—
‘(d) details of
any complaints received and how these complaints were
handled.’.—[Danny Alexander.]
Question put, That the
amendment be made:—
The Committee divided:
Ayes 9, Noes
11.
Division
No.
9
]
AYESNOES
Question
accordingly negatived.
Question proposed, That
the clause stand part of the
Bill.
4.30
pm
Andrew
Selous:
I must have misread the way in which the debate
was going, because I thought that I would have the opportunity to
respond to the earlier debate, given that amendment No. 10 was the lead
amendment.
As we are
now having a stand part debate, I want to refer to a number of points
raised by the Minister in his summing up. I am grateful for the
assurance that quarterly performance statistics will be provided. That
is essential because such statistics provide important and detailed
data on the performance of the CSA at the moment, and CMEC in the
future.
I also felt
reassured when the Minister said that debt that was more than six years
old would remain a debt or a liability, and could be pursued on behalf
of parents with care from non-resident parents. However, I was
disappointed that the Minister did not agree to amendment No. 9. I
believe that clause 9(3)(a) to (d), which we are putting into law, is
much too high-level and much too broad-brush. It does not reach down to
the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day operation of the CSA. I am
particularly disappointed, because we are setting up a non-departmental
public body, which, as the Minister said at the start of our third
sitting, is deliberately going to be at arm’s length from the
Department. I wonder whether this is our last chance as
parliamentarians to have an influence on exactly what CMEC will and
will not put into the public
domain.
I was also
extremely concerned by the Minister’s response, when he said
that the information required by the amendments “may not be
available”—I think that those were his exact words.
Amendment No. 9, on which we just voted, contains fairly basic,
straightforward
stuff:
“the number of
children who are ... eligible for child
maintenance”;
“the
proportion of those children for whom child maintenance has been
paid”;
“the type
of arrangement—whether voluntary or under the statutory
scheme”;
and,
“where
child maintenance has been paid, details of the amount; the
frequency”.
Frankly, if
that sort of information may not be available, my concerns over the
adequacy of the computer system are escalating rather than
decreasing.
We have
tabled a new clause on the computer systems, which we will debate
towards the end of our time in Committee. Given the litany of failures
on computer matters within the CSA, and, indeed, across Government,
which goes back some time, the Minister’s remark worries me very
much. I am grateful, Mr. Taylor, for the opportunity to make
those brief further remarks on clause
9.
Mr.
Plaskitt:
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is at least
reassured on some of my early points. We now return to the nub of his
disagreement with clause 9. His argument is, in essence, that it is too
broadly drawn; it is too “broad-brush”, as he put it. I
say to him again that the clause goes much further in specifying what
we want the annual report to cover than is the case for reports
published by any other non-departmental public body. I hope that it
will reassure him that with the stipulation in clause 9 and the
overriding objectives set for the commission in earlier clauses, the
annual report is quite a testing requirement and will oblige the
commission to report in
detail.
The
commission will not be able to satisfy the requirements under the four
additional specifications, unless it provides a fair amount of detail.
I discourage him from putting the detailed requirements in the Bill, as
he has attempted to do, because we have already gone much further.
Taking the four additional requirements against the general requirement
and the objectives that have been set down, I am confident that the
annual report will be a thorough document, giving us a very good
reading of how the commission is performing. I also believe that
perfectly adequate requirements are in place for further parliamentary
scrutiny of the annual report and further opportunities to ask
additional questions of the commission and Ministers. I hope,
therefore, that the clause will be accepted to stand part of the
Bill.
Question put
and agreed
to.
Clause 9
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
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