You are here: Parliament home page > Parliamentary business > Publications and Records > Lords Publications > Lords Hansard > Lords Hansard Previous Sessions
Previous Section Back to Table of Contents Lords Hansard Home Page

There has been a lot of imaginative constitutional talk in this debate. Could we ever conceive of a situation in which a Secretary of State of the United Kingdom Government would take a certain view about a potential referendum in Wales without there having been full consultation, even before the Assembly adopted a resolution requesting a debate? Surely we will not have a political party in power in the United Kingdom Government that is not represented in the National Assembly. Unless some English nationalist party appears, I cannot imagine such a thing; some would argue that we have one already on the Benches opposite, but I shall not go into that contentious area.

This is a constitutional convention. Any resistance by a Secretary of State would be more likely to bring about the demise of the great historic office held with such distinction by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and others in this House. The Secretary of State is a constitutional invention in terms of the Bill. We are in the conventions of the quasi-federalism that we are struggling towards within the United Kingdom, on which I agree with my noble friend Lord Livsey. Therefore, I welcome the Bill and the Motion.

I join in the congratulations to officials, who are mainly officials of the National Assembly—or the Welsh Assembly Government, as we will have to learn to say—and the Wales Office. They have served us well in drafting the legislation. I am especially grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, for his kind expression of good wishes for the future of the Assembly and for what it may or may not do. In fairness, I am sure that his party has played a great role in the development of the Assembly. We have had consensus about important areas, especially the separation of powers which are not covered by the amendments, so I shall not go into them. To me as Presiding Officer through a difficult period in the first two Assemblies, the separation between the Executive and legislature is the clearest signal that what we have here is proper parliamentary democracy.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to the three noble Lords who have spoken. Once again I marvel at the ability of all Members of the House to be able to translate relatively minor amendments into significant constitutional principles. As the noble Lord indicated, that has kept us on our feet for seven days during the passage of the Bill. I had hoped for a little rest on the seventh day, but we do not seem to be getting any due to the scrutiny of Members on the other side of the House.

This is a fairly minor amendment. It is about laying the order within 120 days. I emphasise that it does not make any material difference. If the United Kingdom Government of the day did not support the order passed by the Assembly with a two-thirds majority, they would be into high politics. If we passed this amendment, a Government would find other processes to thwart a referendum called, because they

24 July 2006 : Column 1578

would clearly be taking a position of substantial opposition to the declared will of the majority of the people of Wales.

The Bill as drafted tries to take the point into account by quite properly forcing the Secretary of State, who is answerable to the United Kingdom Parliament, to face up to the demand for a referendum. In the unlikely event of a Secretary of State refusing to lay the referendum order, he would have to explain his reasons for doing so and would be publicly accountable for those reasons. That would be the basis of the political decision-taking that would result from such a crisis—because it would be a crisis. In such circumstances, this amendment would be immaterial to the decisions of Government.

I am grateful for noble Lords’ constructive work on the Bill. We have laboured long and hard in the vineyard and it is good to see the results. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, who said that the Bill had its merits—although in a rather minor key. He did, however, express a broad commitment to the development of devolution, which we welcome in the main opposition party. He has had rather more enthusiastic support from some of his Back Benches, and we have noted that, too. That augurs well for further progress.

I also recognise that the Liberal Democrat Party is committed to devolution and regrets that the Bill does not go far enough. However, the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, with his responsible role as Presiding Officer of the Assembly, accurately expressed the position—namely, that the Bill opens up the process of enhanced powers for the National Assembly, of which it can avail itself through judicious consideration of Orders in Council.

The Bill marks a significant step in the eventual transition of the National Assembly from its present role to that of a much more enhanced Assembly with fuller devolution powers. The Bill deserves support in those terms. It certainly does not deserve to be frustrated by this rather minor amendment at this stage. I therefore hope that the House will support the government Motion.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Child Support

5.27 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend in another place on the Government’s plans for reform of the child support system.

“Mr Speaker, parents, whether they live together or not, have a moral as well as legal responsibility to support their children. Relationships end; responsibilities do not. Government and society have a clear interest in making sure these responsibilities are honoured. That was the foundation on which the Child Support Act 1991

24 July 2006 : Column 1579

rested. I believe that these are the right foundations on which to build any future system of child support.“However, as we know, and despite the best efforts of its staff, the overall performance of the CSA has fallen well short of expectations. When we came to office, the agency cost more to run than it collected in maintenance, and it has been taking longer to process claims than the court arrangements it replaced. The 2000 Act made important changes: simplifying maintenance calculations and allowing parents with care on benefit to keep up to £10 of any maintenance received. Since 1997, the agency has nearly doubled the number of cases receiving maintenance payments.“However, problems have persisted. Only a minority of cases handled by the CSA receive any maintenance. There is a backlog of around 300,000 cases. Debts of over £3 billion have built up, with limited prospects of recovery. There is a net cost to the taxpayer of around £200 million per year. And levels of customer service, although they have improved recently, have never reached the standards of quality and consistency that the public are entitled to expect.“The need for radical overhaul is clear. I do not, however, believe the continuing problems are a failing of the staff of the agency, but rather the policy framework and the system they are being asked to run. That is why, in February, I asked Sir David Henshaw to redesign our system of child support. He has now presented his recommendations to me. Copies are available in the Vote Office and on my department's website, together with the Government's response. “Sir David has recommended an entirely new system for child support, which will be simpler to use and administer, tougher on parents who do not face up to their responsibilities, and make a bigger impact on reducing child poverty while delivering value for money for the taxpayer. There are four main elements to his recommendations. First, he believes that the system should focus on tackling child poverty by ensuring that parents with care keep more of the maintenance owed to them. Sir David recommends that lone parents on benefit should be allowed to keep more maintenance by significantly increasing the extent to which child maintenance is disregarded in income-related benefits.“Secondly, Sir David believes that a new system should promote greater personal responsibility by ensuring that, wherever possible, we should help parents come to their own financial arrangements for the maintenance of their children. This means reconfiguring advice services to improve the quality and accessibility of information and guidance for parents. Sir David also believes that the Government should remove the requirement that parents with care on benefits make an application for child maintenance through the CSA, even when there is a perfectly satisfactory private arrangement already in place. As a first step to getting maintenance flowing to children, Sir David recommends that,

24 July 2006 : Column 1580

with up to a fifth of potential child support cases not having their father's name on their birth certificate, we should consider the joint registration of births. “Where parents cannot come to an amicable agreement, parents with care need to have confidence that the enforcement arrangements will be effective. So the third element of Sir David's recommendations is to introduce new, tougher enforcement powers, including the withdrawal of passports, and exploring the potential to make better use of existing financial penalties. “Fourthly, Sir David has proposed that there should be a clean break with the past. He believes that the delivery of child support requires a fresh start with a new organisation. Sir David believes that there should be no automatic conversion of cases from the two existing schemes to the new redesigned system. Instead, parents wishing to use the new system will be able to reapply. He recommends that there should be a separate residuary body to manage down and enforce old debt and that we should consider how best to give the new organisation the power to charge clients for using the new system.“Sir David has consulted widely in producing these recommendations and I am grateful to him for his work and to all those who have contributed to it. As Sir David's report shows, tougher enforcement and a substantially higher disregard could increase the number of children receiving maintenance to 1.75 million, compared with just 1.1 million today. This will also lift many more children out of poverty. A smaller, more focused agency that deals with significantly fewer cases will deliver better value for the taxpayer with administrative costs substantially lower over the long run.“Although there is still a great deal of detail to be worked through, I think it is right that the Government should signal their view of the way ahead. We have decided to accept these principal recommendations. We will bring forward legislation at the earliest opportunity to remove the requirement that all parents with care claiming benefit are treated as applying for child maintenance.“We agree with Sir David's recommendation that there should be a higher disregard. But this must ensure a fair deal for taxpayers and avoid sending any signal that families might be better off apart than together. So we intend to significantly increase the level of the current disregard of £10. Details will be confirmed later this year. Both of these changes will help more families to receive more maintenance and reduce the risk of child poverty. They fully reflect both the rights of children to be properly maintained by their parents and the right of society to ensure that parental responsibilities are properly discharged.“We also agree that the delivery of child support requires a fresh start. We will therefore create a new organisation to replace the CSA and we will strengthen enforcement powers. But we will go further. We intend to seek legislation to strengthen the powers available to the agency to recover maintenance from

24 July 2006 : Column 1581

those who repeatedly fail to pay, including through the imposition of curfews as well as the suspension of passports. We will explore publicising successful prosecutions including the feasibility of naming those so prosecuted. And we will continue the CSA's current operational improvement plan, which is already improving our capacity to trace people who owe maintenance and which should see the Child Support Agency collecting a further £250 million in unpaid maintenance.“There is a great deal of detail in Sir David's report that should now properly be the subject of fuller consultation and debate. In particular, we want to consult on: the best way to allow existing claimants to either move to private arrangements or make a claim to the new system—we must ensure that where people currently receive maintenance through the CSA they continue to do so, if they wish to, under the new system without disrupting the payment of child maintenance; how best to deal with the legacy of debt that is left, protecting both the interests of families and the taxpayer; the appropriate role for the courts in this new approach; how we can improve parental responsibility from birth, including the possibility of compulsory registration for fathers; how we can further simplify and improve the current assessment, collection and enforcement processes; and the details of a new charging regime.“In advance of legislation, I intend to publish a White Paper later this year that will set out in greater detail the way forward in all of these areas. In the mean time, I have asked Sir David to report to me on the policy and implementation issues that arise from his first report. “During this process of change the staff of the agency are entitled to expect the full support of my department. They will have it. In particular, we will do all that we can to help and support staff through the transition to the new organisation and in their efforts to ensure that children and families receive the maintenance to which they are entitled.“The original proposals for child support had a wide and broad measure of support. But this consensus over aims was never translated into a consensus over means. We must not repeat the same mistake. That is why I want the new arrangements that must now be established to command the broadest possible measure of agreement. “There is a clear sense, both in this House and outside, that our system of child support needs radical change. It must offer better value for money for the taxpayer. It should enforce the rights of children and the responsibilities of parents more successfully. It must ensure that families and children in particular do not slide into poverty when parents split up. “I believe that the proposals I have set out today can help us better to achieve these vitally important objectives and that is why I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.



24 July 2006 : Column 1582
5.37 pm

Baroness Morris of Bolton: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement made by his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the other place.

I could not agree more with the sentiment that parents, regardless of whether they live together, have a moral as well as a legal responsibility to support their children. We can also agree that no one is happy with the chaotic way in which the CSA has performed the task of getting money from absent parents to the parent with care. Chaotic it is: 267,000 new cases and 66,000 old cases are still waiting to be sorted out and 25 per cent of the cases received since March 2003 are waiting for clearance. Clearance itself takes a ridiculous three weeks to achieve and, when that is over, as the recent National Audit Office report showed, half of those are wrong. It is no wonder that it costs the agency 70p for every £1 that it collects and that there is an estimated £3.5 billion of outstanding maintenance to be collected. It is this fact that is the real scandal and where every effort should be directed. Yet, for the 1.5 million families trapped in the old system, today’s announcement will be a big disappointment.

There are two main reasons why the present system does not work—and unless we understand what has happened, we run the risk of repeating mistakes. The first reason is the difficulty in finding the absent parent. I understand that the Government are looking at addressing that in their efforts to get joint registration of birth certificates, but that is a serious problem with existing families. It should not be beyond the wit of man to use all the references, such as the electoral list or state pension records, to find the father—for it is usually the father.

The second difficulty is, once found, that of assessing the income of the absent parent, who may be in irregular employment. However, the real problem here is that the agency tries to assess their current income. That relies to a large extent on the honesty of the individual. The problem does not occur with the self-employed, who are assessed on the previous year’s income. Why cannot everyone be assessed in that way? It would be easy enough to ascertain through the individual's income tax form, which, by law, every employer has to give to his employee. If, during the year, the income went up, the payments would automatically be processed the following year. If, however, the income was lower, the absentee parent would have to provide evidence in the way of wage slips for the assessment to be adjusted downwards. No doubt some hard cases would appear but they would fade into total insignificance beside the 333,000 parents with care whose children are facing hardship right now.

There is no reason to suppose that the new agency will be any more successful than the old one if it is constantly struggling to establish an accurate basis of assessment. Although we had understood that Sir David was looking at this in his redesign of the system, there was no recognition in today's Statement of the importance of this fundamental issue to a robust system of child maintenance.



24 July 2006 : Column 1583

On the subject of parents on benefit keeping more of the maintenance owed to them, can the Minister give an indication of the level of disregard being contemplated? Can he tell us whether any research has been undertaken on whether the level of disregard could prove to be a disincentive for some struggling families to stay together?

We share the view of promoting greater personal responsibility, where parents reach their own arrangements and the state becomes the last resort. Yet we all know that that is not always so neatly delivered in the real world—hence, the birth of the CSA in the first place. Can the Minister say what advice will be given to parents who wish to sort things out as amicably as possible?

Noble Lords will know from our debates on the Children and Adoption Bill—I am looking at the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley—that we on these Benches believe strongly in the presumption of co-parenting. A child has a right to reasonable contact with both parents if their relationship breaks down, and that provides emotional and financial stability. David Levy, president of the United States Children's Rights Council, says that the benefits of shared parenting were apparent not just in fewer costly disputes going to court but in increased child support payments. Consensus Bureau statistics showed that fathers with shared parenting rights paid twice the amount of fathers with no contact. I do not for one minute argue that payment should follow contact but it is clear that, in the best interests of the child, the state should do all it can to facilitate contact. Will this issue be part of the consultation?

We are told that Sir David would like a clean break with the past—a fresh start with a new organisation. I should think that that is exactly what the parents caught in the present system long for, especially as it will bring huge financial benefit. Yet they will not automatically transfer to the new system. Parents wishing to use the new system will have to reapply. If all parents in the old system reapply, will the new system be able to cope or will the service be rationed? If there is to be a service charge, will it apply to parents from the old system, even if that system let them and their children down?

We shall follow the consultations with interest, but no redesign will work unless we address the fundamental flaws, learn the lessons of the past 13 years and act on them. No rebranding will work unless there is a real change in the arrangements of the families involved. Without that change, the Government will continue to let down hundreds of thousands of lone parents and limit their children’s potential to have the best start in life.

5.44 pm

Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for reading the Statement made in the other place. I also thank him for the courtesy of a telephone call this morning in which he outlined the principal findings of the report. However—I think this point should be made—it is ridiculous that substantial reports of the type produced by Sir David Henshaw, and, indeed, the Statement, are not made

24 July 2006 : Column 1584

available to Front-Bench spokesmen, at least in the morning, so that people have a few hours to study them. There is no possible question of market sensitivity or anything else in this case. I think that that would be a basic improvement to democracy in this country and I cannot see what it would cost.

“Thirteen wasted years”. Those who, like me, have relatively long political memories will recall that that was the slogan with which Harold Wilson swept the discredited 1964 Douglas-Home Tory Government out of office. It is a horrible irony that 13 wasted years is what the lone parents and their children have had to endure in this country under both Governments. The Statement says:

Does the Minister accept that, in plain English, those weasel words really mean that there has been management failure at the very top by Ministers and top civil servants and that the dither and delay that we have seen over many years has contributed substantially to that?

Sir David's report is fine as far as it goes. It is strong on analysis but not very strong on prescription and on what has to be done now. I am bound to say that it reads more like a report from someone with a public-sector rather than a business background. My heart sank when I read that we are now to have a further consultation—indeed, a report—from him on the ways to implement it. How many reports, redesigns and consultations do we have to have before decisions are taken and we move on?

On Sir David’s specific proposals, I agree with the suggestion that parents should keep more of the maintenance owed to them. It is important to maintain the principle that the parent who has moved away should still contribute as far as possible. If there is a disregard, I believe that it should be at a high level with as much personal responsibility as possible.

Of course these arrangements need to be enforced properly. We are happy to consider new powers but, as always with Blairite initiatives, one must ask whether the existing powers are being properly used. The agency already has powers to remove driving licences, but just 11 were removed in the five years up to 2005. That seems to me to be quite an effective power. If the Government are to bring in any new powers, they should ensure that they are used.

There must also be concern about how morale is to be maintained in the rump CSA, if I can call it that—or residuary body or whatever—which inevitably for some time to come will have to carry on dealing with the existing cases. Morale must be bad enough already. Will Mr Geraghty remain as chief executive of whatever the agency now is, and what steps will be taken to ensure that those cases are progressed?

Specifically, what will happen to existing cases in the system? It would be heartbreaking for families who are well through the system to be told that they have to go back and start all over again. We must know the answer to that. It is the sort of thing that the Government and the Minister should have thought about. It is no good just to say that we are to have a

24 July 2006 : Column 1585

few more months’ consultation. That is totally unsatisfactory—the issue needs to be faced up to.

Next Section Back to Table of Contents Lords Hansard Home Page