Clause
29
Power
to treat liability as
satisfied
Andrew
Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con): I beg to move
amendment No. 21, in clause 29, page 32, line 26, at end
insert—
‘(1A) In
circumstances where a person’s liabilities to pay child
maintenance result in sums owing to a parent with care, before
exercising its powers under subsection (1), the Commission must first
obtain the permission of the parent with care in
writing.’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments:
No. 121, in
clause 29, page 32, line 32, at
end insert—
‘(4) Regulations
under subsection (1) may
include—
(a) provision
enabling the Commission in prescribed circumstances to treat liability
as satisfied without authorisation from the parent with care;
and
(b) provision enabling the
parent with care in prescribed circumstances to appeal to the
Commission against a decision to treat liability as
satisfied.’.
No.
22, in
clause 30, page 32, line 37, after
‘(1)’, insert
‘Subject to the permission in
writing of any person to whom arrears of child support maintenance are
owed,’.
No. 23,
in
clause 31, page 33, line 5, after
‘(1)’, insert
‘Subject to the
permission in writing of any person to whom arrears of child support
maintenance are owed,’.
Andrew
Selous:
We have reached the part of the Bill that deals
with debt-management powers. We had full and strenuous debates earlier
in the Committee on the subject of debt. Strong views were expressed,
certainly by everyone on the Opposition Benches, with some
acknowledgement by the Minister that the issue of debt cuts to the
heart of the credibility of the system and that it is important for it
to be dealt with fairly and not to be brushed under the carpet.
Amendments Nos. 21, 22 and 23, which I will discuss, deal with that
subject in
particular.
Amendment
No. 21 relates to cases where a non-resident parent has made payments
on behalf of their children, which is not the child maintenance
payments transferred to the parent with care that they are required to
pay, and deals with how CMEC will treat those payments, if there is an
application to count them against the child maintenance payments that
the non-resident parent should have paid. The amendment states that the
commission must first obtain the permission of the parent with care in
writing before agreeing to exercise its powers under clause 29(1). That
may sound a little dry, but let me illustrate the point with a
constituency case. It is a case that got so serious that I brought the
mother concerned, the parent with care, to see the Minister. I do not
know whether he remembers that
case.
Mr.
Plaskitt
indicated
assent.
Andrew
Selous:
The Minister was gracious enough to see me, which
I appreciated. Although I have not heard from that particular
constituent for a while, which I take as good news, I am pleased to
tell him that the case has been
solved.
That
particular parent with care regularly came to my surgery to tell me how
her ex-husband had bought a tent or a guitar for his children. He was
not paying any maintenance, but he bought the children a tent, a
guitar, new trainers or a trip to Thorpe Park, when they had perfectly
serviceable trainers and probably needed a new pair of school shoes.
His argument to the mother was to say quite bluntly, “Well,
I’ve made payments. I’ve given money to the children.
I’ve spent my money.” He was not paying the maintenance
that he was required to, week by week, which she needed to feed and
clothe the children, to put new school shoes on their feet and so on. I
hope that that case illustrates what we are
discussing.
3.30pm
I
have no reason to doubt the good intentions of the Minister or the
staff of the commission, but it would be a real assurance to parents
with care if the Bill stated that they had to agree to any offsetting
of payments. There may be cases in which non-resident parents have made
payments in lieu of child maintenance payments which the parent with
care is happy to have offset against the payments that should have been
made according to the CSA at present and CMEC in future. It is
important that there is written permission from the parent with care
before that offsetting is
agreed.
Amendment No.
22, which relates to clause 30 rather than to clause 29, refers to the
power of CMEC to
accept part payment of arrears in full and final settlement. Again, the
amendment tries to set out that there may be circumstances where that
is the right thing to do, but it should happen only with the express,
written agreement of any person to whom arrears of child support
maintenance are owed. That does not seem to be too much to ask, and I
shall refer shortly to some of the evidence given by Lord McKenzie, the
Minister’s colleague in another place. Amendment No. 23, which relates
to clause 31, deals with what we would like to see happen when the
commission decides to write off arrears of child maintenance. There may
be occasions when the parent with care is perfectly happy for that to
happen, given the particular circumstances of that case. Given that it
is money owed in most cases to the mother and, most importantly, to the
children, it is vital to have the written permission of anyone to whom
arrears of child support maintenance are owed.
At our first sitting, Lord
McKenzie
said:
“But it
is clear that we would only write off where we had the consent of the
parent with care, and only when the commission recommended to the
parent with care that it might be appropriate. So any inappropriate
offers would be screened out by the commission, and only in those
circumstances and specifically with the consent of the parent with care
would the debt be written off.”——[Official
Report, Child Maintenance and Other Payments Public Bill Committee,
17 July 1007; c.
34.]
Amendments Nos. 22 and 23
simply seek to put that assurance, given freely by the Minister, in the
Bill.
Mr.
Weir:
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Does he also note
what Stephen Geraghty, chief executive of the CSA, said in response to
question No. 85? He made it clear that the agency was considering
coming to an agreement and writing off some of that debt. It is not
clear from that or from the Bill whether that could be done with only
the consent of the parent with care. There is a contradiction in the
evidence, even with the assurance given at that
sitting.
Andrew
Selous:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as always,
for carefully following what has been said. He is right to draw the
Committee’s attention to that fact. It is important to put on
the record at this stage that debt is owed to parents with care and
debt is also owed to the Secretary of State. It is important that we
are clear about that. All debt is not the same. There will be
circumstances in which debt owed to the Secretary of State should
perhaps be written off because it is uncollectible and it would be a
figment of accounting imagination to put it down on a balance sheet as
something that the Government will receive.
The hon. Gentleman is right to
press me on the issue of debt, and he puts his finger on an important
point. There are a number of other questions that I shall ask the
Minister just to cover this matter. It would help if he could give the
Committee an update on the issue of debt. If he cannot do so now, will
he kindly ask his officials to draft a letter to members of the
Committee?
I ask that
because the latest figures that we have on debt come from the 2005-06
CSA annual report. It is usual practice for the annual report to be
published before the summer recess, but that did not happen this year.
We are discussing this subject rather blind and without the latest
figures. At the very least we should
have the information on Report—I would have liked to have it now.
I hope that the breakdown of figures will provide a split between
old-system debt and new-system debt, with a further split into
uncollectible or possibly uncollectible debt, as opposed to
collectible. I believe that to be the format in which the information
has previously been given, and we are entitled to receive that
information given the large sums involved.
I understand that
£760 million of debt is not being pursued in England and Wales
by the agency’s enforcement directorate because it is more than
six years old and cannot be subject to a liability order in the courts.
The National Audit Office made that point. If there is debt that CMEC
views as “uncollectible”, it is important that the
parents with care to whom that debt is owed are informed if CMEC is not
going to pursue collection of it.
Those are important points that
cut to the heart of the system’s credibility. In recent years, I
have said to a number of my constituents that the money owed to them is
a debt, it stays on the ledger until it is paid back and they can be
sure that that will happen. I want to continue to give that reassurance
to my constituents. I will listen with interest to what the Minister
has to say, and in particular to his comments in respect of amendments
Nos. 22 and 23, which, as far as I can see, put in writing exactly what
Lord McKenzie said to us in Committee on 17
July.
Danny
Alexander:
The hon. Gentleman has made most of the
important points, so I will not go on for long. For many years, debt
and arrears have been huge problems hanging over the system. The most
recent figure that we have, which, as he says, is out of date, suggests
that the total amount of debt is now £3.5 billion, of which a
significant proportion is regarded by the CSA as
uncollectible.
It
should be a matter of concern to all members of the Committee that the
CSA annual report has been delayed for so long. It should have been
published in July and would have provided us with a lot of relevant
information. The publication was rumoured to have been planned as soon
as Parliament returned, but I understand that it has been delayed for a
further two or three weeks. If that is the case, it unhappily means
that the information contained in the report will not be available for
any Committee stages of the legislation.
Andrew
Selous:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in the light
of what he has just said, it might be fair to ask the Ministers here to
ensure that the report is provided to hon. Members before
Report?
Danny
Alexander:
In addition to his many good qualities, the
hon. Gentleman has shown the power of foresight. I was going to make
that point. The Minister must do everything possible to ensure that
that information is available to the House before the Commons stages
are completed. There should be an explanation as to the reasons for the
delay. The Bill is being debated now, and that information would have
been useful, particularly in the context of the amendments.
Cynics might suggest that the
report contains information that is unwelcome from the
Government’s point of view. I do not know whether that is true.
Perhaps it contains happy information from their point of view. If the
latter is true, I am surprised that more encouragement has not been
offered to publish it before the Commons stages of the Bill are
finished. None the less, it is important that we have the correct
factual information to help us understand what the provisions would
mean. I hope that the Minister will explain what has happened and when
matters will be set back in their proper
order.
The amendments,
all of which I support, relate to the way in which the parent with care
should be involved in any decisions relating to writing off debt or
arrears that they might be owed. The hon. Member for South-West
Bedfordshire rightly distinguished between that and debt owed to the
Secretary of State. We are talking about arrears owed to the parent
with care. The point made in amendments Nos. 21 to 23, which is that
the parent with care should have some involvement and ability to be
involved in those decisions, is a powerful one given that people may
have been waiting for a considerable period for the CSA to pursue their
case and get the money that they are owed. For a debt to be written off
without their involvement or say so would add insult to
injury.
Amendment No.
121 approaches the matter in the same spirit as amendments Nos. 21 to
23, but somewhat differently, in that it would require regulations to
be made to enable the commission to prescribe circumstances in which
liability would be regarded as satisfied without the permission of the
parent with care and would also provide for that parent to have a right
of appeal in those circumstances, thereby achieving the same outcome in
a different way by allowing the parent with care a chance to appeal
before a debt or arrears are written off. Again, that would allow their
involvement in such
cases.
I hope that the
Minister will consider favourably this group of amendments and explain
how the Government intend to approach the involvement of the parent
with care, particularly in respect of those sorts of
decisions.
Mr.
Weir:
This is a difficult area. I know from cases in my
surgery that many women—they are usually women—have spent
many years trying to get money through the Child Support Agency and
vast arrears have built up over that time. It would be completely
inequitable if those arrears were written off without the consent of
the parent with care because of the changeover between agencies. Many
of those involved will say, “I’ve done without things for
years, and so have my children, because I can’t get the payments
out of them.” Sometimes, that can be many thousands of
pounds.
I am concerned
about this, although I understand what the hon. Member for South-West
Bedfordshire said about the difference between debt due to parents with
care and debt due, effectively, to the Treasury. Stephen Geraghty
said:
“Experience
says that most parents with care will...Take a reasonable
sum.”——[Official Report, Child Maintenance and
Other Payments Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2007; c.
35.]
There is clearly an intention to get
something and to write off some of the debt. That is done with the
consent of the parent with care. I understand the reasoning for that.
If I got half of what I was due or a proportion of it, that would be
better than nothing, and I can understand that happening if it is done
properly, but I would be much more concerned if the CSA, CMEC or
whatever decided on the proportion without the consent of the parent
with care. There is a difficult balance to be
struck.
3.45
pm
The other point
that strikes me—it was canvassed in the evidence-taking session
in Question 84—concerns the problem of the quantification of the
arrears in some old cases. In some cases, where interim assessments
were imposed in the first instance and very large arrears grew up
fairly quickly, those were made at the top rate, basically as a
punishment for people who would not give the information to the agency.
Will the Minister say what is the intention regarding old cases where
those responsible might be looking at writing off debt? Will they
consider how the debt arose? Will any adjustment be made for cases
where a large amount of arrears was put in place due to a notional
interim assessment because the non-resident parent was not giving the
information to the agency? I am not suggesting that those should simply
be written off——the interim assessment is there for a
reason——but I would like some information on how the
Minister intends to deal with such
cases.
Mrs.
McGuire:
I appreciate that this is a difficult issue.
Situations where money is owed to the parent with care and, sometimes,
as the hon. Member for Angus pointed out, to the non-resident parent,
have featured highly in our constituency activity for some years. I
will deal with some of the specific questions on
debt.
It is not a
secret that £3.5 billion is owed to the CSA and that is
increasing at a rate of £20 million a month. As we all know,
that debt has accrued over 14 years. It is not something that has
happened over the last couple of years or, indeed, over the past 10
years. Effectively, it has happened since the inception of the
agency, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. As we all know, there are some
non-resident parents who do their utmost to avoid paying
anything towards the upkeep of their
children.
There was
almost a suggestion creeping in that the current agency is going soft
on the collection of debt. That is not the case. The CSA has improved
its recovery of debt as part of the operational improvement plan and is
committed to recovering over £200 million of historic debt by
2009. In the year to June 2007, it collected or arranged an
additional £63 million of maintenance compared with the
previous 12-month period. As part of that plan, in August 2006 the
agency began contracting out the collection of debt to a private debt
collection agency. It has also achieved success by allowing payments by
credit and debit cards: £11.3 million has been collected in that
way. The child maintenance enforcement campaigns aim to alert parents
who do not pay child maintenance to the fact that the agency is
determined to enforce compliance.
Andrew
Selous:
I am listening carefully and am grateful to the
Minister for her assurance about the £200 million of debt that
the agency is actively pursuing. So far, she has not contradicted what
I said about the £760 million of debt that is not being pursued
because it is over six years old. I do not know if she is going to
refer to that, but I will be grateful if she
does.
Mrs.
McGuire:
As far as I understand it, that debt is still
recoverable. If it is not, I am sure that somebody will advise me in
the next 30 seconds. I understand that it is recoverable and is still,
where appropriate, active on our
books.
Andrew
Selous:
I was asking not whether it is technically still
legally recoverable, but what current active measures are being taken.
There is a worry that some of this debt has effectively been
parked——it is still legally owed but nothing active is
happening about it. The Minister referred only to £200 million
of debt that is actively being
pursued.
Mrs.
McGuire:
We must get our terminology right. The debt is
recoverable, but that is not enforceable through the courts. That is
the difference and is the subtlety in the issue. If the hon. Gentleman
wishes for chapter and verse on whether we are going to pursue x number
of people who have had debts for more than six years, I will have to
come back to him. I am saying to the Committee that we recognise that
the collection of debt is an important issue for the CSA. We are not
waiting until CMEC is active. We are currently pursuing debt, but we
have to recognise that an historic debt has built up over 14
years.
Danny
Alexander:
Before the Minister leaves the statistical
question, I am trying to understand the figure she gave us of more than
£200 million over a three-year period. She said that the target
for collection of debt was £213 million under the operational
improvement plan and, separately, that new debt was building up at a
rate of £20 million a month. That would suggest that in the
period during which the £213 million is collected, a
further £360 million of debt will have built up, so even under
the operational improvement plan net debt will still be rising. Can she
confirm that that is the
case?
Mrs.
McGuire:
We are trying to pull so many threads together
that it is sometimes difficult to understand where we are going in
respect of debt. We are estimating that potentially it could increase
at £20 million a month. Our recovery systems for the
debt that is currently accruing are far more robust than those that the
CSA operated in the past, which allowed the accumulation of debt to the
£3.5 billion figure that we spoke about. Therefore, I am not
sure whether we can do the sharp calculation that the hon. Gentleman
identified.
There is
nothing sinister in the agency’s annual report and accounts and
we are not sitting on it. It is not under a table because we do not
want to share it with the Committee. I am sure hon. Members will
appreciate that it is not currently within our jurisdiction or within
the competence of the NAO, which concluded that further work on the
CSA’s client funds account needed to be done. That enabled the
agency to complete the client funds account, which is now with the NAO
for consideration in its report. The agency will lay the annual report
and accounts in the House of Commons Library as soon as it is
completed. I hope that hon. Members will understand that it is
currently with the NAO and that we are working with the NAO on
this. I hope that I
have answered most of the questions that have been raised and, if I
have not, I hope I will do so in my comments. It may assist the
Committee if I explain what the clause aims to achieve. There are two
limbs to the clause. In the first, we intend the commission to use the
discretionary power to offset maintenance liabilities between parents
of the same child. It is envisaged that that will happen mainly in what
we refer to as role reversal cases, where a child is living with one
parent but later goes to live with another parent. The parent with care
and the non-resident parent swap roles, a scenario with which many of
us are familiar.
It
may also be used in split-care cases, where both parents are caring for
at least one qualifying child; each parent is a parent with care and
each is a non-resident parent, not the scenario that was painted
earlier this week when a child went to stay with the non-resident
parent for a couple of days a week. In this case the parents are
jointly caring for the child and are recognised as doing so.
Clause 29 will allow the
commission the discretion to offset any arrears owed by one parent
against the liability of the other. The hon. Member for South-West
Bedfordshire highlighted that issue as being one of particular
frustration. It is not often that I would quote from The Mail on
Sunday, but there we are, things change. In a recent article by the
readers’ champion, a Mrs. J.W., whoever she was,
highlighted the very issue that the hon. Gentleman was discussing. In
that case, two parents owed money to each other. One owed £534,
the ex-husband owed £913, and we had no powers to offset those
two liabilities against each other. It was incredibly frustrating and,
to be frank, it was difficult to understand why we could not off-set
that amount, so we are alert to that situation.
I shall come back to the two
scenarios that I highlighted. The provision must be exercised with due
regard to the welfare of any child likely to be affected by the
decision. Amendment No. 21 would mean that, for role reversal cases,
the commission would only be able to off-set those liabilities with the
agreement of the current parent with care. For split-care cases, the
commission would need the agreement of both parents because both are
the parents with care. In some respects, we would see a situation where
the agreement would be needed from the parent who had been failing to
meet their maintenance liability in the first place. If they were
failing to meet their liability as the non-resident parent or as the
parent with the higher maintenance calculation, it is reasonable to
assume that they might not agree to off-setting.
In all our deliberations, we
have understood that we are dealing with difficult personal
circumstances and attitudes towards the payment of maintenance. I
think,
with the greatest respect, that the provision would defeat the whole
purpose of the clause and that accepting amendment No. 121 would have a
similar effect, because only in certain specified circumstances would
the commission be able to off-set liabilities without the agreement of
the non-compliant parent. I will give some comfort to
colleagues in a moment. I suggest to the Committee that the commission
must be given the freedom to exercise its discretion in those cases.
The most important considerations should not be the wishes of the
previously non-compliant parents, but the welfare of the children
affected by the decision. The commission will not use the off-setting
powers if it considers that that would put the welfare of children at
risk. An example would be if the current parent with care has a low
income—a situation that we could all understand. Legislating for
different rules to apply in specific circumstances, as suggested in
amendment No. 121, would limit the commission’s discretion and
may, in some circumstances, lead to gross unfairness.
I shall deal with the second
limb of clause 29. The intention is for the commission to use that
discretionary power to offset payments made by the non-resident parent
to third parties against their maintenance liability, whether that
would be a pair of trainers or trips to the cinema—the point
made by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire. That is intended
to cover situations where a non-resident parent, from time to time or
perhaps as a one-off, makes a payment that may be seen as a benefit to
the child. An example would be the payment of an urgent utility bill on
behalf of the parent with care before the maintenance payment is due.
Currently, when that happens, the non-resident parent would still be
legally required to pay the full amount of maintenance in addition to
that payment, thereby being forced to meet the liability twice, as the
hon. Gentleman highlighted.
We want to allow the Commission
the flexibility and discretion to off-set such a payment against the
maintenance liability. However, regulations—hon. Members should
have received them in their briefing packs—will specify that the
parent with care must have agreed to the payment being made in the
first place. Therefore, the parent with care still has the right to
decide whether to accept that payment when it can be offset. It will
then be up to the commission to decide whether to off-set the payment
against the non-resident parent’s maintenance
liability.
It would
not be appropriate to seek the parent with care’s agreement for
the payment to be offset when they have already agreed to the payment
being made in the first place. If there is an agreement to pay the
electricity bill, it would not be fair for that parent with care, who
has already agreed to the payment being made, to withhold their
permission for that to be offset in those circumstances. I fully accept
the spontaneous sort of circumstances that the hon. Member for
South-West Bedfordshire highlighted about trips to the zoo and the
cinema and all the rest of
it.
4
pm
Amendment
No. 121 also seeks appeal rights in relation to offsetting mutual
liabilities. Regulations will set out the parameters within which the
commission can exercise its discretion. The most important
consideration will be the welfare of any children affected by the
decision. The
commission will, of course, discuss with the parent
with care the implication of offsetting before making its decision and
will take into account any representations she makes that the welfare
of her child or children may be put at
risk. It would not be
appropriate to allow appeal rights in respect of any discretionary
decisions, each one of which will require the commission to balance the
needs of both parents and all children affected. Providing an appeal
right is likely to create delay and a layer of complication and
bureaucracy which this provision is designed to overcome. Any delay
resulting from an appeal may slow down the flow of maintenance in some
cases. Potentially, we could end up in a scenario similar to the one
that we have all had to face over many
years.
Amendment No.
22 relates to clause 30. The clause gives the commission the power to
accept part payment of arrears in full and final satisfaction. The
issue of parental consent is somewhat different in this case. Our
intention is that where the debt is due to be paid to the parent with
care, the decision to accept a lesser amount will only be taken with
the agreement of the parent with care. Again, agreement is locked into
the system. Regulations underpinning the power will be set out in
detail, showing how negotiated settlements are to work in practice, and
will be
affirmative.
Andrew
Selous:
I am grateful to hear the Minister’s
reassurances, which I accept at face value. I am just puzzled why this
matter should be dealt with in regulation rather than in the Bill. It
has been said to me, so I will say it to her, that dealing with it in
regulation could make it easier at a later stage to revoke or water
down the obligation to seek the parent with care’s permission.
If she addresses that point, I will be fully
satisfied.
Mrs.
McGuire:
The issue has always been whether it is
appropriate to put discretionary inflexible powers in the Bill. That
sort of operational issue is normally, and effectively, dealt with in
legislation. As I have said, the regulations will be subject to
affirmative resolution. I hope that we are not getting into challenging
whether it is the Government’s intention to water down those
regulations. I will do the hon. Gentleman the credit of saying that I
suspect that that would not be the position of his party if and
when—God help us!—it ever gets into power. I hope that he
can understand that we are not going to water down the regulations and
that he accepts that at face value. I am never sure, Mr.
Taylor, whether or not accepting something at face value is an insult
or a compliment. Perhaps he could explain that to me
afterwards.
The
requirement to obtain consent is part of the process. However, it is
not entirely straightforward, as hon. Members will know if they have
read the draft regulations. One example is the case in which the person
has been on benefit for only part of the period to which the arrears
relate. In such cases, the regulations will require consent only where
the amount recovered is insufficient to cover the amount that the
parent with care is owed. Therefore, someone can have a mixed stream of
income over the period of time. We consider that these matters are too
complicated to be dealt with in primary legislation and are best left
to regulations because we can build in the sort of flexibility that is
needed.
It is right
that the House should have the opportunity to scrutinise such matters,
and for that reason I am pleased to confirm yet again that the
regulations will be subject to affirmative resolution. I hope the
Committee will forgive me if I am going on, but it is a complicated set
of
circumstances.
Amendment
No. 23 relates to clause 31 and the
“Power to write off
arrears.”
The
clause gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations
setting out the circumstances in which the debt can be extinguished. It
is intended that such circumstances should include the parent with care
requesting that arrears owed to them should no longer be enforced
because of, for example, a reconciliation with the non-resident parent
or the death or adoption of the child. Again, we must consider specific
circumstances.
Amendment
No. 23 would place in the Bill a requirement to obtain the consent of
the parent with care in cases when debt was due to be written off and
the debt was due to the parent with care. The power to write off debt
is essentially a tidying-up exercise that the commission will use in
limited circumstances. As the draft regulations make clear, those will
include circumstances in which the parent with care has asked the
commission to cease acting—for example, when the parties have
reconciled and the parent with care does not want the debt recovered,
or when the parent with care or non-resident parent has died and the
opportunity to recover the arrears has
passed.
Clearly,
there are circumstances in which the consent of the parent with care
would not be appropriate, such as when a non-resident parent has died
and it is not possible to recover the debt from the estate. I
understand, in fact, that the total amount of debt that has accrued in
such cases is significant. It would make no sense for that sum to
continue to sit in the agency’s accounts and, effectively, be an
irrecoverable bookkeeping figure. It is not the intention to write off
debt that the parent with care wants recovered. I want to make that
point clear to the Committee because I know that it has caused concern
and that it has been thought that somehow we would bypass the parent
with care. That is not our intention. However, as I have said, there
will be cases when it is not appropriate to obtain that
consent.
I
hope that the Committee will accept that the safeguards are sufficient
to protect the interests of the parent with care. I have confirmed that
during the sitting. Furthermore, as provided for in the primary power,
the commission can only write off debt if it seems to it that it will
be unfair or otherwise inappropriate to enforce liability in respect of
the arrears.
I shall
not apologise for what has been a pretty lengthy consideration of the
measures, because they are quite complicated. I want the Committee to
have confidence that the rights, interests and wishes of the parent
with care will be taken into account at all points in the procedure and
that that is consistent with the underlying principle of the Bill,
which is that we should operate at all times in the best interests of
the
child.
Andrew
Selous:
I am grateful to the Minister for her full and
lengthy explanation. I am reassured by it. She mentioned the draft
regulations that have been sent to members of the Committee. Her words
are on the record, and I know that they will guide the commission, as
is the custom.
I have two brief requests that
have arisen from the debate. I do not know whether the hon. Lady can
accede to them. She mentioned the £760 million debt. I should be
grateful if she would write to me and other members of the Committee to
clarify what action the CSA is taking in that regard. I did not feel
that we had quite got to the bottom of the
matter.
As for the
National Audit Office, I shall be dropping a line to Sir John Bourn to
ask if there is any way in which he can instruct his officials to make
sure that the annual report is ready by the time that the Bill is
debated on Report. If Ministers were willing to take such action, too,
I should be grateful because it would be
helpful.
Mrs.
McGuire:
I give an undertaking to the hon. Gentleman and
others members of the Committee that I shall write to them about the
£760 million debt. We should remember that we are discussing a
carry-over Bill, so Parliament will have a long time in which to
consider it. The National Audit Office will do what it has to do, but I
am sure that Sir John Bourn will receive his letter with
interest.
Andrew
Selous:
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
The
Chairman:
With this we will take new clause
20— Basic level of child maintenance
support—
‘The Secretary
of State may by regulations make provision for a basic level of child
support maintenance support to be sought by the
Commission—
(a) where
the care of a child has been transferred to a parent who has arrears
outstanding to the Commission;
and
(b) where this person would
otherwise have receipt of maintenance offset against those
arrears.’.
Danny
Alexander:
The new clause raises an important point that
relates to the useful, important and helpful remarks that the Minister
just made. I am grateful to her for them. It covers a specific set of
cases where a child has been transferred to the care of a parent who
has arrears outstanding to the commission. It does not relate to cases
where there are arrears on both sides, but where the new parent with
care has arrears to what has become the non-resident parent, when they
could also have expected to have been in receipt of maintenance, had
there been no
arrears.
The new
clause seeks to allow in those cases for the commission to specify a
basic level of maintenance. I am thinking of circumstances in which,
for example, the new parent with care is on benefit, and a basic level
of maintenance would, in most cases, be reduced from
what otherwise might be awarded were there not debt involved, but a
basic level of maintenance might be necessary to ensure that the child
is not living in poverty. That, after all, is one of the Bill’s
objectives. The
Minister rightly reminded us that the welfare of the child must remain
paramount in all cases. A basic level of child maintenance, which might
amount to a partial rather than a full offsetting, could be allowed to
protect the interests of the child. The new clause would do that, and I
would be grateful to the Minister if she could explain how, in that
small, specific, but none the less important set of cases, the
requirement to look after the welfare of the child could be
maintained.
Mrs.
McGuire:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his new clause,
which I trust is a probing
one.
We have already
considered to a certain extent the purpose of clause 29. We believe
that it takes a sensible approach, which responds to the needs and
circumstances of individuals. It is our intention to set out the
parameters within which the commission may exercise its discretion in
regulations. For example, we do not intend offsetting to take place if
the parent with care is living on a low income and is particularly
reliant on child maintenance, which may cover some of the issues
raised.
The new clause
applies to the first limb of the provision which will allow the
commission to offset mutual liabilities between parents. I suggest that
prescribing a basic amount of maintenance to be protected from
offsetting, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, would tie the commission
into adopting a blanket approach and, dare I say it, introduce layers
of complexity. That would not be our
intention.
As most
colleagues will recognise, maintenance liabilities can vary
considerably, depending on the income level of the non-resident parent.
We would have to take account of that in deciding on an amount to
protect. In some cases, the liability can be as low as
£5 per week. Prescribing liability in the Bill would not be a
particularly helpful route. We do not believe that setting a common
basic level is the best way to protect the welfare of children or
address the different circumstances of individuals. A fairer way is to
take account of the income of the parent with care, who is due to
receive the maintenance, because that would be an indication of the
impact on the
child.
We are still
working on the specific details of the regulations. I hope I can
reassure hon. Members that in doing so the welfare of the child or
children is uppermost in our minds. I hope that with that explanation
the hon. Gentleman will recognise that we will cover the point,
although not in the way that he wants, which is to see it in primary
legislation.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Clause 29
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Further
consideration adjourned.—[Mr.
David.]
Adjourned
accordingly at fifteen minutes past Four o’clock till Tuesday 16
October at half-past Ten
o’clock.
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