Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My Lords, of course one would be foolish not to recognise that there may well be circumstances in extremis where the financial adjustment that shared care would produce could discourage shared care, but we do not believe that that is the generality. As I said, I believe that there is an opposite effect, where some recognition of the costs involved in shared care will be reflected in the commission’s formula. I was simply in a sense stating the obvious that there could certainly be extreme cases where contact is affected by these adjustments. Essentially it depends on arrangements under which contact is settled. Obviously, if it is settled by the court that is one thing and if it is settled by voluntary arrangements that is something else. I come back to the point. We believe that a central point of the Bill is to encourage voluntary arrangements where appropriate. We believe that that is the environment where shared care can best flourish.