Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

My Lords, the Minister said that the 12-month rule provides a balance between bedding down and the interests of the child and the parent with care. So would two or even three years, so I am not convinced by that argument. The Minister asked for evidence that parents with care do not agree. That is the position of several of the organisations—the stakeholders, as the Minister describes them—that have written to me over the course of the Bill. He would not call that evidence in the academic sense, and perhaps I would not either. None the less, it is my duty to promote the views of people unless I profoundly disagree with them, which indeed I have done. I know that the CSA does not collect the figures that I am asking for, but that does not mean that they do not exist. Therefore, I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he will use his best efforts to ask the relevant departments for the figures—I suspect, as I said earlier, that the Courts Service would have them—that should prove my argument one way or the other. Again, I am sure that we will have the opportunity to refer to this over the next few years and not only because of the many orders that are to be laid under the Bill and which, in their first appearance, will be debated by affirmative instrument—a point that the Minister made right at the beginning of our proceedings this afternoon. Talking of our proceedings this afternoon, may I, on behalf of these Benches, thank the Minister very much indeed for the way in which he has handled this Bill and for his good temper, even though I have occasionally provoked him perhaps beyond the call of his duty? I think that the Bill on the whole will work, but between now and 2013-14 we shall watch like a lynx to see that it does. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.