Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I shall try to respond to the points that have been raised in the debate on the first group of amendments. In respect of HMRC data, the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) asked about the commission helping other Government Departments. The commission has a stake in any Department looking after the interests of children, especially where family separation has occurred. It will probably be highly relevant for the commission to exchange information with the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which will help with programmes in which the Department is involved, such as Sure Start, children's centres and so on. Wherever there is a shared interest in services for children, especially for those from a fractured family background, I would expect the commission to co-operate with other bodies. The hon. Gentleman asked me how many other non-departmental public bodies had Crown status. There are three others—the Health and Safety Commission, the Health and Safety Executive and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. The commission will join them, forming a small group out of 200 NDPBs. The commission is by far the largest of those bodies; the others that I mentioned are considerably smaller.