Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I realise that I am probably the Minister's worst nightmare—some sort of idle Back Bencher pottering in from one of the Commons Corridors and taking part in a debate on a Bill although he did not serve on the Committee—but I am interested in the matter. I welcome what the Minister said about pursuing people who have cash assets that lie outside income. I would be interested to know what will happen in instances where someone takes a cash asset and transfers it into a fixed asset—for example, they have £10,000 in cash in an account and buy a new car for £10,000, or they have a larger sum, say £150,000, and buy a house to hide it from the clutches of the CSA or the courts. Where such circumstances are identified, will there be powers to require such a person to borrow against that asset to pay the money that they owe, or to sell the asset so that the cash can be liberated and paid back to their partner? Alternatively, a notional income can be attached to those assets. If a person buys a house for £200,000, owns £150,000 of that and has a £50,000 mortgage, the income that can be derived from the £150,000 can be part of the calculation. I should be interested to know what the position would be in all those circumstances. On travel restrictions, I am always concerned when the state talks about taking away people's passports. It sounds a little like Big Brother. Conversely, I am attracted to the idea of stopping parents pleading poverty, as both the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) rightly identified. Some parents plead poverty, yet travel on a two-week vacation to Disneyland Florida. As my hon. Friend pointed out, one parent may be living almost entirely on benefits and bringing up the children day to day, while the former husband or partner is travelling north America at great expense. That does not seem fair. Finally, what are the logistics of the process? If the intention is to go after cash in bank accounts or cash in fixed assets, how will that be done smoothly, seamlessly and quickly, without loads of lawyers becoming involved and loads of appeals lodged? The process could take years. I have seen at my surgery people's absolute reluctance to face up to their responsibilities. I shall be interested to know how we will ensure that the process is speedy. With those concluding remarks, I can reassure the Minister that that will be my last contribution to the debate, as I have some constituents coming in this evening, whom I will be looking after later.