Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Members for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) for their support for the amendments. As they say, debt is very important. From our constituency casework, we know the prevalence of the issue and the strength of feeling that there is about it. We know that some of the amounts involved are very large indeed, as was the case with the constituent I met accompanied by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire. There is considerable emphasis in the operational improvement plan currently applied to the agency on improving its debt collection performance. I am pleased that the relevant measures being taken are having the intended result. The agency's target is to collect £200 million of debt a year—a sum that has never been achieved before—and it is on course to achieve that. The extra measures that we put in place have enabled it to perform more strongly in debt collection and the amendments will allow even more progress to be made. There is a certain stickiness in attempts to resolve the issue at the moment because of the current regulatory framework, which is why we have accepted the changes and put them into the Bill. To reassure the hon. Member for Rochdale, let me repeat that there is no general power of write-off. That would not be acceptable and it is not part of the Bill. It would be completely contrary to our message about the settling of such debts. Let me also try to reassure him that the parent with care is in control in this process; it would not be a case of a letter suddenly arriving saying, ““This is what we think you should settle for. Sign here. ”” It will not happen like that. A deal would be under consideration only after lengthy discussion between the parties involved, and that would will happen only if the parent with care agreed to it. That is the important consideration in this case. I hope that I have given the hon. Gentleman the reassurance he seeks.