Welfare Reform Bill

Many Members of this Committee will remember the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill of 2007 very well indeed—including my noble friend Lord Goodlad, who moved a similar set of amendments in discussions on that Bill. Clause 25 of that Bill changed the long-standing arrangement whereby the CSA had to apply to the courts for the ultimate sanction of the removal of driving licences, identity cards and passports from absent parents who refuse to pay their dues in respect of their child or children to the parent with care. The clause allowed the CSA to remove those pieces of travel authorisation administratively without any reference to the courts. It was also to be possible for that to be contracted out under Clause 8. Your Lordships’ Constitution Committee produced a report that reminded the House that the right to leave and return to one’s country is recognised as a fundamental right in international law. It therefore followed that a civil servant or private sector employee should not be given the power to remove a person’s travel documents without reference to a court of law. To cut my story short, the Government did a volte face and moved an amendment on the second day of Report to return to the status quo ante—in other words, the sanction of a removal of travel authorisations by the courts. To my surprise, that was a totally voluntary act on behalf of the Government; no Division was required. But this Government will not take this House’s clear wish for an answer for very long. The constant pressure for 42 days’ detention without trial for suspects of terrorism is a case in point. I have lost count of the number of times they have tried to put that into law. Is it four, five, six or seven? I do not know. But I digress. The Bill does something rather different to the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill, now an Act, in respect of travel authorisation. It returns the Government’s wish for CMEC to have the power to remove driving licences or travel authorisation, or both, administratively, in part for a trial period. If the trial is unsuccessful in persuading the absent parent to pay up, there is a sunset provision, returning to the position of doing this through the courts. If, however, the trial—or pilot, I should call it—is successful, an order must be made to continue it. I said at Second Reading that my party was prepared to give these pilots for driving licences a go to see whether they had the desired effect of money being given up for the upbringing of the child. I do not resile from that statement. However, I note that your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, so ably chaired by my noble friend Lord Goodlad, does not resile from its position either—namely, that the Executive should not be allowed such power of sanction. I am tempted to agree with the committee, but there are two ways in which to deal with this problem. Your Lordships’ Constitution Committee has chosen one way, which is to return more or less to the status quo ante. In the next section of the amendments, I shall produce another way in which to deal with this, which with a bit of luck will be slightly more acceptable to the Government. I return to the amendments of my noble friend Lord Goodlad. My noble friend wants a decision to withdraw these authorisations to be made at a senior level within CMEC—namely, by a senior director. I like this idea and could easily incorporate it into my own formulation in my next group of amendments. It seems that his say-so would set the withdrawal proceedings in motion in the courts by virtue of, as I understand it, Amendments 174C and 174D. If the courts are dealing with the matter, my noble friend sees no need for an appeals mechanism once the court order has been made, as presumably the normal appeals system through higher and higher courts would operate. This appeals mechanism is therefore disapplied by Amendment 174E. My noble friend also dislikes an award of costs being made when a court proceeding occurs. That must be the purpose of Amendment 174F. His new clause is consequential. I congratulate my noble friend on his very comprehensive series of amendments, which, taken together, return us, as I said, to the status quo ante. I, however, have a rather different proposal, which will come up in the next series of amendments and which I expect the Government to find more acceptable—if, that is, they find any changes acceptable.