Welfare Reform Bill

It feels like 2001. I beg the Committee’s pardon. It should have been 2011, and it may even be 2012 by the time we get there. These two or three clauses have deep significance, and they have to be read. I took the trouble to reread them at the weekend. They differ quite substantially in tone from the rubric and narrative that the Government are advocating for this change. They insert quite dramatic hurdles, particularly for parents with care. They introduce a new level of fiscally driven tension between getting the savings that CMEC and the department are looking for and the maximisation of the flow of benefits to parents with care and their children. This is the new, new CSA—CSA 2.5 or CSA 3—that we are heading for in 2012. I will go to the great Parliament in the sky a very unhappy bunny if this one goes wrong as well. It is not a question of allocating blame; I am as responsible as anybody. I thought that the provisions that were introduced early on were fit for purpose. However, there is a huge gap between policy creation and the implementation of this very difficult area of public policy. It is a deeply troubled area and we need to be very careful that what we are doing is apposite and right for the people it is designed to serve. It is important to mention the staff who laboured under the introduction of these provisions. I think that the Minister in the Commons, Maria Miller, mentioned them rather glancingly in the Public Bill Committee. She said that the actions of the staff resulted in the measure not falling flat on its face, particularly around 2003 when everything was going wrong. If it had not been for the dedication of the professionals who ran the CSA centres and worked through the stuck cases that went into manual administration, the whole thing would have collapsed. I want to make clear that although I think that in the past the policy has been totally inadequate, I do not mean in any sense to criticise the professionals who were asked to administer it. By and large, they played a great game and without them we would have been in a much worse situation. The background political context to this is slightly worrying as well. It would be helpful to be told why there has been no response to the Select Committee report that was published in July. As colleagues know, Governments have to respond to Select Committee recommendations within a two-month period, although there is a bit of a purdah period over the summer. For a set of important recommendations that are absolutely apposite to this group of amendments to be published and to have no government response is indicative of something: either something very good or something very difficult is happening. My noble friend has now been invited to enter the trench of child support and maintenance. I cannot think of anybody more appropriate to man a trench than my noble friend Lord De Mauley. I welcome him to the task. I hope he is not considered to be expendable infantry—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Freud, has neatly side-stepped the graveyard pass. Can we be told what is happening with the Select Committee report? Furthermore, the draft regulations were supposed to be made available to the Committee by the end of 2012. Perhaps we will get them soon, very soon or very, very soon, but there are only days left before these regulations are due. I am picking up in the corridors here at Westminster a general political unease—this unease crosses parties and is felt not just by one side or the other—about the family implications of some of these changes, particularly around charging which we will come to in a minute. Some of us are old enough to remember when a £44 charge was introduced in 1995, which did not last very long. I wonder what has changed. I think that that £44 charge lasted about 18 months before it was realised that it cost more to collect than it brought in and the whole thing collapsed, but here we are again with charging. I ask myself what is different. My next question impacts on all four of the amendments we are discussing. Is the 2012 CSA 3 or CMEC 3—or whatever the new, new system is being called—on track? The annual report of the CMEC/CSA that was produced earlier this year noted that the major projects authority was asking some very searching questions, and raising doubts, about challenges that were being faced with yet another new computer system. I do not know whether the system is in Warrington or whether it is an agile system. I hope that it is both, but I hope that it works. If we could get an assurance about the readiness of the 2012 relaunch, it would be valuable in our consideration of all three groups of amendments around this policy. I also want to ask about costs. I looked at the Work and Pensions Select Committee report on the rest of the comprehensive spending review period and am puzzled about what exactly the costs are. At paragraph 75, the report states: "““Noel Shanahan indicated that CMEC’s aim was to achieve at least a 30% reduction in costs, in common with other parts of Government””" over the CSR period. We all know that the previous annual report, for 2009-10, indicated that the CMEC was spending £572 million. At paragraph 76, Noel Shanahan is quoted as saying that the transition to the new system in 2012 would cost, "““in the region of between £150 million to £200 million in terms of additional costs””." Could some clarity be introduced as to over what period that refers to? How is that money being spent and how does it measure up to the 30 per cent reduction that Mr Shanahan was talking about? I am not clear as to the spend profile and the business case for charging—we will come on to that later. A reduction of 30 per cent on a budget of £572 million will put immense cost pressures on the agency through 2012 and beyond. It is very important, in order to make sense of this group of amendments, to know what the Government are planning to spend and what the business case is. We have all had the benefit of the excellent work that has been done by Gingerbread and other groups that have been briefing us. Amendment 113B would make sure that the principal objective available to CMEC in its previous non-departmental- public-body status, to maximise the number of those children who live apart from one or both parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place, was enshrined in law. CMEC is being abolished as a non-departmental public body and being taken into an executive agency, and therefore does not have that objective. All we have now is assurances from Ministers. The Minister, Maria Miller, gave rather a weak assurance to the Public Bill Committee, saying that we could rely on ministerial assurances. I am sure that we can, but that is not my experience with all Ministers all the time. I should like to hear what the Government have to say about the prospect of trying to put back that basic overriding objective into the work of the commission. As a consequence, a two-yearly report on progress on meeting that objective would be valuable. I wonder whether we could use Amendment 113C to ask the Minister to explain to us a little bit about how the new support services will be rolled out and, again, how much money is involved in their provision. A £30 million fund is available through the Department for Education, which oversees a range of grant-funded relationship and family support services. However, of course, that funding runs out between 2011 and 2013. We need to replace that money by 2013; otherwise we might face an effective net reduction in the amount of money that is available. We know that £5.6 million a year is available through the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission’s option service. Will that be continued through the CSR and beyond, and how are we going to co-ordinate all the charities, the mediation services and the advice from family lawyers that currently exist into a way that makes sense? Can we, at the same time, understand—because I do not understand at the moment—what the differences and the relationships are between the gateway process and the co-ordination of the services? They are different functions and I do not understand how one will relate to the other in order to make sure that people do not get signposted to the wrong door. Perhaps the Minister can give us a little background about the support services that are and will be in existence. A footnote in the briefing that I have seen refers to the long-term vision for the service being completed by 2020. I am in favour of these things being done in a deliberative way but this will start becoming critical to some of the households it will affect by 2013. It is a big gap to leave in place, particularly if Mr Shanahan’s estimates of the cuts he will face are to be found, so can we have some assurance on the funding? Amendment 113D deals with evening up the treatment in the gateway between parents with care and non-resident parents. The way it is currently cast is unfair and there will not be a positive outcome for anyone. My Amendment 113F deals with legacy cases. Everyone understands that the longer a case has been in operation—sometimes three, five or even 10 years—the more likely it is to have recourse to the statutory provision. Inviting all those legacy cases to opt in to the new service in 2012 is obviously a way of filtering out people who do not need the money or have lost interest, but that risks losing a huge amount of the £1.14 million case load in that category. We need to look at that issue very carefully. I would be much happier to leave such cases alone because the authorities already have all the information on the money that is in existence and would not need to go through the process of applying again and facing the charges and fees we will discuss later. There are four or five important themes which are a precursor to the next group of amendments, which deal with charging, and if the Minister could give a brief indication to signpost what the Government and the department have in mind in relation to some of these important matters I would grateful. I am sure the Committee would like to share that information.