Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, the speeches that we have heard so far have been extremely powerful and I very much supported the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. I shall refer to Amendment 113B in the name of my noble friend Lady Sherlock, as well as Amendment 113DA in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. I feel strongly that structures should follow the objectives and not that we should adapt the objectives to be the outcome of whatever structures we think we can best achieve, which is what is going on, I fear, in Amendment 113B. Amendment 113DA is simply wrong and I am frankly amazed that the DWP has come forward with this proposition. It is morally offensive and I do not know from where it has come. Like others we have the CSA engraved on our hearts. The 1992 legislation was a catastrophe primarily because it insisted on overturning existing court objectives and becoming retrospective, which means that the new system never caught up even though it was entirely well intentioned. I remember defending our intentions on the 2000 legislation in front of the committee chaired at the time by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. We found it difficult to persuade the Treasury to budge beyond a £10 hand-back to women, so we could never get women to co-operate in setting the CSA on their old partners, as there was little in it for them. The moves established by my noble friend in 2008 to allow women to keep all their maintenance was a triumph, but the problem with voluntarism, which also accompanied it, meant that it became a charter for bullies who did not want to pay, as indicated by my noble friend Lady Lister. We know that the people who pay are the men who need to pay most, not the men who need to pay least. They are the men who have been married, divorced, are older, earn more, have a profound attachment to their children and expect and want to pay. They are honourable and decent men and they are the ones who pay most. They pay and behave admirably. We also know, however, the ones who do not pay. They are the young, feckless men who have never actually lived with the child, who is perhaps the result of an overnight relationship, if we can dignify it with that term—a casual sexual act. They think that they were trapped. There are the chaotic self-employed who never get their accounts right and never find the money to pay for their children. A group that surprised me are the men in uniform who are often very bitter, judgmental and followers of the language of fault—““She had an affair so it is her fault and I don’t pay””—with little regard for the children. Finally, there is the group mentioned by my noble friend Lady Lister—the men who have remarried, with second families whose new partner is often very hostile to any payment. These men change their address, their job, their name, and even their country to avoid paying. Add to those problems a flaky computer and the problems of HMT, which is not only unwilling for women to keep their money but refuses to share key information so that NRPs can be tracked through their current records. We were not allowed to deduct even a £5 benefit payment at source. It would have been obvious for HMT computers to talk to DWP computers, but that was not possible either. It is no wonder that there has been a struggle ever since. I fear that increasingly—with these measures, I am convinced of it—the concept of child support has taken a wrong turning in this country. Unless we accept the amendments moved so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and my noble friend Lady Sherlock, that wrong turning will become a highway down which the failure to pay child maintenance will rapidly escalate. I strongly believe that statutory payment should be not the last resort but the first. That is how we establish the appropriate level of money that should be paid; you establish a speedy pattern of payment. We know from Australia and all the international research that unless you establish payment early and ensure that it is paid regularly for at least a year, it dies within 18 months or two years. Establish payment early and get it paid regularly and there is a hope that you will get amicable contact arrangements. Then the whole thing becomes a virtuous circle. Having voluntary payment in which the father can bully his way out of payment, as he too often has done, means that it never gets established. If instead we had statutory payment to begin with and then after six months or a year following regular, reliable payments the reward was voluntary negotiations, that would be wonderful. That would combine the best of all worlds. You would establish the pattern of payment, and then, if the father co-operates in that activity, you could allow that couple to make their own future arrangements. That way the child does not suffer. This way, I fear that the rights of the child to income and support from the father—it is the father in all but 3 per cent of cases—are going to get lost in what I have to say is the department pursuing cost cutting rather than ensuring adequate support for children. We know that regularly paid maintenance is not only good for children in the signal that it sends from fathers about being committed to their children’s lives, but that it can be the payment above all—all the Alan Marsh research shows this—that lifts a lone parent with a couple of children from below the poverty line to above it. It can be transforming. It is like privatised, old fashioned family credit if it is paid and paid regularly. It will be so paid only if it is established early, and that means through a statutory system in which good behaviour allows you to go on to the voluntary path. I very much fear that in going down the path not just of voluntarism but of trying to get rid of CMEC, which at least was trying very hard to ensure that money was paid to children, we will lose the real benefits that are available to children through the poverty objectives and we will be overcome by the structural problems of seeking to reduce costs. That is highly unfortunate.