Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I have enormous respect for my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, which I know all noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, share. I am grateful to him for his amendment and to all noble Lords for their contributions. I have listened carefully—and not, I have to say, without trepidation—to the detailed points made by my noble and learned friend and all other noble Lords who have spoken. I am glad that we have also had a debate within the debate about charging. I emphasise again that the Government’s reforms and particularly charges need to be seen in the wider context. Perhaps I may start by setting out some of the historical contrast. When the Child Support Act was taken through Parliament in 1991 one of its primary aims was to recoup the money that the Government spent on benefits. This was achieved by reducing lone parents’ benefits by the sum that we were able to collect from non-resident parents. Parents on benefits had to use the scheme in order to further this aim. That was a scheme of its time and was set up with the most noble of intentions, namely reforming a court-based system that was not working. Today we start in a different place. Lone parents no longer have their benefits reduced at all when child maintenance is received and this Government have been proud to announce that we will extend this to universal credit. We have greater ambitions. We see a key part of the reforms as expanding the support for parents to collaborate. We no longer require parents to use the CSA. We do not want it to be the default option. Where they can collaborate, we believe that that is fundamentally better for parents and children. That is why we cannot accept my noble and learned friend’s amendment. The proposal would set up a system where the state would be obliged to try to arbitrate. We specifically think that that is what will happen if we use the reasonable-steps test, which surely requires some sort of judgment as to whether an applicant has done all that could be expected to reach a family-based arrangement with the ex-partner. We cannot see any way to collect hard evidence to show that a parent with care had taken reasonable steps without an inappropriate degree of intrusiveness. We do not believe that the state should try to monitor whether a conversation has taken place about collaboration between two private individuals, the parents. We cannot see how to make this work, not least because parents could quite fairly challenge the state’s discretionary decisions, leading to delays in maintenance flowing and acrimony in the system.