Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

Public Bill Committee, 24 July 2007.

Clause 6

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I beg to move amendment No. 68, in clause 6, page 2, line 27, after ‘fees’, insert

‘to a person who has failed to pay an amount of child support maintenance’.

It is a pleasure, Mr. Chope, to serve under your chairmanship for the first time. This is my first contribution to these debates, but I promise it will not be my last. Having spent the last couple of weeks learning for myself the obligations of parenthood, I have been afforded a degree of time to study the evidence given to the Committee and the debates that have taken place so far.

Amendment No. 68 and subsequent amendments relate to the subject of fees and the potential of the new Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission to charge for its services. They are matters about which there is the potential for some controversy.

I note that at point No. 10 in his written submission, Professor Nick Wikeley said:

“The question of charging fees will doubtless be controversial”.

He went on to say:

“The obvious point is that charging fees is unlikely to be effective if customer service remains at current levels.”

We will come to that when we discuss a subsequent amendment.

With amendment No. 68, I wish to probe the Government’s intentions about the circumstances in which they intend to charge fees. The note in the evidence that was kindly given to Members in a folder in advance of our deliberations is pretty opaque on the matter. Things were not made a great deal clearer when I read the oral evidence taken during the Committee’s first two sittings.

In evidence, Lord McKenzie said:

“No decision has been made on charging yet.”

However, even from the evidence, the nature and purpose of the charging regime that the Government seek to introduce was fairly fuzzy and opaque. On the one hand, Lord McKenzie said that he did not wish to

“force people—particularly low-income families—out of the system and prevent them from entering into proper and effective maintenance agreements.”

Hilary Reynolds thought that it was

“highly unlikely that charging would start before 2010”.——[Official Report, Child Maintenance and Other Payments Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2007; c. 12.]

However, that does not preclude it starting before that date, although the Government’s note on the matter is slightly clearer. Will the Minister clarify the timing on charging?

Although Lord McKenzie said that he did not wish low-income families to be penalised by charging, he also said:

“Clearly we would wish people to be incentivised to use private agreements...and therefore, I suppose, not to use the system unnecessarily if it can be avoided and if it is not appropriate.”——[Official Report, Child Maintenance and Other Payments Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2007; c. 13.]

If the purpose of charging is at least in part to incentivise people to make private agreements, the flip-side is that if the charging regime is pervasive it will serve to disincentivise people from making an application to CMEC.

The purpose of the amendment is to try to narrow the range of people to whom fees may be charged. Specifically—the Minister made this point in oral evidence—fees may be useful in cases when people such as non-resident parents fail to discharge their obligations, as the fee would be more like a penalty. The amendment suggests that fees should be payable by those who fail to comply with their obligations—in this case, by failing to pay child support maintenance.

It would help if the Minister made clear his intentions about the range of people to whom charges might be applied. Clause 6 leaves it wide open. Fees could be charged to any and all people who interact with CMEC in any way, whether parents with care or non-resident parents. They could be charged in a range of circumstances. It has been explained that the issue is not principally about cost recovery. None the less, a charging regime that leaves open the possibility that a level of charges might be introduced for all applicants, including parents with care, that is sufficient to incentivise private agreements—in other words, add a sufficient amount to disincentivise people from choosing CMEC as their first option—could be a boon to that type of charging.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

As ever, the hon. Gentleman is making a measured case. However, does he agree that, even if we do not want to tie down explicitly to the text of the Bill any instructions to CMEC, it would be unfortunate if the charging regime were to be operated penally in any way? It is one thing to give a measure of incentive, but it would be another to depart from cost structure or seek to punish individuals who chose to use the service.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I agree with it in the sense that a charging regime must not punish people simply for their choice of interacting with CMEC. The existence of a child maintenance support system is a public good, so to charge people willy-nilly to interact with the service seems wrong. The amendment would make it clear that, in a certain category of cases of those who fail to pay an amount of child support maintenance—those who have gone through the CMEC system and have not complied with their obligations—a charge might be a useful additional incentive to encourage them to meet their obligations.

The Minister has rightly made it clear that the importance of the Bill is that it encourages those who interact with the child support system to fulfil their responsibilities. He has said continually that one of the major reasons for the failure of the current child support system is that many non-resident parents—mainly men—are not meeting their financial obligations in quite disgraceful ways. The amendment would allow fees to be charged in such cases, but it would exclude charging to be allowed in the generality of cases for all parents with care or non-resident parents.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s argument with interest. I am mostly in agreement with him, but I am concerned that the amendment might put pressure on people to enter a voluntary agreement that may not necessarily be in their interests if fee charging is allowed and they fail to enter a voluntary arrangement. I accept his argument when people reach the stage at which they fail to honour their obligations, but I am worried that such a proposal might become a problem at an earlier stage by forcing them into voluntary agreements that are not necessarily in the interests of one party.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

Perhaps I have not explained myself clearly enough. In a sense, the hon. Gentleman supports my argument. A charging regime, as the Bill allows, under which charges can be levied on all classes of people who interact with CMEC, could serve such a purpose. It could put pressure on people to enter into voluntary agreements. I do not know what level of charges the Minister has in mind. If it is to be set at £100 and there is a £10 disregard, it could effectively be 10 weeks’ maintenance for a benefit case and a significant disincentive.

The purpose of the amendment is to say that charges should not apply automatically just because a person has applied to CMEC if the voluntary agreement had fallen through, for example. Charges should apply only when a person has been through the CMEC system and the non-resident parent has been asked to pay money. If, in such cases, the non-resident parent has failed to pay the child support maintenance to which he is obligated, charges could then apply. In other cases, they would not.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

I am not necessarily opposed to the amendment, but is there not a danger that the fees will become an add-on to the existing arrears? Does it necessarily help the parent with care to get the money? Will the hon. Gentleman make it clear that the situation in which the maintenance is paid first and the fees separately would only come into play after the parent with care has received any maintenance that is due?

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I am grateful for that intervention. I intend to go on in the subsequent amendment, which I know that the hon. Gentleman supports, to make the wider case against the fees. I cannot imagine that any Committee member would disagree with the argument that the payment of maintenance should take precedence over the payment of fees. Will the Minister say whether that is the Government’s position as well?

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

I want to pick up on one area that the hon. Gentleman referred to. In our evidence-taking sessions, we asked the Minister, Lord McKenzie of Luton, what split of cases the Government wanted to see going to the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission versus going to private arrangements. In that discussion, he confirmed that the Government had no intention of using the fee-charging structure to reach a particular target or split of cases between CMEC and the voluntary arrangements. He said:

“We want to use them”—

presumably the fees—

“to encourage people to make choices that leave them in a position that we and they believe is right.”——[Official Report, Child Maintenance and Other Payments Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2007; c. 20.]

That indicates that CMEC has no guide to the purpose of the fees. They are clearly not about cost recovery. That was ruled out in the evidence given by Hilary Reynolds. The Government do not appear to have a view about the number of cases that use CMEC versus a private arrangement. CMEC is not being given a steer about how to set fees or what the purpose of the fees is—in fact, it is getting no guidance at all.

The Minister needs to be clear about the purpose of the fees. If the purpose is not cost recovery, there must be some other point. One cannot separate setting the fees against the incentive or disincentive effect that they are going to have. By setting the fee, we are implicitly making a judgment about the extent to which we wish people to use CMEC. I do not think that we can separate those two issues. There is a fundamental confusion, which the Minister needs to address.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

Once again, it is a pleasure to have you chairing our proceedings, Mr. Chope. I am grateful to those hon. Members who have spoken in the debate and for the points raised by the hon. Members for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey and for Forest of Dean, which I will try to cover in my response.

Let me begin by pointing out the importance of clause 2(1), which we discussed before. Any decision about fees that CMEC might make in the future has to be made in the context of the overall objective, which is clearly set out in clause 2(1). Any test that might be applied to a proposal to have fees will have to be run against that objective.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey raised the concern that the charges might become penal or that they might disincentivise people or produce undesirable outcomes. In that case, the commission will not be meeting its obligation under clause 2(1). Therefore, it is an important part of the test.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I do not wish to disagree with the Minister about that because I think that it is clearly what we all wish. Does he not agree that as a matter of administrative law, the commission as a public body will always and at all times have to act reasonably—it will not want to attract attention from judicial review—if it sets the level of fees at any level which could at least arguably be seen to be unreasonable as far as the individual is concerned?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

That is quite a legitimate point. It puts further constraint on the commission’s discretion to introduce or consider any fee regime.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

The Minister is being reassuring, as he is wont to be, which is—

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Reassuring.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

Exactly. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

It was clear from the evidence of the Minister’s colleague, Lord McKenzie, that one of the motivations behind the power to charge is in relation to incentivising private agreements. However, for every incentive there is an equal and opposite disincentive. How does the Minister intend to get the balance right? If private agreements are genuinely incentivised, how will he prevent the charges disincentivising people from going to CMEC when they need to?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I shall come to that after I have dealt with some of the other interventions.

The Government recognise the importance of ensuring that a charging regime does not dissuade vulnerable or low-income parents from applying to the commission in the first place. Indeed, I remind Committee members that the White Paper said that

“the clear burden of charging should fall on the non-resident parent and not the parent with care.”

We would expect any charging regime put forward by the commission to reflect precisely that. I remind the hon. Gentleman that any charging regime must first secure the approval of the Secretary of State. That will be followed by a further check on any proposal, which I shall come to in a moment.

Charges may be incurred for a variety of reasons. The intention is that the majority of them, such as penalties for late payment and enforcement measures, will fall only on non-resident and non-compliant parents. However, in a few situations, allowing the commission to charge a fee at an early stage of the process—possibly to both parents—might provide it with a tool to help it achieve its objectives, of which I reminded the Committee at the outset.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I thank the Minister for giving way again, but members of the Committee must be clear on this matter. He mentioned charges for late payment. We know from our constituency casework that one of the defects of the current arrangements is that money has been collected from the non-resident parent but for some reason has not found its way through the agency to the parent with care—for example, either an employer is delinquent or there has been an administrative glitch. Will the Minister assure us that CMEC will do its level best to ensure that no arbitrary charge is levied on those who are not being delinquent but who have merely been caught up in an administrative problem?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I am happy to give that reassurance. We are making the changes precisely to achieve that degree of improvement in performance and we have been making that stipulation for such circumstances.

I referred to circumstances in which fees might be applicable, and it might be possible to envisage a small application fee coming into the process, as is the case in a number of other child maintenance systems in other parts of the world. That might encourage both parents to consider whether a voluntary arrangement might be more effective for them.

Above all, we consider it too early to put a restriction in the Bill, as the amendment would do. I would not want to fetter the commission in any way at this stage, in terms of proposals that it might make in respect of charges. It is important to give the commission the option of putting forward proposals on charges and not to say that charges in respect of certain things cannot be considered. The details of any charging proposals that might come forward would be more appropriately laid out in regulations. That is because the commission should play a key role in finalising the detail, and also—the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey sought reassurance on this—because fees will not be introduced until 2010 at the earliest, and then only as clients move into the new system.

I hope that I have reassured the Committee that all regulations made under the clause in respect of fees will be subject to affirmative resolution; that is the second lock on the process. First, any proposals must secure the Secretary of State’s approval, then they must go through the affirmative resolution process, under which they would be subject to additional parliamentary scrutiny.

I hope that I have given hon. Members the reassurance that they sought on fees and that it is sufficient to encourage the hon. Gentleman—whom, incidentally, I must congratulate on becoming a parent—to withdraw the amendment.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I am grateful to the Minster for his response and final remarks. His reassurance has certainly satisfied me and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I beg to move amendment No. 84, in clause 6, page 2, line 27, at end insert—

‘(1A) The Secretary of State may only make regulations under subsection (1) when he is satisfied that the Commission is capable of providing a satisfactory service to parents and children in terms of its duties under this Act.’.

Although the Minister offered reassurances on the way in which the Government intend to decide how charges could be applied, a much broader issue needs to be raised in relation to the charging regime, and the amendment seeks to do that. It relates to the evidence that the Committee heard from Professor Wikeley, who said that the obvious point is that charging fees is unlikely to be effective if customer service remains at current levels.

The amendment seeks to establish on the face of the Bill an equation between the ability to introduce charges and the ability of the new organisation to deliver its services competently, something that has been sadly lacking from the current Child Support Agency regime. That was debated in earlier sittings, but I make no apology for returning to it.

I noted the Minister’s comments about morale among CSA staff in an earlier debate about improvements under the operational improvement plan. That is obviously important, and I would be interested if he were willing to lay before the House—perhaps in the Library—a copy of the recent staff survey that Lord McKenzie referred to, so that members of the Committee can see in detail the opinions of staff on the range of issues that are, no doubt, pertinent to this amendment and others.

Morale among CSA claimants, rather than staff, would be a better measure of the degree to which it is performing its functions effectively, although I do not think that I need to go through the evidence in detail.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman’s comment that the morale of the claimants would be a good measure of effectiveness. As he said, the morale of staff is also important, but another good measure would be how often hon. Members have to use the hotline, should the hotline still be available when the new service is in place. I would like the Minister to reaffirm whether hon. Members will still have access to the hotline because, unfortunately, in cases of desperation, we need to use it frequently.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I hesitate to speak for the Minister on those matters, although I note that, in the evidence session, his colleague in the Lords, Lord McKenzie, made clear that the MP hotline would continue. Without wishing to speak for the Minister as a matter of habit, I hope that I have made that point clear. However, the wider point that the hon. Lady made is absolutely right. The amendment, which would establish an equation between the competence of the organisation and the ability to level fees, would allow a much wider range of measures to be employed. It is not simply a matter of competence.

On Second Reading, hon. Members on both sides of the House referred to the hard-working nature of the staff and the fact that many of them are talented, competent and yet are struggling under the weight of a system that has been incompetently devised. I am not sure that the new system will mark a huge improvement on that, but we will, no doubt, come to that as we work through the Bill. That point is important. The major reason why we are in Committee debating the Bill is that the current system has been such a hideous failure for so many of our constituents, and every hon. Member in the Committee will have had dreadful experiences with that at a constituency level. The Minister, in his closing remarks, seemed slightly firmer on the introduction of charges in 2010 than we had previously allowed—he made it clear that charges would be introduced in 2010 at the earliest. It would be interesting to know whether he intends to introduce the regulations in 2010 or whether he does not yet know. I suspect that he may say that that is a matter for the commission.

In any case, if the level of competence and administrative efficiency in CMEC and the legacy organisations has not improved, introducing charges would add insult to injury to users. For people who have suffered for many years from not having their maintenance obligations effectively dealt with, levying charges would be hopelessly wrong if the new organisation is unable to meet the higher standards set by the Minister. Because of that, I want to return to the questions that were raised about staffing levels in the organisation.

Significant falls in the number of staff are planned during the 18-month period that concludes next year. The Minister said that those reductions relate to the operational improvement plan that is currently being implemented, which he said has been through its peak phase and is now winding down. I would be interested to hear about any evidence that suggests that the operational improvement plan has been successful because it would cut to the burden of the amendment, which concerns the administrative efficiency and competence of the organisation.

From a constituency perspective, the Minister has been helpful with a particular case and I remain grateful for his assistance. In all too many cases that are less complicated and unique than that one, I cannot say in all honesty that I have noticed a great deal of improvement in the past 18 months. Other hon. Members may have had different experiences. In my experience, it is extremely hard to find out what is happening in cases that end up in the Bolton special case unit.

John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con) indicated assent.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I notice that the hon. Gentleman agrees. I remain of the view that, with the significant staff reductions that are planned, there is a risk that performance in the child support system could go from bad to worse. The Minister will no doubt disagree with that, but he ought to agree with the purpose of the amendment. He has regularly made the point that the creation of the new organisation is a major shift, not a re-badging or re-branding exercise. The reason why he presents it as a major shift is that he is trying to change the culture and operation of the organisation. If that is his objective, I hope that he will support and welcome the amendment because it would allow a mechanism for proving his faith.

John Penrose (Conservative, Weston-Super-Mare)

The amendment would bring about an assessment of the overall or average level of competence. The hon. Gentleman made the point that if CMEC falls below an average level of competence, it would add insult to injury to levy charges. However, does he accept that the experience of the Child Support Agency has been that different classes of case pose different levels of difficulty? Therefore, measuring an average level of performance does not address the problems that people are experiencing because some classes of case are more likely to be swallowed up by the black hole that is Bolton. It may be necessary to table an amendment so that the assessment of whether charges are acceptable would assess not only the average level of performance, but individual levels of performance in specific cases. If CMEC falls below an acceptable level of performance, it may be necessary to think about reimbursing charges that might be levied on those specific occasions.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I am grateful for that intervention—the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. While it is not specifically within the scope of the amendment, I hope that the Minister will take it on board. In his earlier response, he made it clear that one option is for charges to be levied in certain categories of cases, rather than more generally.

Concerns have been expressed about individuals who use the CSA in a vexatious way in order to apply pressure to the other party, or other cases in which there is non-compliance. Those are precisely the sort of cases to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. They are often the more complicated cases in which things are more likely to go wrong in the administrative system, without the safeguard that he proposes. I hope that the Minister will respond to that, and particularly to the point about cases in which the individual has been let down by the administration and in which charges should either not be levied or be reimbursed. That is absolutely right.

It would be monstrously wrong for CMEC or the CSA to say, “We are going to levy charges, even though we have got it horribly wrong in your case.” Sadly, that is the experience of far too many people throughout the country. That is why Janet Allbeson of One Parent Families expressed in her evidence to the Select Committee her concern about the introduction of charging by saying:

“let us put charging on hold; let us see how the system beds down; let us see who is using the new system and why they are using it and then think about charging and how that fits into it. It is too early, and can just antagonise people and create unnecessary tension and aggravation.”

It is in precisely the sort of cases referred to by the hon. Gentleman that unnecessary tension and aggravation will be felt particularly strongly. In making a general assessment about the performance of the organisation, we must consider not only the amendment, but performance in specific cases when deciding whether or not charging is appropriate. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the important equation that we seek to establish.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I rise to reflect on the matter, rather than to reach a substantive conclusion, and I have a number of points in mind. The first basic point is that we would not be debating the Bill, if the CSA were doing its job at the moment. We know that radical change is required, and that change must be towards competence and satisfactory performance. That is self-evident and is no reflection on the individuals, who are doing their best, or on many of the people who pass through its portals.

As a kind of mind game—I suppose it is the type of game that one plays in a glide-path towards the end of a parliamentary career—I occasionally fantasise about the Minister’s objections. I will do that on the grounds that I may be more terse than he is. I do not advise him to accept the amendment as such, but I speak in spirit rather than in detail. We are delighted to have the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey back in Committee, all the more so as I now realise why he was away.

My first objection—I will be rude to the Minister for a minute—is that many of us are somewhat cynical about certification by a Secretary of State in any matter, whether it involves compliance with legislation on human rights or otherwise. The amendment would effectively require the Secretary of State or, more realistically in an individual case a junior Minister, to certify that there was a satisfactory performance.

My second point, which is more helpful to the hon. Gentleman, is that however good CMEC is, it is not the only party to the transactions. The matter depends on the compliance and behaviour of other people and frankly, one of the problems is that many parents who are absent or non-resident have no intention of complying, however hard we try. It is offensive to people, not least to those who are trying to care for their children, when that situation arises, and I fully understand the Minister’s wish to pursue such matters.

I have some subsidiary concerns. Capability is not necessarily the same as performance. Even if the commission is capable of performing a satisfactory service, it does not necessarily do so in every particular case. Similarly, it might deteriorate having reached certification by the Secretary of State on the back of its fees. Those are substantive issues.

The nub of the argument is what is a satisfactory service. We must expect the new commission to perform in a satisfactory way in the great majority of cases. Our concern, and the reason for the new measure, is that the present agency does not perform adequately in the broad mass of cases and performs execrably in a minority of cases. What is needed is a normal performance—a default function that works—and for proper attention to be paid to individual cases which, because of their category or an administrative glitch, do not work. Only then can the Minister claim success. The inference of the amendment, with which I agree, is that at that point, and on that basis, it is reasonable to start charging.

It is worth spending some time on certain issues: first, we should not be trapped by a date. As One Parent Families said in evidence, there should be a perception that everything is working and is in a stable state, and that the problems are finite and manageable. It may then be appropriate for a fee to be charged. Those are perfectly sensible criteria.

Secondly, there must be an understanding at that point that individual difficulties that arise—God knows, they arise with applications for passports, driving licences and so on—can be handled satisfactorily. I would have thought it self-evident that fees should not be charged, or should be rebated, when there has been a failure of service, especially when the service is generally satisfactory. The Minister needs to go a bit further in relation to compensation. Privately, I have always been a bit uneasy that the existing agency, faced with evidence of its failure in a particular case, tends to say, “We were right to check the 50 quid and tell the person it is a compensation payment,” which is not necessarily always appropriate. It is not as good as fixing the system.

The Minister needs to consider not only the return of fees but compensation, when appropriate. We touched on, but did not explore, the function of CMEC and its responsibilities to its customers in respect of its ability to be sued, for example. If someone had to make a private arrangement and it had been validated by a lawyer, that lawyer would be liable in respect of professional negligence and so forth. If CMEC is the broker of these arrangements, albeit the broker of last resort, it has an obligation to deliver properly.

We know exactly what the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey is arguing for, and it is a worthy aim not to rush into things and not to charge fees where there will clearly be continuing come-back. It is important that when fees are charged there is a good reason for it, and they should not be a loss leader. We should not regard fees as an excuse for not paying the maintenance, which must be the first charge on anyone who is contributing. There should be stability, and a proper regime for redress in cases of failure. I am sure that that is what the Minister wants to achieve, and it is the Committee’s duty to spend a little time encouraging him to do so.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

I want to make a few brief points on the amendment. We are here in the first instance because of the failure of the Child Support Agency and the point made in Sir David Henshaw’s report that a clean break is needed. However, I fear that introducing fees will add new complexity to an already difficult situation. The Bill states that the Secretary of State may make regulation to introduce fees, when he is satisfied that the commission is capable of providing a satisfactory service.

The Minister has already accepted that the CSA is not fit for purpose, hence the Bill. However, I draw a parallel with tax credits, when Minister after Minister stood up in the House and said that there was nothing wrong and everything was working fine, in the teeth of evidence from hon. Members on both sides of the House who had problem after problem with tax credits. Although I have every faith in the Minister, we need an independent assessment of when the agency is performing satisfactorily.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Would the hon. Gentleman like me to describe my discussions with my local welfare rights office the other day? We produced a precise contrast between the means-tested benefits, notably tax credits, which were generating a huge amount of casework, and the very small number of cases where there was an entitlement, such as to a pension, and where administrative issues do not normally seem to arise.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. My point concerns the system and how we decide when it is working satisfactorily. We all agree that the CSA, despite the best efforts of most of its staff, is not working in a satisfactory manner, and there are many reasons for that. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey mentioned the number of staff. There are obviously resources implications, as there have been from the outset, and there are IT problems. There is a host of problems, which has undermined public confidence and the confidence of most MPs in the CSA.

We all want CMEC to be different. We want it to work and to provide a better system. The priority must therefore be to get CMEC up and running, working well and enjoying the confidence of both non-resident parents and parents with care. I was interested in the Minister’s statement, which gave the impression that CMEC may be considering introducing charges from a fairly early stage. That would create unnecessary complexity and would lead to disagreement between parties.

I suspect, if I may be cynical for a moment, that the reason for charges is to encourage people into voluntary agreements or a standard form that may be available on the net. That is fair and well where parents agree, but in many cases parents cannot agree, and CMEC will become involved. Charges are not going to help matters in complicated cases where one parent is being very difficult. Whoever has to pay the charge, it will be another piece of grit in the oyster in trying to reach agreement between the parents—it will irritate and lead to trouble.

There is also the problem of the level of fees, on which there has been no indication as yet. I appreciate that that is a matter for CMEC, but unless the fees are on a staggered basis, they may not mean much to someone who is earning a reasonable amount of money. For someone on low income or on benefit, however, they may make a huge difference to the level of child maintenance.

Fees are a cul de sac that we should not go down at this stage. The better enforcement that is promised by the Bill is a better way of ensuring that those who are liable to pay child maintenance will pay it. Fees should be considered only once we are all satisfied through an independent appraisal that CMEC is doing its job and that it is making things better for parents with care and children.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

I have three relatively brief points. What assessment has the Department made of the relative cost of entering into private agreements? Clearly, if a private agreement is a relatively straightforward standard agreement that can be downloaded from the internet and entered into without taking legal advice, it will be fairly cheap. On the other hand a private agreement that meets the requirements of both parents as well as those of the children could be more costly. That needs to be taken into account when setting the level of fees.

If entering into a private agreement is relatively expensive and the fee is not set at an equivalent level, people will use CMEC instead of using private agreements. That will lead to a situation that the Government have said that they do not want, namely CMEC being the default mechanism. The other thing that is not really laid out is whether any fee structure that is set up will involve a flat fee, a fixed monetary amount, a means-tested amount or a figure linked to the income or amount of maintenance. What is the Minister’s view?

I have asked that because, according to the graph in the regulatory impact assessment showing the number of cases and the level of maintenance, the majority of cases involve amounts of money that are not very large, although they are a lot for the parent with care. If the fees are high enough to have any effect, they will be significant compared with the amount of maintenance in the vast bulk of cases, but very small in the smaller number of cases that involve a significant amount of maintenance. Does the Minister intend to structure the charges so that they vary according to the income of the parent?

My final point, which has been touched on by a number of Committee members, is whether any fee structure will be worth the candle if it is specifically designed not to be a cost-recovery mechanism. Given the complexity of the maintenance system in general and the amount of money that is likely to be collected in fees in this case, will it be sensible to have a fee structure, a charging mechanism and a method of collecting the money? Has the Department thought about the amount that will be collected in fees and the number of people who will have to pay them? If the fee level is low and the number of parents—with care or without—fairly small, it will not be worth the trouble of setting up a complex structure. We might end up with one of those governmental situations in which the staffing and running costs outweigh the amounts of money being moved around to the extent that it makes no sense at all.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

Hon. Members have raised a wide range of points. I was going to reassure the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire that there is, of course, going to be access for MPs pursuing constituents’ cases, but she has gone.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey raised a number of points. First, he asked whether I could place the recent staff survey before Parliament. Yes, I shall be more than happy to do that. Then he spoke about staffing. He knows that we have increased staffing levels in the agency in recent years as part of the operational improvement plan to deal with a considerable legacy of issues and problems in the agency. A concerted effort is taking place during the three years of that plan to resolve those problems before we move on to the new commission arrangement, but this is only the first year of the plan. The agency, in common with other parts of the Department, has a mission to achieve head-count numbers.

We envisage that numbers will reduce gradually as we implement the head-count plan. That should take the numbers back, broadly, to where they were before the boost to staffing levels associated with the operational improvement plan. The hon. Gentleman should remember that if the OIP does what we expect it to do, a lot of issues will be removed from the agency, and as we move into the new arrangement there will be different levels of people coming into the statutory system. It will be for the commission, once it is set up, to decide the staffing level that is appropriate for it to run the services that it is deemed to have to run. It is important to understand that the current trajectory on staffing numbers does not presume decisions that the commission will make, and the hon. Gentleman should not do so either. The numbers that are published relate to the agency and to the head-count plan that applies to the Department.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

The Minister rightly enjoins us not to make assumptions about CMEC staffing levels. Does that imply that resources would be made available should the commissioner and his board at CMEC decide that they need more staff? The Minister makes the point that one year into the operational improvement plan, staffing is on a downward trend that is expected to go through to March 2008. The reduction is significant. Does he have early evidence that he can give the Committee on whether, in that first year, the operational improvement plan has succeeded to the extent that a reduction of 2,000 staff by March 2008 can be justified?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

Let me see whether I can reassure the hon. Gentleman on that with some of the results from the first year of the operational improvement plan. So far, 45,000 more children are in receipt of maintenance; a higher proportion of non-resident parents are paying or using direct maintenance, 61 per cent. of whom are on new schemes; the number of uncleared applications, which was one of the big problems in the agency, is already down by 31 per cent.; applications are being cleared far faster with 61 per cent. being cleared in 12 weeks, up from 53 per cent. before the plan; telephony is certainly improving; and the extra releases in IT are taking place to fix some of the problems inherent in that system. Those are encouraging results from just the first year of the operational improvement plan, which has two years to go.

With the operational improvement plan, we are focusing on the outcomes in terms of the agency’s performance, which is the important thing to keep an eye on. As the problems are resolved and as the IT releases go in, a lot less will have to be done clerically. That will facilitate a reduction in head count without jeopardising the continuous improvement in the performance of the agency that we are looking for.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey and others have raised concern about the situation in Bolton, and I hope that I can reassure them. Thirty-four thousand of the most complex cases in the agency were transferred to Bolton for a concerted drive to try to tackle them. That is a tough job, and I willingly accept that there have been difficulties in the early phase of the operation. I will not dwell entirely on those cases, but I will return to them in a moment. The fact that those 34,000 really tough cases have gone to Bolton means that agency staff who were dealing with them are free to deal with other cases, which is helping to improve performance.

We want to see results coming out of the Bolton mission, but it is early days. So far, it is administering £15 million in additional maintenance payments as a result of focusing on those problems. Again, part of the solution is getting the IT right, and there are further releases to come for the Bolton operation this year, which should help in getting on top of the situation.

The hon. Member for Daventry asked about the compensation scheme, which will continue essentially as it is under CMEC. However, it is open for CMEC to consider, in the light of its operations as it comes into being, whether it wants to make further changes. At this stage I envisage it taking on the existing compensation scheme.

The hon. Member for Angus asked, in connection with the amendment, how we will know how the commission is doing. He wanted to know whether we can assess its performance before it comes back to us or to Parliament asking to implement any fee charging scheme. When discussing clause 9, we will look at the reporting system and the annual report that the commission must make. There are amendments that we will debate, but it sets out the framework of how the Secretary of State and Parliament will have a regular check on how the commission is doing against the performance criteria in the Bill. Therefore, there will be a way of measuring how it is doing against its objectives. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the critical thing is to get performance, delivery to clients and enforcement right. That is what we need to keep our relentless focus on. That is the point of the fundamental change and the clean break that we are making with this Bill.

The hon. Member for Forest of Dean raised some interesting points about fees. He wondered whether behavioural impacts will arise from the structure of fees. I am sure that that will happen, and that is one of the issues that the Commission will have to think about, if it chooses to come forward with a proposal for fees.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

Will the Minister give way?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

In a moment.

One of the things that we will want to see is its assessment on the potential behavioural impacts of any fee structure that it proposes. It goes without saying that we would not be inclined to support a fee structure that has detrimental or adverse impacts. The hon. Member for Forest of Dean asked whether the fee structure will be flat, varied or means-tested. That is entirely an issue for the Commission, so I repeat to him that any fee proposals that the commission comes forward with are subject to affirmative debate in Parliament, so they will get intense scrutiny before they are implemented. That will be the point at which we can look at the questions that he has raised, should the situation arise.

I shall give way to the hon. Lady, but first I repeat the answer that I gave to her earlier question, while she was out of the Room. She asked whether MPs will continue to have access to the systems to pursue cases. Yes, they will.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

I thank the Minister for that answer. I was trying to make a wider point, because he gave that answer in the evidence session.

With regard to the fee structure, I have a practical suggestion. Can the new scheme be given a six month run-in period while we see how it beds down before the fee-charging scheme is introduced later? I mention that because of particular cases involving fathers who are very difficult to track down. When such fathers are tracked down, it is very difficult to get payments out of them. I am worried that those people will disappear altogether. Could we not see how the system beds down, and then introduce the fee-charging scheme?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I am afraid that I cannot agree with that suggestion, for a very simple reason. It is important to understand the principle on which we are making these changes. We are moving to a commissioning basis in the system of child maintenance. I really do not want to fetter the commission in the decisions that it is going to make. I understand why the hon. Lady has said that, and I am sure that a whole host of suggestions about making various changes will be made. However, the more that we hem in the commission, the less clean a break it will be. That is how it has to be, and I want those decisions to rest with the commission.

As I have said, if the commission comes forward with fee-charging proposals, it will need the approval of the Secretary of State and an affirmative resolution from Parliament. It is not as if the subject is being lost from scrutiny and that there will be no opportunity to raise the points that the hon. Lady has mentioned—far from it. I want the initiative to rest with the Commission, which is the point of the change.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Although I fully understand that the Minister does not want to hamper or fetter the commission in coming up with any fee-charging scheme, or in the general discharge of its functions, would he mind if I put down a marker on the question of costs? The clause, as drafted, has a cost-related fee structure, but does the Minister agree that it is very important that CMEC at least gets a grip on its costs in individual cases, in particular categories, and at the margin in pursuing individual cases? Unless it understands that structure, even if it does not reflect it in the unit charge, it will not be able to manage its job or discharge the work efficiently overall.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and I potentially agree with him. I refer him back to clause 3, which we debated last week. It includes an obligation to the commission to

“exercise its functions both effectively and efficiently”.

One of the tests whether it is functioning efficiently is the way in which it spends its money and handles its costs. I agree with him, and the opportunity for us to assess that is already covered by clause 3.

I shall now return to the core of the amendment, on which the debate hangs. The amendment poses some difficulties, although I understand why it has been tabled. It would require a subjective test of the capability of the commission and of what constitutes a satisfactory service. Any view that the Secretary of State takes on those matters could be open to challenge, which would threaten the validity of any regulations then brought forward.

The amendment would potentially stop the introduction of fees until the new scheme is up and running, when a clearer assessment of the commission’s ability to provide a satisfactory service is possible. That would prevent the commission establishing fees as an integral part of the new scheme. That might be what the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey wants, but such fettering of the commission is not appropriate at this stage.

Let me add, however, that the Child Support Agency charged fees between 1993 and 1995. The regulations allowing them to be charged were revoked, partly because the service that the agency provided at the time was simply not good enough to justify charging a fee. The commission will have that experience in mind when it considers arrangements for any future charging regime and its timing. That will be borne in mind not only by the commission, but by Ministers, and Parliament will bear that precedent in mind if and when charging regulations are laid and considered under the affirmative procedure. Given those reassurances and reminders, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

We have had a good debate and some important points have been made. I should have referred to the experience of charging by the CSA in my opening remarks. The Minister rightly made the point that charging was withdrawn because of issues of effectiveness. Notwithstanding his assurances, I believe that the Bill would be improved by the amendment and I therefore seek to test the Committee’s opinion.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I beg to move amendment No. 57, in clause 6, page 2, line 38, at end insert—

‘(3A) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that the provisions of the Child Support Act 1991 (c. 48) with respect to—

(a) the collection of child support maintenance,

(b) the enforcement of any obligation to pay child support maintenance,

shall apply equally (with any necessary modifications) to fees payable by virtue of regulations under subsection (1).’.

The amendment clarifies the intention behind clause 6(2)(f), which enables regulations to include matters relating to the recovery of fees. The amendment is modelled on section 47(4) of the Child Support Act 1991. Fees will not be an effective tool if they cannot be enforced, which is why the clause originally said that regulations could provide for the recovery of fees. However, we felt that the intent of the provision might not be clear enough, which is why we tabled the amendment.

I am sure that hon. Members remember that section 47(4) of the 1991 Act specifically states that enforcement powers shall apply to fees. However, that section will be repealed with the creation of the new fees provision. Despite the reference in clause 6(2)(f), it could be argued that in its current form the new fees clause does not give the commission the ability to use enforcement powers to collect fees. That is not the intention, so for the avoidance of doubt I am moving this amendment.

The amendment makes no substantive change to the Bill. It simply makes it expressly clear that the enforcement powers available to the commission, including those set out in part 3, may extend to the collection of fees. However it is recognised that some enforcement powers are not proportionate to the collection of fees—I refer to measures that we will come to later such as the removal of passports, curfew orders, commitment to prison, and disqualification from driving. These powers are clearly intended to be used for the collection of unpaid maintenance payments. I assure the Committee that we do not intend to use them just for the collection of fees, and restrictions to that effect will be placed in regulations.

It is appropriate to set out the exact details in secondary legislation, as it will allow any restrictions placed on enforcement measures to be developed as an integral part of the charging regime to which they relate. However, I reiterate the importance we attach to ensuring that the measures are used appropriately. Members of the Committee will of course have the opportunity to scrutinise all regulations made under clause 6; again, they will be subject to affirmative resolution.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I do not want to cavil with the Minister’s intentions, not least when he is reinstating a piece of interesting Conservative legislation. However, one thing has changed. The amendment mentions

“enforcement of any obligation to pay child support maintenance”.

We are bound to focus on CMEC—a public body, albeit in a different form—and the obligations that it may impose. Does that power extend to any obligation that the parties may have undertaken in relation to a private agreement—one that has not been through CMEC—or to any other kind of obligation on the parties? I suspect that widening the means of collection rather than making it exclusive to the Child Support Agency may cause a slight difficulty.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I wish to make one brief point. The Minister made it clear that these sensible and proportionate provisions are necessary to ensure that the Bill operates as the Government intend. Under paragraph (b) of the amendment,

“the enforcement of any obligation to pay child support maintenance, shall apply equally...to fees payable by virtue of regulations under subsection (1).”

Will the Minister clarify whether using the enforcement powers to collect fees will apply only when maintenance is also being collected? For example, if someone has started to pay maintenance but for some reason refuses to pay the fee, can those enforcement powers, which are to be used for the collection of child maintenance, be used to collect the unpaid fee? I suppose that a fee could be levied even in cases where there is a nil maintenance assessment.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

As we begin to tease out this issue—subsection (1) makes it clear that it is about the agency—I have it in mind that the agency may nevertheless be required to pick up on private arrangements in which maintenance is not being paid. The question is whether it can charge fees retrospectively, as if were, on that portion of unpaid maintenance that was missed before it became directly involved?

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I hope that the Minister will explicitly rule out the circumstance described by the hon. Gentleman, as I am sure that it would be against the Government’s intentions as set out by the Minister. I am trying to understand whether the provision would allow the enforcement powers to be used to collect fees when no maintenance was being collected through the enforcement process.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

I want to make a brief point about the welcome intention that the Minister outlined when introducing the amendment. The amendment refers to the fact that the regulations to be used to collect fees shall apply equally, with any necessary modification. I listened carefully to what the Minister said about not using the enforcement mechanisms disproportionately to collect fees, so the use of the phrase “shall apply equally” seems to me to state the opposite intention. Given that that will be in the Bill, and the Minister’s comments will not, I wonder whether a different wording might be more satisfactory.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I shall reply briefly to the points that have been made. The hon. Member for Daventry is seeking to extend the policing powers of the commission into private agreements. That is not what we intend to do. The answer to his question is that fees will not be levied in respect of private cases.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey wanted to know whether enforcement powers could be applied just to fees. No, they could not.

The hon. Member for Forest of Dean wonders why the phrase “shall apply equally” is included. It is to ensure that the legal basis for taking action to pursue maintenance, is also available to pursue fees. Of course, it is restricted in terms of the powers that will be used in the way that I have clarified.

I hope, with those reassurances, that the Committee will accept the amendment.

Clause 7

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

I beg to move amendment No. 38, in clause 7, page 3, line 14, at end insert—

‘(1A) Before any arrangements are made pursuant to subsection (1) above, the Commission must ensure that consideration has been given to how the specific arrangements sought will contribute to the Commission’s main objective of maximising the number of children living apart from one or both of their parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place.’.

Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 39, in clause 8, page 3, line 26, at end insert—

‘(1A) Before any authorisation is given pursuant to subsection (1) above, the Commission must ensure that consideration has been given to how the specific authorisation sought will contribute to the Commission’s main objective of maximising the number of children living apart from one or both of their parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place.’.

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

This clause deals with agency arrangements and the provision of services. I know from our evidence-taking sessions last week and our debates that when CMEC comes into operation, greater use will be made of the voluntary and third sector to provide information services. I welcome that. The amendments seek to place in the Bill what we believe is the prime purpose of the agency and to ensure that that aim is not overlooked when arrangements are made to contract out and for different services and support to be provided by other bodies.

I appreciate that if money can be saved by delivering a service in a different way, that is in itself a laudable aim. But that pursuit of greater administrative efficiency should not be allowed to obscure the importance of delivering the service for which the agency has been set up. The Minister already knows of our concerns about the planned cuts. He has given reassurances about that, which he has repeated this morning. Nevertheless, as we begin to contract out and to use other services, we need to make sure that our prime purpose is to ensure better delivery of service. That is why I quoted the example of making greater use of the third sector in the provision of information services. That is an excellent example, which shows that locally delivered, locally administered voluntary agencies can be much more successful in providing support to parents who seek to make child care arrangements than an arm’s length agency that might not have sufficient staff in the locality to provide information and support.

We also accept, as the Minister pointed out last week, that the use of private debt collection agencies has brought results. We are not opposed to the use of private debt collection agencies. However, we have to be clear about our purpose in moving to the use of such agencies, and that purpose must be the provision of child maintenance and the welfare of the child. The amendment is designed to ensure that that remains the prime purpose for introducing any such contracting or agency arrangements.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I want to return to something that the hon. Gentleman said a moment ago on the commission’s objectives in securing effective maintenance. Does he share my regret that the phrase “and the welfare of the child” does not appear in clause 2?

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

We had a full debate on that last week, and I was disappointed that the Minister could not accept a reasonable amendment that would have set the agency up with that very clear purpose. This measure is not only about collecting money, but putting arrangements in place to ensure that children are properly cared for.

On professional and technical services, I want to make a brief comment about the provision of IT services, which has bedevilled the CSA since its inception. There are still two different computer systems in operation. I know that the Secretary of State said in February in evidence to the Select Committee that the Government intended not to have a new system. However, he also stated that they were happy with the arrangements with EDS and that there was a clear programme to ensure that the problems with the current system would be worked out. I hope that the Minister can update us on the improvements to IT services. I am still experiencing problems in my casework that are caused by the inability of the IT systems to extract the information that is needed.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

It is not only a case of being bedevilled by IT. Some cases are more complicated than others, as we have said before. In complicated cases, such as that of Mr. and Mrs. Jennings who are two grandparents in my constituency who are looking after children who have an absent mother and father, the IT system seems to fail completely. Then, going back to an earlier point, we have to depend on individual caseworkers. Can we have an assurance that the IT system will not be of the average standard used for average cases, but that measures will be built in to allow the software to deal with more complex cases?

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

I agree with the hon. Lady. She has quoted an example in her constituency, and all of us have cases in which the current IT system is not delivering. The Select Committee insisted that before CMEC becomes operational, the Department should provide the House with information on how the computer system will operate. We want an indication from the Minister about what will happen as CMEC is set up and what arrangements will be put in place.

We do not want to deal only with yesterday’s computer solutions—this is the point in the Henshaw report about the CSA having a fresh start and a clean break—because we want to know what arrangements are being put in place to ensure that any replacement or enhancement system can deal with not only the new method of operation, but, more importantly, existing cases. The Minister knows that in the previous sitting I went on about ensuring that historic debt is not forgotten. We must ensure—we need a comment from the Minister—that what he has got planned will ensure that the new systems will perform and that what has bedevilled the CSA in the past will be dealt with more effectively.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I have quite a lot of sympathy with the comments that are being made, and, sadly, assurances are needed in relation to IT systems. I have a different point, which picks up a dialogue about confidentiality that the hon. Member for Angus and I engaged in at the oral evidence session. I have no ideological difficulty whatsoever with either agencies or outsourcing, if that is the most effective thing to do.

One of the attractions of the amendments, which bears on clauses 7 and 8, is that they relate to the agency’s main purpose. However, I have concerns that information may leak out to other persons. If the Minister remembers the oral evidence sitting, we developed the argument that highly confidential information on income, which HMRC does not normally release, will pass from the Inland Revenue to CMEC in order for CMEC to do its job. I do not think that anyone in this Committee is seeking to overturn that.

It is extremely important that that information or any other material, such as medical submissions that appear on the file, stops at that point. The collection of such information is justified by the need to sort out maintenance, but not as part of a fishing expedition that becomes part of the public currency. Those people are private individuals, and we are all aware of the sensitivity of the cases. All that I am asking for is the Minister’s assurance that whatever obligations apply to officials within the existing agency will continue into the new commission and its agents or contractors. There will be absolutely no question of any dilution of standards or safeguards in terms of the privacy or confidentiality of the information relating to individuals.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

I want to follow the point made by the hon. Member for Daventry, which is the point that I also wish to make. Taking up what the hon. Member for Rochdale said about IT, we challenged in the evidence-taking session the flow of information, and I made the point that CMEC is fundamentally different from the CSA in that it will get its information from Revenue and Customs. At that point, I raised the concern about where that information will go after it has reached CMEC.

Hilary Reynolds, who is the civil servant responsible, said that one of the schedules includes all the available information gateways and that the gateways are fairly wide to allow CMEC to take and receive information from a wide variety of sources. This is a specific clause about the use of that information and the scheduling of various gateways. That is quite correct. The schedule in question is schedule 6, which states that

“Information to which this paragraph applies may be supplied—

(a) to the Commission, or

(b) to a person providing services to the Commission

for use for the purposes of functions relating to child support.”

My concern is that the contracting-out of services, specifically in clause 8, gives the potential that a lot of information coming from HMRC is going not to CMEC but to outside agencies. I made that point in the evidence-taking session in relation to the extent of contracting out—for example, will the calculation of maintenance be contracted out to a third party? There are limits on contracting out, including on when services can be contracted out. However, clause 8 does not set any limits, as far as I can see.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are also issues about jurisdiction? We understand that the agency, at least, is operating within British law. There is nothing, as far as I know, to prevent the new CMEC from commissioning services from different providers in another country where British law does not apply and where the provisions of the Official Secrets Act or the obligations of the civil service code, for example, are not binding unless specified.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

That is obviously a concern. I would be concerned if there were proposals to contract out CMEC services to overseas agencies—for example, many big accountancy companies operate multinationally. However, there is concern about the level of contracting out, and the amendments would set some controls on that.

Will the Minister say something about the extent to which confidential information from HMRC may be passed on? We all agree that information can go to the commission for the purposes of child maintenance, but where it goes once it reaches the commission is a different matter, which is a huge concern for many hon. Members.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

On clause 7, which deals specifically with agency arrangements for other public bodies or other parts of Government, I want the Minister to indicate what he has in mind. His colleague, Lord McKenzie of Luton, made it clear that CMEC was being set up as a non-departmental public body rather than as a Government agency, because it would be better if it were more at arm’s length and further away from Government. Since the clause deals with a number of the relevant functions performed by other parts of the Government, I am curious whether the power was included as a general power in case it was required, whether at this stage the Department had any specific thoughts about how it may want to deal with that—what bits of Government CMEC may want to use—or whether it was included just in case to allow future flexibility.

We will be able to discuss the two points about IT contracting when we discuss new clause 13, which has been tabled by me and my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire.

The information control addressed by amendments Nos. 38 and 39 is important. As the hon. Member for Angus has said, we touched on that in the evidence session. The relevant schedule is wide and permits information to be passed. When we talk about that schedule in due course, we will want to have some controls on where the information can go and on the responsibility that CMEC would retain for ensuring that that it was handled securely under British law.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I feel that the debate on clause 7 has strayed significantly into clause 8 as well, but provided that you permit me, Mr. Chope, I will respond to all the points that have been raised.

The hon. Member for Rochdale asked whether I could provide an update on fixing the IT. Clause 7 does not relate to the IT situation, but seeing as it has been mentioned, I will see to what extent I can reassure him. We are all familiar with the IT problems in the agency, which have bedevilled it pretty much from the outset. I do not want to go back over the history of how the IT was acquired, because that would not add much to our proceedings. However, suffice to say that the problem has been there from the beginning.

When we thoroughly assessed the IT situation in the agency to find out what was wrong, we discovered 506 defects in the system—that is all—which is a seriously large number. Those had to be graded into those of real significance, which undermined the efficiency of the organisation, and relatively minor defects. We decided, sensibly, to target the fundamental, systemic defects in the system first to try to get them fixed; 219 of them have been fixed since June, the date of the last report on IT status. That leaves a significant number of defects still to be remedied, but those that are left are minor. Those that were far more detrimental to the operation of the system were the focus of our priorities and have largely been resolved.

A major upgrade will introduce enhanced functionality throughout the agency’s IT system by the end of the year and will resolve a number of problems, as I shall explain. We will implement IT changes to support the agency’s new operating model that allocates cases to appropriately skilled case workers and teams to progress those cases, which will certainly be a result. We will implement a more effective telephone call routing strategy that is aligned to the new operating model, which should improve the response to clients on the phones. We will also implement a number of IT fixes that will prevent cases from becoming stuck in the agency’s computer system, which has given rise to many problems in all hon. Members’ constituencies, and provide improved system-produced key customer communications, a matter that was raised in earlier sittings.

Enhancements to the finance system functionality will be introduced in 2008-09, which will improve the system’s ability to collect debt and process all financial transactions. The agency is working closely with EDS, the main supplier, with the aim of ensuring that all cases will be technically recovered by the end of March 2008. The agency will ensure that any operational or remedial actions are taken on cases following technical recovery by March 2009. In view of these plans, all current cases should be unstuck by the end of March 2009 at the latest. I hope that I can reassure the hon. Member for Rochdale that, to coin a phrase, a lot has been done, but there is a lot still to do in respect of fixing the IT system.

The hon. Member for Daventry asked about confidentiality and I can assure him that the confidentiality safeguards will not be diluted. They will apply to any agency carrying out a function on behalf of another in exactly the same way as they do to the commission itself. The hon. Member for Angus strayed on to clause 8, but I will try to reassure him that any supplier that has access to sensitive information in the course of carrying out the commission’s functions will be subject to exactly the same restrictions on the use of that information as the commission’s employees. Provisions to govern that matter will be enshrined within the associated contracts.

Clause 2 provides the commission with a single overarching objective: to maximise the number of effective maintenance arrangements in place. I do not fundamentally disagree with what the hon. Member for Rochdale sought to achieve by tabling the amendment, but I hope to persuade him that provisions that will have that effect are already in the Bill.

The functions that the Bill confers on the commission and the powers that it is given to carry them out have the common purpose of enabling the commission to achieve its objective. For any functions that relate to child maintenance, the commission already has a duty to consider its objectives. Indeed, that is made absolutely clear in clause 2(3), which states:

“The Commission shall aim to pursue, and to have regard to, its objectives when exercising a function that is relevant to them.”

It is therefore clear that the commission must already have regard to its objectives when considering whether its functions should be carried out by another provider. It is worth noting that clause 7 also makes it possible for the commission to carry out functions of other Departments and public bodies, and for each to provide services for the other.

I think that the hon. Member for Forest of Dean was anxious about scope, and I shall now deal with that point. It might not always make sense for the commission to enter into arrangements or to perform functions with a view to its main objectives. The commission’s works sit within and are closely linked to a number of other areas of government. As such, there might be situations when the commission is best placed to carry out a particular task, even if that task does not contribute directly to its objectives. With the increasing momentum for work to be joined up across government, I think that hon. Members will agree that that should be encouraged.

We should also consider the example of Northern Ireland when looking at the context of clause 7. Although child support in Northern Ireland is a devolved matter, the IT systems provided by the British CSA are used at present. That makes economic sense, given the small size of the Northern Ireland CSA caseload and that its child support system is based on GB’s child support system. Wider government success and efficiency depend on such arrangements being possible, even when they do not contribute directly to the aims of the individual body.

I suggest that the amendment would, on the one hand, simply repeat a requirement that is already provided for elsewhere in the Bill and, on the other, prevent the commission from contributing to and benefiting from wider initiatives for joined-up government. I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Rochdale will agree to withdraw the amendment.

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

I was interested in the Minister’s comments, particularly those that related to our earlier proposals on using HMRC to collect some of the maintenance. In view of that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 8

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

I beg to move amendment No. 99, in clause 8, page 3, line 26, at end insert

‘, except for functions relating to collection and enforcement exercised under sections 19 to 28 of this Act.’.

The amendment would limit the scope of contracting out under clause 8. At the moment, clause 8 will enable any function of the commission to be contracted out, and I think that it would be inappropriate for certain functions to be contracted out to private organisations. The specific area that the amendment would prevent from being contracted out is the collection and enforcement powers that are specifically in clauses 19 to 28. In a moment, I will go through each of those in turn to explain why I think that contracting out would be inappropriate.

I want to say at the beginning that we very much support tough enforcement and collection powers. Indeed, it is specifically because the enforcement powers are very tough and robust that it would be inappropriate for them to be executed by an organisation to which they had been contracted out. Because they are tough and powerful, they should be exercised by only CMEC itself. It is worth saying that some functions should remain properly within the purview of the public sector and not be contracted out.

The first few clauses about which we are concerned—clauses 19 to 22—relate to collection. I do not want to go through the deduction of earnings orders at the moment because we will have a chance to discuss them later. Although the broad principle of allowing CMEC to take money and apply for deductions of earnings is correct, it is not a power that I would be comfortable having contracted out to a private company or organisation, as that would allow them to seek orders to take money directly from someone’s earnings.

A number of the first few clauses to which the amendment refers relate to such collection mechanisms, be they deductions from earnings, or some lump sum deduction orders. In some senses, however, those are the least objectionable issues. My main concerns about clauses 19 to 28 relate to some of the rightly tough enforcement mechanisms. Clause 25, on the disqualification from holding or obtaining travel authorisation, specifically gives the commission the power to make an order without even having to get the permission of a court. It will be allowed to make an order and to take away a person’s travel documents. That is a tough power, and it is not appropriate for the commission to contract it out and allow others to carry it out on its behalf. Given that the commission has to take into account whether a person needs travel authorisation to earn a living, it is a judgment that the commission should properly have to make, not simply contract out.

When the Minister was talking about the use of important powers to collect fines, he recognised that some of the powers would be disproportionate for that purpose. For the same reason, it would be inappropriate for the commission to contract them out.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Has my hon. Friend noticed the concern expressed by several hon. Members about practices such as wheel clamping in private car parks, where some of the charges are quite inappropriate or inordinate? CMEC would issue a pretty full and possibly unduly detailed contract to preclude such a thing simply under contract law. I suspect that the Minister will give that type of assurance.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

My hon. Friend makes a good point. In relation to the specific example that he raised, many of us know from constituency casework that private companies can have tough powers to take enforcement measures that can be used disproportionately. The remedies available to individuals and the Members of Parliament acting for them are limited—far more so than they would be if they were dealing even with a non-departmental public body, with recourse at some stage to a Minister.

The applications for curfew orders under clause 26 are potentially very serious. Admittedly, there is a safeguard that the order must be made by a court, but, again, it is not appropriate for the commission to contract out to another organisation to seek from a court an order to limit a person’s liberty, a breach of which could result in imprisonment.

Similarly, clause 27 gives the commission the power to apply to a magistrates court for a warrant committing someone to prison if they have failed to pay the amounts that they owe. We might think that that penalty is appropriately tough, but given its very toughness, a private sector organisation should not be allowed to seek to have an individual imprisoned. That power should properly be exercised by a public body with the appropriate levels of accountability. The public would not be happy to see it contracted out.

Tough enforcement will potentially be one of CMEC’s weapons, whether or not it has to use it, when trying to change the culture to one of compliance. Apart from the principled arguments that I have been making, a danger of contracting out is that the inappropriate use of enforcement powers might drag all the enforcement mechanisms into disrepute—it would not need many inappropriate uses; one might be enough.

Stephen Hesford (Labour, Wirral West)

Does the hon. Gentleman consider running a private prison to be more onerous and exacting than exercising those powers? Contracting out to private prisons that operate such systems has happened for a very long time.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, but it is rather outside the scope of the Bill. We are talking about this Bill, not whether such things take place elsewhere.

Anne McGuire (Labour, Stirling)

That is not a very good answer.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

It is a perfectly good answer. We are talking about this Bill, not another Bill, or another set of arrangements. We can talk about such things in due course in another forum, but I am talking about this Bill. I am being quite frank. It would not need very many examples of organisations misusing these powers to bring the powers into disrepute and to damage the reputation of the commission. That would damage its ability to use the powers, quite properly, to enforce maintenance arrangements.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

An answer to the question about the prison system raised by the hon. Member for Wirral, West is that no one is sent to prison without going through the court system, which is part of the Ministry of Justice. Part of what my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean is talking about is the removal of passports, which is done under an administrative procedure, not a judicial one. He is therefore absolutely right to make that distinction.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. One issue that I have not referred to is that without my amendment, the commission will have the power to contract out the making of administrative liability orders. Again, the commission can make those orders without going to a third party—a court—to have them granted.

Stephen Hesford (Labour, Wirral West)

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire has come to the aid of the hon. Member for Forest of Dean, but anyone who knows about running a prison knows that within those four walls there are a lot of exacting administrative judgments in terms of discipline and other enforcements. Those judgments are delegated within the four walls of that private prison, so I repeat my question: does the hon. Gentleman believe that running a private prison is more or less onerous than running these measures?

Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch)

Order. The scope of the Bill is pretty wide, but it does not extend to that matter.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

As I said in my response, we are talking about this Bill. Part of what I am saying relates to the arrangements. I suspect that these measures are very onerous. Therefore, were the commission to contract them out, the complexity involved and the control that would have to be exercised to ensure that the powers were properly used would frankly make contracting out rather pointless. If the commission has to put those very tough arrangements in place, it may as well do the work itself.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Will my hon. Friend accept from me, as somebody who’s constituency contains two privately run penal establishments, that the proceedings—including the administrative ones—in such prisons are crawled over at all times by the Home Office monitor? A similar level of control or intervention would therefore be appropriate if there are penal or quasi-penal powers in the case of CMEC.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention Without wishing to stray outside the confines of the Bill, there is nothing in the Bill that would set up a similarly exacting scrutiny function to ensure that these powers will be properly used by an organisation that they are contracted out to. If the Minister wants to retain the powers to contract out in the Bill, he will have to reassure us that there will be some tough enforcement powers. There would need to be a suitable exacting scrutiny function conducted not by CMEC, but by somebody outside the organisation to ensure that those powers were being used appropriately.

We can obviously talk about the specific powers in more detail, when we get to those sections of the Bill, but a cursory look at them shows that they are not the sort of powers that we would necessarily want CMEC to be able to contract out. As the Minister has already mentioned, CMEC would have to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of contracting out. Given the enforcement powers that would be needed to secure compliance, the complexity of contracting them out outweighs any efficiency and benefit that could be derived. Therefore, when we consider contracting out, it would be sensible to narrow the scope.

When we discussed amendment No. 39, other hon. Members wanted to ensure that contracting out was limited specifically to help the main objective of the Bill. On this amendment, I am keen that, where appropriate, tough enforcement powers are used to secure compliance. However, there is an issue of principle, which is who should use those powers. I fear that inappropriate use will damage the commission’s ability to enforce them.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I have a few brief comments to add. I share quite a lot of the objectives of the hon. Member for Forest of Dean, but I am not convinced that his amendment will fulfil the things that he said in his remarks. He said, and I think that he was right, that in relation to the child support and child maintenance system, the commodity of trust is in short supply. Part of the burden of his argument, which I agree with, is that it will only take a few mistakes by an organisation to which the relevant powers have been contracted out to undermine the precious little trust that there is. The Minister hopes that trust in CMEC will accumulate as it begins to demonstrate its competence, but I hae ma doots about that.

Anne McGuire (Labour, Stirling)

Translate it into English for them.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I greatly doubt that that will happen.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

The hon. Gentleman gives in too easily.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I believe in the Union and the free flow of debate and information between Scotland and the rest of the UK. That is definitely outside the scope of the Bill, Mr. Chope, and I shall quickly move on.

The hon. Member for Forest of Dean is trying to make a distinction, which his amendment does not, between taking and implementing decisions. I agree with him 100 per cent. No contracted-out private organisation should be responsible for deciding whether an individual goes to prison. However, whether we like it or not, privately run prisons exist, to which people will be sent to complete their sentence. No private organisation should have the power to take away someone’s driving licence or to decide whether to subject someone to a curfew.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s view, but there is a difference between sending someone to prison—I agree with that—and removing passports and other identity documents, for which there is administrative action. The implications would be very serious if—God forbid!—we were to end up with an identity card. I wonder, therefore, whether there is a problem with not only prison, but administrative action. The passport is a state document that allows someone to travel, and surely only the state should have the right to take it away.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

When we consider clause 25, we will have a proper debate about whether that should be an administrative power or one that is enforced by the courts. In that instance, I think that I would be on the hon. Gentleman’s side.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

In an effort to assist the hon. Gentleman, I would like to make two points. A passport remains at all times the property of the state. Conversely, I would invite him to spend a moment or two over the summer looking at the case of Sir Frederick Crawford, whose passport was removed by the Wilson Government in the late 1960s. It is an example of arbitrary action, and even from a long distance, I remember the matter to this day as an example of the bad practice that we seek to avoid.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, I do not wish to stray into a debate about clause 25 and how that power should work. We will have plenty of time to do that at the appropriate moment. On the latter point, I shall seek his advice after the Committee about my summer reading list, so that I can become acquainted with that case, which sounds very interesting.

I broadly agree with the hon. Member for Forest of Dean with regard to the powers relating to passports and driving licences in prisons. One of the clauses relates to administrative liability orders, and I hope that in due course we will have a debate about whether they should be an administrative power. None the less, if the clause is accepted and administrative liability orders become a feature of the new system, I share that view of the hon. Member for Forest of Dean that decisions about those orders should be a matter for CMEC. However, is he then saying that the enforcement of that liability order should not be contracted out?

I agree with one of the points that the Minister has made—he has made only a limited number of points with which I agree. For example, during last Thursday’s sitting, we noted that private debt collection agencies have been used by the CSA relatively recently and that they have already pulled in some £3 million of outstanding debt. The fear of private debt collection agencies among non-resident parents has proven to be a powerful tool in encouraging them to come forward, merely on the basis of that threat. I am concerned that if we leave out the clause relating to liability orders, it would stop the use of contracted-out organisations for the enforcement of decisions that should properly be taken by CMEC.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

The hon. Gentleman makes two good points. I drew up the amendment specifically to refer to collection and enforcement powers so as not to damage any existing powers. The second reason is that, as currently drafted, the Bill does not have any restrictions at all on anything. The Minister may consider that my amendment goes a little too far, but given the broad level of agreement that he has achieved on most of the Bill, I would like him to acknowledge that this provision’s scope is far too wide and needs to be narrowed. If he does not do that, while my amendment may not be 100 per cent. perfect, it is an improvement on the Bill.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I hope that the Minister will make it clear in his response that it is not the Government’s intention for functions relating to decision taking under the clauses to be contracted out, although their implementation may be. Further to what the hon. Member for Forest of Dean has said, I would like to make a broader point in the hope of staving off a clause stand part debate.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

The hon. Gentleman has drawn a distinction between decision making and enforcement. However, it will still be up to whoever is contracted out to decide on what basis or how enforcement action will be taken. I am not sure that it is possible to make that distinction. CMEC might wish to enforce something and pass the case to a collector, but once it is in the collector’s hands, the method of enforcement becomes a matter for the contracting party. I am not sure that there is an exact distinction.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

The broader point I wanted to make is relevant to that intervention. The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Stirling, and I were members of the Committee that discussed the Welfare Reform Act 2007, where we had a debate about contracting out. One of the important assurances that she offered, and I hope that her ministerial colleague will do likewise, was to make it clear that provisions in relation to human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998—the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 is also important in this context—will fully apply to any or all agencies to which the functions are contracted out.

I agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Angus, but I hope that the methods that might be used by a contracted-out agency would be restricted by the contract that it has with CMEC and by the provisions in the two pieces of legislation to which I have referred. Some of the more unpleasant methods of collection could be seen as being carried out on behalf of an arm of the state. That could involve a breach of an individual’s human rights, which would be a very serious constraint, compared with the way in which some of those organisations operate in the private sector. I hope that I have provided some reassurance. None the less, the Minister needs to respond to the burden of the argument, albeit that Liberal Democrats have doubts about the framing of the amendment.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

The amendment moved by the hon. Member for Daventry would restrict the commission before it is even set up and running. He is trying to chip away at the range of options that is available to it. I resist his amendment because it begins to gnaw at the basic principle of moving to a commissioning arrangement. However, I hope that I can reassure him that the necessary safeguards are in place to prevent abusive use of the powers that he is talking about.

All the safeguards that would apply to CMEC, if it were doing any of the relevant things, will apply in the same way to any other contracted party carrying out functions on an agency’s behalf. I did not hear the hon. Gentleman object to any of the safeguards in place in respect of CMEC, so I am not sure why he does not understand that those also apply to anybody contracted with CMEC to carry out functions. Exactly the same safeguards and rights of appeal are in place as would be if the commission were carrying out a function.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I am grateful for that specific assurance. Given the concern in this place about persons financed by local authorities in private care homes not being able to access human rights legislation, however, can the Minister specifically confirm that, in relation to any contracted-out functions of CMEC, the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 and of equalities legislation—going rather wider than disability discrimination—will be applicable?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

Yes, I can. I maintain that we must equip the commission with the key tools and abilities that it will require to make child maintenance provision in this country a success, which is what we all want. We must ensure that it is able to work with the voluntary and third sector groups and with those with expertise in managing and collecting owed money. That is why clause 8 enables functions to be contracted out if the commission considers it appropriate. However, the commission will retain ultimate accountability for any functions it chooses to delegate.

Sir David Henshaw recommended that the new body should be set up essentially as a commissioning body. We agree that we must enable the commission to carry out its functions as effectively and efficiently as possible, as enshrined in the Bill. That will include benefiting from the skills and experience of external providers. Preventing the commission from contracting out the collection and enforcement powers contained in the Bill between clauses 19 and 28 could have a significant impact on the extent to which it is able to operate effectively and efficiently. If that were done, we would in effect, as I have said, be tying its hands before it even gets going.

I reassure hon. Members that contracting out functions has no effect on the rights of individuals to appeal against decisions. Individuals will retain the same right of appeal against decisions, regardless of whether the commission or another provider makes the day-to-day decisions. Restrictions on the use of personal information are the same, regardless of who is doing the work. In respect of the example that was mentioned—moving to withdraw a passport, for example, for administrative reasons—the decision is appealable in a magistrates court, and the rights of the individual concerned are exactly the same whether that is done by the commission or a contracted party.

We recognise that, in contracting out its functions, the commission will need to ensure that providers deliver high-quality services and high standards of decision making, including all those relevant to enforcement. That can be achieved through careful consideration of the contract terms and rigorous contract management. It will be for the board of CMEC to ensure that that happens. Building the capacity and capability to manage contracts must come before any large-scale contracting out is undertaken, otherwise the commission would be failing in its important, enshrined statutory duty to operate efficiently and effectively.

The commission will, under the range of provisions by which it is accountable to the Secretary of State, have a duty to report on standards of decision making. It will also be required to publish an annual report detailing all activities undertaken in that financial year, including the extent to which it has relied on its power to contract out. The Bill provides for all enforcement powers to have intrinsic safeguards, whoever operates them. For example, only a court can make a curfew order, whoever is carrying out the enforcement function. I hope that I have given the hon. Gentleman the reassurances that he seeks and that he will withdraw the amendment.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

I have listened carefully to the Minister and I am happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 9

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I beg to move amendment No. 10, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, after ‘on’, insert ‘section 7(1) and’.

Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 11, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at end insert

‘; and, in respect of each authorisation under section 8(1), details of the body to whom the functions of the Commission have been delegated and their performance in contributing to the Commission’s objectives.’.

No. 9, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at end insert—

‘(e) the number of children who live apart from one or both of their parents who are eligible for child maintenance under the Child Support Act 1991;

(f) the proportion of those children for whom child maintenance has been paid in the previous year;

(g) the type of arrangement—whether voluntary or under the statutory scheme;

(h) where child maintenance has been paid, details of the amount; the frequency of payment; whether paid in full or in part; and whether paid on time.’.

No. 69, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at end insert—

‘(e) the extent to which the Commission has made progress regarding the collection and payment of arrears.’.

No. 82, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at end insert—

‘(d) details of any complaints received and how these complaints were handled.’.

No. 13, in clause 9, page 4, line 39, at end insert

‘and must make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to each such report.’.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

We have reached clause 9. It is an extremely important clause, and it is very good as far as it goes. However, we contend that it does not go nearly far enough, which is why we seek to amend it fairly extensively. There are six amendments in this group—four tabled by the Conservatives and two by the Liberal Democrats—and I find myself in broad agreement with all six.

Amendment No. 10 would have the effect of requiring CMEC’s annual report to the Secretary of State to report not only on the extent of contracting out by CMEC, but on the extent of the agency arrangements covered by clause 7, which we have just debated. We know from that clause that any relevant authority can be used by CMEC in the course of the discharge of its functions. I listened carefully to the debate, but I do not think that the matter came up, so I would be grateful if the Minister gave us an idea of the range of different relevant authorities with which CMEC might make agency arrangements. It would also be useful to know what functions and services are likely to be contracted out or provided by those other relevant authorities. Does the Minister have in mind any limit on the extent of the contracting out or agency provision of services, or is he completely open-minded on that? Are there any areas in which he thinks that contracting out or the use of agencies by other relevant authorities would be particularly appropriate?

Amendment No. 11 would require CMEC to give details of each authorisation to contract out a function, and of how successful each contractor had been in achieving the commission’s objectives. We have no objection in principle to contracting out, as my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean said during the earlier debate, but it would be useful to know which organisations were acting on CMEC’s behalf and how successful they were in achieving their objectives.

There is, of course, a danger that CMEC’s reputation could be damaged if its contractors do not act with high standards. The Minister will want them to have the highest possible standards, so hopefully that will be written into the contract terms and there will be ongoing monitoring and review. It is important that we receive such assurances now given the huge issues of reputation with which the CSA is dealing. We must now state how we want the contractors to behave, if CMEC is to avoid having to deal with damage to its reputation in future.

One Parent Families has said that there is always a risk with contracting out by a Government organisation of the details of the contractor’s performance being hidden behind the veil of commercial confidentiality. Of course, there will always have to be some commercial confidentiality. That is the harsh reality of the business world, but it is important that the public interest in knowing whether public money is being spent wisely is not overlooked. That is why CMEC must be placed under a statutory obligation in the Bill to disclose the performance of its contractors, at least once a year.

It is not as though there is not a lot of history to the issue. Let us consider the excellent report of the Public Accounts Committee, “Child Support Agency: Implementation of the Child Support Reforms”. Somewhat bafflingly, it was published the day after the Bill’s Second Reading. I, for one, found that particularly unhelpful. I wish it had been available before that debate. Page 11 of the report sets out the relevant financial details of a large number of contractors. Such information has come into the public domain in a useful way through the good offices of the Public Accounts Committee, but I would be more reassured if the Bill required such information to be provided annually so that CMEC has to prepare it regularly.

It is also important that the commission justifies its decisions regarding the contracting out of its functions in terms of its objectives under clause 2 rather than only on cost grounds. I hope that I have been helpful to the Committee by explaining the rationale behind amendment No. 11.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Will my hon. Friend consider the position in which there is a partial contracting out of a particular function by CMEC, with some activity—perhaps geographically defined—in the private sector, and another part of the country covered by direct arrangements? Is it not particularly important that at some stage, subject to the constraints that he has already expressed, the general public should have a handle on whether what is being run by the private sector is as efficient or superior to the delivery and direct provision of the public sector?

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

As always, I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s wise words. He is absolutely right. It is in everyone’s interest that we have a direct comparison between the public sector and the private sector and between the arrangements in place in different parts of the country. We are discussing the spending of public money for important objectives and we need to have all the information out in the public domain in as transparent and open a way as possible. That is the overall objective of all six amendments to the clause, which is good as far as it goes, but does not go nearly far enough.

Amendment No. 9 would place a requirement on CMEC to provide detail of the nuts and bolts of what it does day to day, rather than the current high level overall strategic direction targets that are listed in subsection (3)(a) to (d). Specifically, it would require CMEC to report on the number of children who are living apart from one or both of their parents and are eligible for child maintenance under the Child Support Act 1991 and the proportion for whom child maintenance was paid in the previous year. One could obviously work out the number of children who have not received child maintenance from that information.

The amendment would also place a requirement on CMEC to disclose the type of maintenance arrangements, whether voluntary or under the statutory scheme, so that we can find out whether the Minister is achieving his objective of encouraging voluntary maintenance agreements, which is widely shared and supported in the Committee.

When child maintenance has been paid, the amendment would require CMEC to provide details of the amount, the frequency of payment, whether it has been paid in full or in part, and whether it has been paid on time. That requirement refers to the total figures for the UK as a whole. We need that level of specific detail as a minimum to be in the public domain once a year, provided by CMEC.

Incidentally, will the Minister assure the Committee that CMEC will produce quarterly performance statistics as the CSA does now? I would be extremely concerned if there were any diminution in the provision of those statistics. I think that the reason why six amendments have been tabled on clause 9 is that the CSA does not have a good reputation for its management of data and reporting systems. Figures are sometimes revised, put in the public domain, revised, brought back and so on. It is incredibly important to get those systems right so that we can judge whether progress has been made and as an aid to the CMEC board. All the proposed additional requirements in subsection (3) would assist the board in achieving its objectives. The public discussion and interest that would arise from the provision of that information to the public domain would be entirely healthy for achieving the overall objectives.

One Parent Families had more to say on the clause. It referred to the fact that clause 2 shows that the primary objective is to maximise the number of children who live apart from one or both parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place. It made the point that if the objective is to drive the performance of the CMEC board in a meaningful way, it will need to have regular data at its disposal to measure how successful its interventions have been at increasing the number of children for whom child maintenance is being paid.

It is worth reflecting on the current situation in terms of data that is put into the public domain. Child maintenance receipt figures come mainly from large annual surveys, such as the families and children’s study and the family resources survey, which tend to be at least a year and a half out of date when they are published. Although they are informative, such surveys will only identify on a retrospective basis whether the commission’s activities have worked. CMEC needs the information on a real-time basis to find out whether a greater proportion of children living in separated families are receiving child maintenance as a result of its work. The intention of all the amendments is to help CMEC to meet its overall objectives.

Amendment No. 69 relates to debt, on which we had an extensive debate in a our sitting on 19 July, recorded at columns 113-118 of the Official Report. The amendment is a slightly briefer version of amendment No. 12. As noted in column 113, you agreed that we could press it to a Division at the end of the debate on the amendments to clause 9, Mr. Chope. I restate my wish to do so, because debt is such an important concern.

Amendment No. 69 highlights the importance of debt. It is worth reflecting that only a limited amount of information about the agency’s debts and its success in recovering them finds its way into the public domain. Each year, the Comptroller and Auditor General reports on the agency’s client account and the total amount of debt owed, which is broken down into “collectable”, “possibly collectable” and “probably collectable” sums, as well as into sums under the old and new schemes, and sums owed as a result of interim maintenance assessments and full maintenance assessments. I wonder whether, in future, there will be three columns in which the Comptroller and Auditor General can record sums relating to old, new and CMEC schemes. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that in his response. The information that the Comptroller and Auditor General puts in the public domain is useful, but is of limited help in understanding the agency’s performance and the strategy behind it, which is why I sympathise with amendment No. 69.

We know that the agency has analysed its debt book and knows the proportion of non-resident parents owing different amounts of debt. Those figures are broken down into bands, such as those owing less than £1,000 or those owing more than £50,000. In passing, I must say that it is pretty shocking that there are some parents with care, mainly mothers, who are owed more than £50,000 as a result of the failings of the agency. I know that the Minister entirely shares that sentiment.

Some work has been contracted out to private debt collectors. The annual report that will be made under the clause will be a useful place in which to report the commission’s strategy for pursuing debtors in different categories and the usefulness for that purpose of private debt collectors, compared with the commission’s staff. That information is not shared currently, but it should be. In the spirit of transparency, and given that the Minister has talked about a clean break and a new start, such provisions should be included in the Bill. I therefore hope that hon. Members will support amendment No. 69 and will not resist amendment No. 12.

The Bill will give CMEC considerably more powers than the agency has to collect child support debts. That is right, because we know from the National Audit Office that, in June last year, the CSA’s enforcement teams were dealing with only around 8 per cent. of cases with arrears. The Minister properly referred to the operational improvement plan, and we all wish it the greatest success. It promises to quadruple the number of staff devoted to debt collection and enforcement by March 2009, and is pledging to collect an extra £213.8 million of historic debt. It is appropriate to require that CMEC reports on the success of those operational improvement plan measures, as well as on its plans to increase its debt recovery targets, in light of the greater powers that it will have as a result of the Bill. Overall, the greatest standards of accountability should be set by the commission in reporting on the recovery of money owed to parents with care for children, and in our view the obligations on the commission should be made crystal clear.

Amendment No. 82 would add to clause 9(3) the words:

“details of any complaints received and how these complaints were handled”.

That would be a useful and important amendment—I should have tabled it myself. Again, I shall refer to the excellent report by the PAC, which is one of the most powerful and influential Committees in this House—it normally talks a good deal of sense—and about which we often hear a great deal in the media. Paragraph 11 on page 6 of that report, which was published on 5 July 2007, states:

“55,000 complaints were made to the Agency in 2005-06”.

The number of complaints received will be a key indicator of public confidence in the success of CMEC, which is why I believe that the Bill should require the publication of those figures.

Amendment No. 13 is important because it would require the Secretary of State to

“make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to each...report”

That would ensure that each annual CMEC report to the Secretary of State would be debated in the Chamber by all Members of Parliament. Given the importance of the role that CMEC will perform and the impact that its success or failure will have on the lives of so many children and families, I do not think that the amendment is too much to ask. Hon. Members should not have to apply by ballot for Adjournment debates on CMEC which would be shuffled off to Westminster Hall. An annual debate in the Chamber, required by statute, on a Thursday afternoon, or whenever it can be put into the legislative programme, will help to maintain MPs’ interest in, and knowledge of, these very important child-support matters. I commend amendment No. 13 to the Committee, therefore, and look forward to its support on as many of the amendments as possible.

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire on his remarks. There is a great deal of agreement on the six amendments before us, partly because there is very little detailed information in the Bill about how CMEC will operate, which is why clause 9 is so important. The draft regulations have not been published. However, from our own case loads and the history of the CSA, we all know of the huge concerns about the way in which the CSA operated and, therefore, share a desire to ensure that the new body is set up and run properly. One of the ways in which Parliament and hon. Members can do that is through the use of an annual report.

Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch)

Order. The Committee is adjourned until 4 o’clock this afternoon, when David Taylor will be in the Chair. I look forward to seeing hon. Members again in October.

David Taylor (Labour, North West Leicestershire)

I welcome hon. Members to the sixth sitting of this public Bill. I am grateful to my co-Chair, Mr. Christopher Chope, for taking the first five sittings. I expect to take the remainder of the sittings, bar one, overlapping into the autumn period.

David Taylor (Labour, North West Leicestershire)

I remind the Committee that with this we are taking the following amendments:

No. 11, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at end insert

‘; and, in respect of each authorisation under section 8(1), details of the body to whom the functions of the Commission have been delegated and their performance in contributing to the Commission’s objectives.’.

No. 9, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at end insert—

‘(e) the number of children who live apart from one or both of their parents who are eligible for child maintenance under the Child Support Act 1991;

(f) the proportion of those children for whom child maintenance has been paid in the previous year;

(g) the type of arrangement—whether voluntary or under the statutory scheme;

(h) where child maintenance has been paid, details of the amount; the frequency of payment; whether paid in full or in part; and whether paid on time.’.

No. 69, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at end insert—

‘(e) the extent to which the Commission has made progress regarding the collection and payment of arrears.’.

No. 82, in clause 9, page 4, line 32, at end insert—

‘(d) details of any complaints received and how these complaints were handled.’.

No. 13, in clause 9, page 4, line 39, at end insert

‘and must make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to each such report.’.

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Taylor.

Just before the break, I was talking about amendments Nos. 10 and 11 and I shall continue. The Minister said, when we were talking about contracting out, that it was highly likely that other Departments may be involved in dealing with some of the work. I took it from that that he was talking about Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, particularly in respect of some of the assessments and collecting the money. If HMRC is to be involved in that process, and if other private agencies are to be involved in collecting debt or third sector bodies in providing information, it is important that information about how they are progressing and dealing with the case forms part of the annual report.

As I said previously, we have so little information in the Bill—we do not even have draft regulations in front of us—and we do not know how different the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission’s ways of working will be from those of the Child Support Agency. It is therefore important that what the annual report will deliver is written down and agreed early on. It is of major importance to the House and the public that the new agency gets off on the right foot, sets itself clear objectives and is held accountable to the House for the progress that is being made.

Amendment No. 9, which we support, seeks more detail about the numbers of children that will be dealt with—the numbers receiving payments—and the type of arrangements. Because we are talking about a shift and a move back to more private arrangements, I should think that the Select Committee on Work and Pensions would want to scrutinise the operation of the new systems. Again, we would support that.

Amendment No. 69, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, reiterates that we will not let the issue of historic debt go away. As we heard in the evidence presented by One Parent Families last week, the information about the current historic debt is extremely flaky. It is important that, in the interim, before CMEC is set up, we ensure that that information is firmed up. As I said last week, there is more than £1 billion of historic arrears, but the current targets for the CSA only deal with £213 million. We need some clear assurances and clear information about what is happening to that old, historic debt. That needs to be dealt with and we need to know how it is to be done.

I was disappointed with the Minister’s response to me that,

“the debt has arisen because of the lack of co-operation of non-resident parents, who simply have not faced up to their responsibility....That is ultimately where the fault of the situation lies.”——[Official Report, Child Maintenance and Other Payments Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2007; c. 116.]

I ask the Minister to go back, pre-CSA, and look at why the CSA was brought into being. I am sure that the hon. Member for Daventry is in a better position than me to comment on that. Nevertheless, the CSA was brought into being because the court system, as it then existed, was not working for the same reason that the Minister now gives for the CSA not working, and it is important that we understand and accept that point when we consider the arrangements for the operation of CMEC.

In my experience as a teacher, one accepted that certain children were always going to be naughty. One was not surprised if they were, but one planned one’s lessons to ensure that they did not disrupt what was happening. When dealing with non-resident, non-paying parents, we must accept and understand that many will try every trick in the book to avoid paying. The systems that we set up must be robust enough to ensure that they cannot do so.

I welcome the Bill’s greater teeth and tougher powers. It will enable CMEC to get stuck in, which is fine with the new arrangements. I said last week that we do not want the agency to use this clean break as an excuse to wash its hands of that difficult debt, which has sat there for years and not been addressed. We want to ensure that Parliament holds the new body to account, because as I said last week, the Government made a different decision from that in the Henshaw report. Henshaw’s recommendation was not that the historic debt should move over to CMEC, but that it should sit elsewhere. The Government have not taken that decision; they have said that the historic debt will go with the new body.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, particularly as he gave me a slightly back-handed compliment a while ago. He is making an entirely sensible set of remarks. Does not he remember that, even in those days of intervening revolutions, with Boxer bonds or Chinese sovereign debt, countries that wished to re-borrow on the world market had to be seen to make some effort before they could restore their credibility? Although one is business, or possibly politics, and the other is domestic, is that not a principle worth sustaining?

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that comment. Yes, of course, that principle is worth sustaining; it is hugely important to the credibility of the new organisation. We have lost a generation of children who have not received the child maintenance, and therefore the start in life, to which they were entitled. There are still people who look to Parliament and to the Government to restore their confidence and ensure that the money that they are owed is paid. That must be the new agency’s overriding target. It must address that issue, and I hope that the Minister will deal with that point. The Bill is all very well and good, but it contains warm words and it is not specific. The amendments are an attempt to be specific.

Amendment No. 82 deals with the details of complaints. Many Members will say that the way in which complaints are dealt with is absolutely disgraceful. I have not been in this place as long as many other Members, but when somebody gets a £25—I hesitate to say—book token or whatever as a fob-off for a significant period of considerable emotional distress, I find that it is an insult to people’s intelligence. At the end of a long process, during which they have had to fight for every penny and make the CSA admit that the mistake lies with how it has handled the case, not with the case itself, that is an insult.

I hope that the new agency has a much better way of handling complaints, and that it will pay compensation. We had a debate about these matters earlier in the Committee; the fact that people are not prepared to admit that they are liable is not acceptable. We want to see in place a really strong system that will handle complaints and ensure that redress is dealt with and delivered speedily, and not with the insult that occurs at present. We want to see some of the complaints listed in the annual report and a general picture of what has happened, and we will need to know how complaints were dealt with.

We would also support amendment No. 13, which is about ensuring that the House has an opportunity to debate the report. It ought to be automatic that CMEC, at least in its early stages, reports to the House annually to demonstrate why it is a fresh start, and how it is dealing with some of the historic problems.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

It is a pleasure to have you chair our proceedings, Mr. Taylor.

All but one of the amendments would require the commission to report on additional matters in the annual report. However, the clause contains a wide-ranging provision that requires the commission to report on all the activities it has undertaken in the preceding financial year. Such provisions are entirely standard in the founding legislation for non-departmental public bodies; almost identical clauses can be found in respect of the Environment Agency, the Pensions Regulator and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. The clause goes further, however, than the standard for non-departmental public bodies because it highlights in addition four particular areas on which the commission must focus in its annual report.

Incidentally, following our debate last week, there might be some confusion about where the specifics of the annual report will be detailed. To clarify, the specifics of the annual report will be in clause 9, and not, as I said last week, in regulations.

The four specific areas on which the commission will focus are: first, the strategic direction of the commission and how that is kept under review; secondly, the steps it takes to meet its objectives and targets and the extent to which they have been met; thirdly, how the commission has monitored its performance in respect of carrying out its functions effectively and efficiently; and fourthly, the commission will report on the extent to which it has considered the contracting out of any of its functions. Substantially more weight is therefore placed on the annual report than would normally be the case, which underlines the importance that we will place on the annual report.

In this morning’s sitting, the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire asked whether we expect quarterly performance reports to continue. The answer is that I do.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

Will the Minister comment on the extent to which he expects CMEC to publish its annual reports in a timely way? A written statement today states that publication of the CSA’s annual report, which would, according to normal practice, occur before the recess, has been delayed until after. I hope that the Minister would not wish to see CMEC get into such practices.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I do not see that as some sort of precedent and I expect the annual report to come out on a regular basis.

On amendments Nos. 9 and 69, we believe that clause 9 already places sufficiently comprehensive reporting requirements on the commission. Of particular importance is the requirement to report against its objectives and targets.

As we all know, the commission’s main objective is to maximise the number of effective maintenance arrangements. In order to report against that, the commission will need to establish a range of measures similar to those proposed by amendment No. 9. The measures will be drawn from studies and surveys such as the family resources survey and the family and children study. We do not want to define the measures in the Bill because, among other things, we would be concerned that the measures may not be available in the exact form stipulated by legislation.

Amendment No. 69 would specifically require the commission’s annual report to cover its progress in collecting arrears. Again, the commission will be required to report against its objectives, so that is already covered. As hon. Members know, one of the objectives is to secure compliance with parental obligations—in other words, to get parents to pay all, and I stress all, that is owing, which includes debt. The commission must report on its progress on debt collections.

The hon. Member for Rochdale wanted me to acknowledge the continued importance that we place on collecting debt. It is one reason why we did not pursue Sir David’s recommendation, but the responsibility carries on. Far from being downgraded or overlooked, it is as important as it ever was. The historic debt built up for a variety of reasons, only one of which is, unfortunately, the persistent non-compliance of a large number of non-resident parents. In introducing the commission and setting out its operational framework, we have to learn lessons from the Child Support Agency.

We know that some of the debt arose because of the extraordinary complexity of the calculations that had to be made to come up with the maintenance assessments in the first place. In turn, that led to a lot of interim maintenance assessments that were rather wide of the mark, which added to the problems. We are learning as we go, and we have certainly learnt from the CSA experience what should not be repeated in the operation of the commission. However, that is not to downgrade the importance of continuing to pursue the debt. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have recently given the existing agency additional measures to go after some of that long outstanding debt, and early indications are that they are proving quite successful.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I would like the Minister to say something about a matter that arose in an earlier sitting: how debt is treated after six years. I think there is a legal change, which worries me greatly, as I have in the past told my constituents not to worry because their ex-husband or partner has a lifetime liability to pay the money to their children, even if he is still doing so when he approaches retirement. I hope I was honest and accurate in saying that.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I think that the hon. Gentleman has given sound advice to his constituents. My recollection is that in recent cases the agency has been successful in collecting debt that is more than six years old, deploying some of the new methods that we have given to it.

Amendment No. 82 would insert the requirement to report the details of any complaints received and how they are dealt with. The reasons behind the amendment are completely understandable, but the clause as drafted requires that the commission reports the steps taken to monitor its performance in ensuring that all its functions are exercised effectively and efficiently.

Customer service including complaints handling is an important function of any public body and it is our full intention that the commission will report on the standards achieved against any complaints targets within the annual report, much as the Child Support Agency does, without the need for it to be specified in legislation.

The independent case examiner will also continue to produce an annual report on complaints received about child support, with any recommendations taken fully into consideration by the commission. In addition, the commission is required under schedule 7 to report on the standards achieved in decisions relating to child support appeals.

Amendment No. 10 would require the commission to report on the extent to which it has relied on the provision for agency arrangements in clause 7(1). That would bring it into parallel with clause 8(1)—the provision for contracting out. We have included the specific requirement to report in clause 8(1) because of the emphasis that Sir David Henshaw placed on contracting out in his report. We therefore thought it sensible to include an explicit provision covering the extent to which the commission contracts out its services.

Clause 7(1) provides for the commission to enter into arrangements with other public bodies and Departments. That is not exceptional; the provision is used, for example, by the Welsh Assembly to allow a variety of joint working across Government. It will also allow for a continuation of the existing arrangements with Northern Ireland, to which I referred earlier. There was no case for making explicit provision for reporting on it. However, it is likely that the commission would report on any such arrangements in reporting on its activities in the previous financial year.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I asked the Minister whether he could give the Committee an idea of who those relevant authorities would be. I should like to see the widest possible co-operation with CMEC across Government, but I am still a little hazy as to which organisations we are talking about.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

A relevant authority in this clause would be any Minister of the Crown or Government Department, or any public body specified in the regulations.

Amendment No. 11 would force the commission to give details of the bodies to whom the functions of the commission have been delegated and their performance in contributing to the commission’s objectives. To do so in line with the amendment could cause problems. It would be very difficult to report on the performance of any third party against the commission’s objectives. There is no single function carried out in isolation that can achieve the objectives, so it would be impossible to measure the impact of any one organisation on the commission’s objectives.

The commission may include similar details in fulfilling the existing requirements to report on all its business activities and the extent to which they were contracted out. Clearly, if a large number of functions were contracted to a single organisation, it would be possible to comment on the contribution made by that organisation as part of the overall reporting process.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Will the Minister comment on a hypothetical circumstance where the performance of the organisation to which the work was contracted out changed? It might start very well and then deteriorate for reasons for which it may not be entirely blameworthy. If that were to happen, it would seem entirely reasonable for the commission to draw the public’s attention to it.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

The commission may want to do so. More importantly, I hope that it would take action to correct the problem. We will ensure that contracts are sufficiently tightly and rigorously drawn. The commission has the right to step quickly into a situation like that and arrest the problem. That is the most important thing to achieve in those circumstances.

That brings me lastly to amendment to No. 13, which would place an additional statutory requirement for the annual report to be debated once laid in Parliament. Of course, we want to ensure that there is proper parliamentary scrutiny. However, we find it difficult to understand what the amendment would add; it would certainly be very unusual for a non-departmental public body’s annual report to be debated in Parliament as a matter of course. I think there will continue to be such interest in how CMEC performs right across the House that we can guarantee that it will remain under very close parliamentary scrutiny. That will quite conceivably be on the Floor of the House, certainly in Adjournment debates and most certainly by the work of the Select Committee. There will be such interest that there will be no requirement to force a debate as it will come about anyway. To accept the amendment would take the commission right out of line with any other non-departmental public body for which there is not the requirement to hold a compulsory debate. There is also the slight problem that if it happens just once, hon. Members may find their applications for debates refused because they will be referred to the annual debate. Parliament may want to debate that more than once a year.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I am disappointed that the Minister does not like amendment No. 13. Will he give the Committee some assurance that Department for Work and Pensions Ministers will make a regular path to the door of the Leader of the House to keep this subject well to the fore so that it is debated in the Chamber? There was a CSA debate in Westminster Hall this morning. That is all well and good, but it rather made by point. I want to see these matters debated in the Chamber so that everyone can take part.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I shall repeat what I said before: I do not think that I or any Minister will have to force the pace. There is already a quite sufficient body of interest and concern among hon. Members on behalf of their constituents, and the whole matter will be kept under close scrutiny anyway at Question Time and through any other avenue of debate and means open through the usual channels. I do not think that there will be any shortage of parliamentary scrutiny of the process, and I welcome the fact that there will be such detailed scrutiny, which is right and proper.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

The particular significance of my hon. Friend’s point is that, while we hope that things will go well, they may not, and a debate on a motion on the Floor of the House of Commons has the advantage of providing an opportunity for Members to vote on the motion and express a view on the performance of the agency. Other forms of debate—in Westminster Hall, for example, on a motion for the Adjournment—do not, except in extreme situations of adjourning the House, afford hon. Members that opportunity.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I do not think that I would devalue those other means as the hon. Gentleman suggests. They are extremely important, and I know that I and all my ministerial colleagues in the Department take very seriously any form of accountability, whether we are made accountable in Select Committees, Adjournment debates or elsewhere. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire has not managed to persuade me that there is a need for the provision. It is not that I do not like it, as he puts it. I just think that it is not necessary to bring about the parliamentary scrutiny that he and I want. I hope that the amendment will not be pressed to a vote.

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

I am grateful for what the Minister has said. In view of most of his comments, we are happy to withdraw the amendment. We would, however, like to press amendment No. 82, which deals with complaints and complaint handling, to a vote.

David Taylor (Labour, North West Leicestershire)

I now call Mr. Selous to move amendment No. 9 formally.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I want to move amendment No. 9 formally, but am I able to reply to the debate, Mr. Taylor?

David Taylor (Labour, North West Leicestershire)

No.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I must have misread the way in which the debate was going, because I thought that I would have the opportunity to respond to the earlier debate, given that amendment No. 10 was the lead amendment.

As we are now having a stand part debate, I want to refer to a number of points raised by the Minister in his summing up. I am grateful for the assurance that quarterly performance statistics will be provided. That is essential because such statistics provide important and detailed data on the performance of the CSA at the moment, and CMEC in the future.

I also felt reassured when the Minister said that debt that was more than six years old would remain a debt or a liability, and could be pursued on behalf of parents with care from non-resident parents. However, I was disappointed that the Minister did not agree to amendment No. 9. I believe that clause 9(3)(a) to (d), which we are putting into law, is much too high-level and much too broad-brush. It does not reach down to the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day operation of the CSA. I am particularly disappointed, because we are setting up a non-departmental public body, which, as the Minister said at the start of our third sitting, is deliberately going to be at arm’s length from the Department. I wonder whether this is our last chance as parliamentarians to have an influence on exactly what CMEC will and will not put into the public domain.

I was also extremely concerned by the Minister’s response, when he said that the information required by the amendments “may not be available”—I think that those were his exact words. Amendment No. 9, on which we just voted, contains fairly basic, straightforward stuff:

“the number of children who are ... eligible for child maintenance”;

“the proportion of those children for whom child maintenance has been paid”;

“the type of arrangement—whether voluntary or under the statutory scheme”;

and,

“where child maintenance has been paid, details of the amount; the frequency”.

Frankly, if that sort of information may not be available, my concerns over the adequacy of the computer system are escalating rather than decreasing.

We have tabled a new clause on the computer systems, which we will debate towards the end of our time in Committee. Given the litany of failures on computer matters within the CSA, and, indeed, across Government, which goes back some time, the Minister’s remark worries me very much. I am grateful, Mr. Taylor, for the opportunity to make those brief further remarks on clause 9.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is at least reassured on some of my early points. We now return to the nub of his disagreement with clause 9. His argument is, in essence, that it is too broadly drawn; it is too “broad-brush”, as he put it. I say to him again that the clause goes much further in specifying what we want the annual report to cover than is the case for reports published by any other non-departmental public body. I hope that it will reassure him that with the stipulation in clause 9 and the overriding objectives set for the commission in earlier clauses, the annual report is quite a testing requirement and will oblige the commission to report in detail.

The commission will not be able to satisfy the requirements under the four additional specifications, unless it provides a fair amount of detail. I discourage him from putting the detailed requirements in the Bill, as he has attempted to do, because we have already gone much further. Taking the four additional requirements against the general requirement and the objectives that have been set down, I am confident that the annual report will be a thorough document, giving us a very good reading of how the commission is performing. I also believe that perfectly adequate requirements are in place for further parliamentary scrutiny of the annual report and further opportunities to ask additional questions of the commission and Ministers. I hope, therefore, that the clause will be accepted to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I beg to move amendment No. 63, in clause 10, page 5, line 8, at end insert ‘and laid before Parliament’.

It is a pleasure, Mr. Taylor, to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, but by no means the last—although it will be the last time for several months.

I refer to what the Minister said in his closing remarks on clause 9, which is about parliamentary accountability. A feature of the Committee’s proceedings has been that a number of amendments have been tabled seeking to strengthen parliamentary accountability, in recognition of the fact that the new body is to be further removed from Parliament than the Child Support Agency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale tabled an amendment that would have required parliamentary approval for the appointment of the chair of the commission, and further amendments were tabled on the subject of Parliament debating the annual report. I am sad to say that a feature of the Government’s response so far has been that, despite the rhetoric of the new Prime Minister about strengthening the role of Parliament and parliamentary accountability, Ministers have chosen to reject the amendments. I hope that we will see a change in that pattern in relation to this amendment, and I look to the Minister for a response.

Clause 10 relates to the link that will continue to exist between the will of the Secretary of State and the activities of the commission, an arm’s length body or a non-departmental public body. The clause quite rightly gives the Secretary of State the power to provide guidance on how the commission should carry out its work, which is not binding, and to issue directions, which are binding as I understand it. In other words, he may give instructions that the commission will have no option but to follow. It is right and proper that he should have those powers because, although it is at arm’s length, the new body is still a Government one.

The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that, when the Secretary of State chooses to exercise the powers, giving guidance or directions to the new body, Parliament should be made aware that he has done so. That relates to several broader matters. It would ensure that the lines of accountability between the Secretary of State and the commission are clear and can be seen clearly. A degree of openness in the relationship would be healthy—many hon. Members are still supporters of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; I certainly am—as it would allow ongoing scrutiny of the exercise of those functions.

The risk, when governmental functions are transferred to arm’s length bodies, is that a mechanism may come about that detaches responsibility somewhat—it is not the Minister’s fault; it is the commission’s. The commission is being given a degree of responsibility and, therefore, it must accept that blame sometimes comes with that.

Ultimately, the commission must be answerable both to Parliament and to the Secretary of State. If that information were laid before Parliament, it would aid the public’s and Parliament’s understanding of the way in which the Secretary of State is exercising his functions in relation to guiding and directing the activity of the commission. I suspect that if this were a private organisation, we would be hearing shouts from defenders of commercial confidentiality on not putting the information before Parliament. However, the body will be a public one, not a private one, so I do not see that that objection should apply. The Minister may wish to respond that at least some of the directions may apply to particular cases and that there may therefore be data protection reasons for objecting to the amendment.

Perhaps the Minister will give a view on how he expects the powers to be used in practice. One suspects that the vast majority of the guidance will be general guidance about the policies and practices of the organisation, and that directions may relate to specific matters. Perhaps they will relate to legislation or to issues that have become live in the public domain, when the Minister sees fit to act in order to show that something has been done or to make a change that is required by public opinion or other reasons. In all those cases, I see no reason why the information should not be made available to Parliament as a matter of course. With those brief words, I hope that the Minister will accept those arguments and see fit to welcome and adopt the amendment.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Taylor. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey clearly identified that the clause is about what might be termed the private dialogue that Ministers and the Secretary of State will have with the chairman, the chief executive and the officials of the new commission. That is a relationship with which I have had some experience, and if I may use the occasion of the amendment to speak on one or two related points as they occur to me, that might be helpful, although I shall not do so at great length.

My first point is one that the Minister has made a number of times. It is inconceivable that the affairs of the new commission will wither and cease to be of interest in this place—clearly, they will not. I can tell the Minister, if he is not already painfully aware of it, that however much he may put the commission’s functions at arm’s length and however much he may distance himself and say, “This is a purely administrative battle,” all the dirt will land on his desk, even if he does not deserve it. In that sense, I sympathise with him—it is difficult to do that for Ministers, but I shall. To put it in English, our constituents have suffered from failures with the CSA, and if CMEC were to be as unsuccessful, we would all be on his back to do something about it.

There is no sense, except a purely formal one, in which Ministers absolve themselves of their responsibility by seeking to create some clear space. On the other hand, if they are to do things sensibly, they would want to give a measured management freedom. The Minister has referred to that a number of times. He has sought to resist our amendments when we have apparently, if only for debate, sought to fetter the discretion of the commission or to make it too prescriptive.

In relation to the new Government, which has been in place for some three weeks, my impressions are that in rhetoric at least, some healthy changes are taking place. We seem to be having a retreat from targets, for example in local government, which I think is quite helpful. I do not believe that people respond best to being ordered, pushed around or told precisely what to do. If people have a clear remit because the objectives are clear, and a degree of management discretion to effect it, the last thing that people want—and the last thing that they deserve—is Ministers digging them up by the roots every ten minutes and saying, “Why didn’t you do this or otherwise?”

Without respect to party or individuals, the Committee will know that that is a relationship or a set of constraints that has shot through the whole process of government ever since the emergence of the concept of next steps agencies and the separate evolution of non-departmental public bodies, which have been in place for almost a generation. One has to go back to Nye Bevan, to the days when he said that a dropped bed-pan would be a matter for debate in the House of Commons. We have rightly moved on from that, but the Minister therefore owes the Committee some indication of his thoughts on guidance and directions, and how he wants to conduct the relationship.

I shall add a coda before I sit down. My remarks could be construed as being rather sinister. They could almost imply, for example, that the relationship had broken down quite badly and that Ministers, having lost confidence in the body, were issuing instructions to it, rather in the way that a permanent secretary can distance himself from ministerial decisions by writing a permanent secretary minute saying, “Not mine”, although he would not be so impertinent as to say so. Ministers are accountable here, so, quite rightly, they can take decisions against official advice. They do that from time to time, and sometimes they are right to do so, but it is not helpful if it happens all the time.

In the spirit of my comments on targeting, I should like the Minister to reflect on the possibility of issuing annual guidance, which he may be minded to do, or, in the context of a comprehensive spending review, to have a dialogue that is enshrined in a formal letter and could well be published. He should tell us. I have experience of running the two most expensive non-departmental public bodies, in the shape of the Higher Education Funding Council and the then Further Education Funding Council. My role was to write them an annual remit letter in the context of their funding arrangements and then to let them get on with it. Both formally and in practice, that is the wisest course of action.

In the transition, there is a danger that Ministers might become too prescriptive, as happened when the Further Education Funding Council became the Learning and Skills Council. I well remember a remit letter from the early days of the LSC that listed 76 urgent requirements. The Committee needs to reflect on that for only a moment. If I were to say to my secretary that there were 76 urgent pieces of work for her to do, she would tell me where to put them. The only purpose of specifying 76 requirements is to enable one to take a forensic approach and say, “You left out that one. You failed on that.” That does not lead to a healthy relationship.

I say to the Minister that we need to get a flavour of what guidance there will be, whether it will be given regularly and the circumstances in which Ministers might feel that it is appropriate. Above all, we need to know whether the directions will reflect a particular need of Ministers, some points that they think particularly important or something that has gone wrong that they wish to redress.

I promised a quick conclusion and I shall deliver one. I hope that Ministers and the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, who moved the amendment, will not take it amiss when I say that the prescriptions in the clause and the amendment slightly miss the point. Whatever is specified in private and said, or not said, in public, it is important that Ministers should have a dialogue with their non-departmental public body that is not based on instruction, but that takes the form of a regular conversation. There needs to be a degree of confidence, dare I say, that the chairman and chief executive are encouraged to come in and talk, and that Ministers will not make accusatory inquiries and perform press release-type stunts, but will say, “Have you thought about this?” and “How are you getting on with that?” A wise Minister does that all the time and somehow contrives to do it without interfering. It is a delicate relationship.

My final point concerns information. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire talked about the need for quarterly reporting. As a Minister, the only time when I ever had such difficulty and was not happy with the chief executive in question was when something was bounced on me. We had an administrative problem and, although it was on nothing like the scale of those of the CSA, I did not enjoy having 35,000 unpaid student loans on Christmas eve. Indeed, I even threatened to go to Glasgow to sign a few cheques to get something done about it. It could all have been averted if we had had enough notice of the problem. We would have put additional staff in a couple of months earlier and found people in the Department to deal with it.

In all seriousness, Ministers will need to give regard, as I am sure they will wish to, to the nature of their private dialogue with such organisations. That is a perfectly proper thing to do—it is not subverting the will of Parliament. Equally, they need to tell us here and now, in response to the amendment, on which subjects they propose to give guidance and direction, in what circumstances, how frequently and to what effect. If the Minister will reflect on that, it would be helpful.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

It was remiss of me, Mr. Taylor, not formally to welcome you to the Chair when I spoke earlier, but I do so now warmly. I have had the pleasure of serving under your chairmanship before, and I know that you will be fair and allow the most robust scrutiny, so long as it remains in order.

I have sympathy with amendment No. 63, and I agree with the remarks of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey. It is a short amendment to what seems to be a relatively brief and innocuous clause, but our debate shows that within even the most anodyne clauses deeper and more significant issues can lie, as was ably illustrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry.

During our third sitting, the Minister said about CMEC that

“It will operate at arm’s length from Ministers and the Department”,

and a little later, he said that the

“autonomy that goes with a non-departmental body is crucial”.——[Official Report, Child Maintenance and Other Payments Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2007; c. 90.]

We understand the Department’s reasoning for that, given what has happened up to this point, but when we come to clause 10, it will raise questions as to where the balance lies, as my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry and the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey have pointed out. It would be good to get a feeling on what the Minister thinks of the in-extremis powers that he is giving himself and the Secretary of State as a reserve. How frequently, if at all, does he imagine them being put into action?

I think the points on transparency were well made, and they have been made frequently today in respect of other amendments. My hon. Friend certainly did the Committee a service when he spoke of the role of targets in general, and he was absolutely right to do so. During my relatively brief six years in the House, I have often had the sense that public servants, both local and national, spend more time looking up towards Whitehall targets than looking at—I do not mean looking down on—customers, people, local residents, people of this country and those whom they serve. The intention is that targets will achieve good delivery. We all understand that, but the reality is often not what Ministers intend.

I am interested in the distinction between guidance and general or specific directions. I do not know about the experience of other hon. Members, but in my constituency guidance in the education system seems to have the status of holy writ to teachers. It seems that guidance is put on a pedestal and no one dare do anything else. I know that is not the case legally, and the helpful explanatory notes to the Bill point out that the commission should “have regard” to guidance but that it must “comply” with directions, as provided for under subsection (2).

David Taylor (Labour, North West Leicestershire)

Order. I am conscious of the generous remarks that the hon. Gentleman made a moment or two ago. However, the amendment is narrow—it relates only to line 8—and his comments are developing into a stand part contribution.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I am grateful for your guidance, Mr. Taylor. It was certainly not my intention to start a stand part debate. If I strayed a little wide, I shall redirect myself to amendment No. 63. The central question is, why should there be secrecy? Why should these matters, this guidance and these directions not be made public? I cannot think of a good reason. As was said earlier, the commission is not a private organisation. In the spirit of openness and transparency that has been urged on the Minister so frequently in the course of our deliberations, I hope that he will look favourably on the amendment.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I am grateful to the hon. Members for Daventry and for South-West Bedfordshire for their contribution to the debate prompted by the amendment. I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Daventry for having shared his experience with the Committee. We all appreciate having had the advantage of witnessing his graceful glide-path, to which he referred this morning, and I hope that it will result in a smooth landing for him.

The hon. Members for Daventry and for South-West Bedfordshire both want me to expand a little on the use of guidance and directions, but the hon. Member for Daventry has the answer to his own question. As he has said, there will have to be well-established dialogue between Ministers and the senior staff of the commission. Of course, that is right. I suspect that out of that will come the judgment as to how much guidance is needed—there might well be more of it at the onset of the commission than there is later, although I shall not try to specify how much, because it will rightly come out of that dialogue. We anticipate using directions only in emergencies.

The debate was prompted by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, who moved the amendment, and I intend to smile on him—a bit. Because it is a non-departmental public body, ultimate accountability for the commission’s performance and actions remains with the Secretary of State, and supervision for direction and guidance is therefore provided for in this clause. It is not unusual to have such provisions in the founding legislation of non-departmental public bodies, and similar legislation can be found in the Environment Act 1995 and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.

The power of direction will be used only in exceptional and time-critical circumstances—states of crisis such as that which occurred in 1999 when the Passport Agency failed to process applications within agreed deadlines. The agency agreed a recovery plan with Ministers, who in turn authorised the recruitment of additional staff. Ministers also facilitated arrangements for emergency extensions of passports at post offices, and reversed a decision taken by the agency to reduce security checks.

In less time-critical situations, the Secretary of State can use the power of guidance to assist the commission. Unlike the power of direction, under which the Secretary of State’s instructions must be followed by the commission, any guidance, notwithstanding what has been said in the course of debate, provided by the commission must be taken into account, but it does not have to be followed to the letter in every case. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs uses that power and provides guidance to the Environment Agency on, for example, the collection of waste in ways designed to protect human health. However, it is for the Environment Agency to determine how it exercises that function and to ensure that the power of guidance does not impede its ability to use its judgment in particular cases.

The amendment would require that any guidance or directions provided to the commission should be laid down in Parliament. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s desire to ensure even greater openness with regard to the operation of the commission and agree with him about that. I must highlight the fact that we see a distinction between the power of direction and that of guidance. The provision to give guidance to a non-departmental public body is nothing exceptional. It would be unusual to publish such guidance and therefore unnecessary—indeed, inappropriate—to lay guidance notes before Parliament. However, with regard to the Secretary of State providing direction to the commission, I am happy to give further consideration to the amendment.

Over the summer, I want to look at other examples of how similar powers are used across the Government, and specifically at whether such directions are laid before the House. I will return to the matter once I have considered it further. I want to give positive consideration to the idea that the hon. Gentleman has put before us in respective directions in light of the amendment.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I always respect a Minister who listens to the argument and reflects on it. That is hugely helpful to the Committee.

While we are bagging at least one assurance that the Minister will look at something, I have one further point. If he is in formal correspondence with the commission, perhaps on an annual basis or in the context of its annual report or the financial settlement, will he reflect on whether, either as a matter of practice or by using guidance in some other way, he might consider the possibility of publishing that kind of dialogue? I fully understand that if he has some internal guidance—something that perhaps reflects operational factors, starting factors or otherwise—that he does not wish to disclose. There may be cases, matters of staffing and otherwise, in which that might be inappropriate.

It might be good practice for the Minister to consider some sort of an annual “remit” letter—I use the word loosely—so that we had some context in which to frame our consideration of the relationship and the continuing work of CMEC.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

It may be appropriate to consider the key issues that could be raised in the context of the annual report. I will take that away and look at it over the summer together with the suggestion to adopt what has been proposed in respect of laying directions before Parliament. At this stage, I ask the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey to withdraw his amendment, on the understanding that I will give it serious further consideration and come back to the Committee in the future.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I am grateful to the Minister for both the content and the spirit in which he delivered his remarks to the Committee. I welcome his commitment to give further consideration to directions, and I understand what he is saying about guidance. If he is in a reflective mood, perhaps he will consider whether, in the run of things although not necessarily in every case, there are ways in which such guidance could be put in the public domain that fall short of laying it before Parliament.

For example, is it a matter that could be published on the website of the Department for Work and Pensions or of CMEC? I suppose that the commissioner will have his own plans for making such documentation open to the public short of laying it before Parliament. I well understand that distinction. I am grateful to the Minister for his remarks, and I look forward to hearing what he comes back with after the recess.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Before we leave the matter, I briefly invite the Minister to consider a point that I suspect will be put to him. There might be certain cases in which direction is not appropriate for publication on the grounds of confidentiality or, in extreme cases, national security. I would not expect him to produce that, but he may need to produce some kind of rubric that will cover him in those very narrow cases.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 11

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

This being a clause stand part debate, we can range reasonably widely round it, although I am conscious of your guidance in our last debate.

On the face of it, clause 11 looks like another short, innocuous clause that introduces supplementary provisions and does not warrant too much attention, as it contains no great issues. Subsection (1) mentions the definition of “child”. Further on, clause 37 deals with the meaning of “child”. Just for wider understanding, beyond this Committee—perhaps even for Committee members—I would be grateful if the Minister assured the Committee that the meaning of “child” in clause 11 is the same as that in clause 37, which in general terms refers to children under 16 or children under 20 who are in full-time education or other circumstances that meet with the conditions prescribed in clause 37(1)(b).

Subsection (2) contains the much wider issue of share of care, which I am sensing, increasingly strongly, is a large issue that is not sufficiently addressed in the Bill. It says:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about when a child is, or is not, to be regarded for the purposes of this Part as living apart from a parent.”

To put it on the record, I understand that under the current definition of what we are talking about, children living apart from one of their parents spend more than 260 nights away from their other parent’s home. If I have understood that correctly, a contention exists between parents on occasions in respect of shared care arrangements when the non-resident parent has their child for approaching 104 or more nights. Understandably, the parent with care might say, “No, you’re not having our children for more than 104 nights, because I don’t want to lose any money.” I have a lot of sympathy with that. I understand the concern of the parent with care about a possible reduction in her maintenance as a result of the child spending 104 nights or more with their father. That is a source of great concern and contention, and it comes back to the general issue, which we discussed in respect of clause 2, about the welfare of the child.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

I have two quick comments on which I would value my hon. Friend’s opinion. First, 104 days neatly coincides with weekends, which must be a typical pattern of shared care. Secondly, the overheads continue for somebody who loses only a few nights of care. That must be a factor in their view of whether the arrangement is equitable.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

As always, the Committee is indebted to my hon. Friend for his wise remarks. On his first point, he is right: 104 days is 52 weekends of two nights. The question of school holidays also comes into that. Parents might have their child every weekend during term time, but they might want them for a bit longer over the summer holiday or the Christmas holiday. Are the maintenance calculations then brought into question because of that?

In respect of my hon. Friend’s second point, the costs of maintaining a certain size of house to accommodate a child during a whole year—even though they are not there every night—are fixed and utilities and rent for a house large enough to have the appropriate number of bedrooms are expensive.

In respect of my hon. Friend’s second point, the costs of maintaining a certain size of house to accommodate a child during a whole year—even though the child is not there each night—are fixed. Utilities and rent for a house large enough to have the appropriate number of bedrooms are expensive. Looking at matters the other way round brings me neatly to the need to recognise the contribution that non-resident parents often make in respect of meals, food and clothes, even though their child is classed as living away from them as parents. The huge concern felt about that by many parents—mainly, but not exclusively, fathers—is justified.

The Bill’s aspiration in clause 2(2)(a) is to cover as many children as possible of divorced or separated parents. Incidentally, the phrase “children of divorced or separated parents” is greatly preferred by many non-resident parents, who deeply resent the term that we have slipped into using, because it is quick and easy. We have to be careful to think of the effect that anachronisms and terms have on people who care deeply for their children and who are greatly involved in their lives. Given that we are discussing a new start or new organisation, perhaps CMEC will think about using new phraseology. It is not really a matter for the Minister to give a detailed response to now, but perhaps it will be considered in the future.

Under clause 2(2)(a), the overriding objective that relates to clause 11 is for CMEC to encourage and support the making and keeping by parents of appropriate voluntary arrangements for their children. The Minister hopes that the definition in clause 11(2) will not have to apply to the greatest number of children. In his ideal world, it would not apply to any children, because the arrangements would be voluntary and therefore it would not be the business of the state, CMEC or any organ of government to look at the regulation and see how many nights here and how many nights there. Parents will have the flexibility to make their own arrangements to have a certain amount of money flowing forward, and the children can come and go without financial consequences. I greatly welcome that aspect of the Bill. It is excellent that more parents will not have to go through nasty weekly conundrums in respect of the split.

I do not expect the Minister to have fully worked out answers now, but the issue is serious. He has said that he will go away and consider a specific amendment from the previous group that we considered. In all seriousness, I say to him that the matter is of justified and genuine concern. It can be dealt with slightly more equitably than it is at present without requiring the him to take sides between parents with care and non-resident parents. I should be grateful if he could give us clues about his thinking or that of the Department and say whether he is prepared to have the period of summer reflection that he has assured us he will embark on.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

May I add my words of welcome to you, Mr. Taylor? I wish to follow on from what was said by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire. He referred to the definition of a child under the Child Support Act 1991, to which clause 11 refers. He said that a child was someone under the age of 16 or under the age of 20 in full-time education. I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that that is not quite correct under Scots law. Under section 1 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985, both parents can be obliged to pay aliment to a child in full-time education to the age of 25, and I will move an amendment to clause 37 in that respect. Will the Minister confirm whether clause 11 refers to the Child Support Act 1991? Presumably it will be referred to as amended, if I am successful in my later efforts on clause 37.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

As the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire has reminded us, shared care is a vexed area. As he has recognised, Ministers do not want to get drawn into such an area. They do not want to become involved in the discussion or debates that separating parents might have in respect of arrangements over shared care.

If the hon. Gentleman has studied the White Paper and all the responses from stakeholders and consultees—I am sure that he has—he will know that there was no consensus over the sort of change that should be made. In such circumstances, we were right to conclude that we should leave the existing arrangements for shared care provision within the maintenance calculations.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

The Minister has said that it is not an area that he wishes to get involved in. However, there is currently huge ministerial involvement, because a set of regulations exist that massively affect that area.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

The hon. Gentleman was tempting me to get even further involved than I am. Drawing on the years of experience that we have on this matter, we concluded that the current formula has been reasonably well road-tested and is reasonably effective. There was no consensus in our consultation to do anything different or anything other than the arrangements that already exist. That is why it is sensible to carry over those arrangements into CMEC.

Clause 11(1) sets out that the definition of child

“has the same meaning as in the Child Support Act 1991”

and makes provision for the Secretary of State to regulate when a child is to be regarded as living apart from the parent. The definition of a child in the Child Support Act 1991 is to be amended by clause 37. Following the amendment, a child will be defined as a person who is under the age of 16, or under the age of 20 under certain conditions. Clause 11 ensures that that meaning is used by the commission not only in the statutory maintenance service, but in information and support services and throughout the child maintenance system. In Scotland, the definition of a child is different, and children have different rights.

Clause 11(2), which was the subject of the debate, refers to children who live apart from one or both parents. To ensure that there is no confusion over the scope of the objective and the circumstances that it is intended to cover, clause 11 gives the Secretary of State the power to provide in regulation when a child is to be regarded

“as living apart from a parent.”

That power is intended to be used in circumstances in which it might be argued that a child lived with both parents, in whatever proportion, and therefore did not fall under the commission’s main objective because that child would not be living apart from one or both parents. The statutory maintenance service has robust and clear procedures that allow the maintenance service to apply clear and consistent rules when assessing a claim, even if there are complex family arrangements such as those that he has referred to.

When the commission exercises other functions, such as the promotion of parental responsibility and the provision of information and guidance, the measure will ensure that that is not restricted in terms of who is considered to be a child living apart from one or both parents.

Clause 12

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I have a few brief questions to put to the Minister. Because clause 12 relates to the transfer of functions from the Child Support Act 1991, and therefore, in many cases, effectively from the CSA to CMEC, this is a good opportunity to ask some questions about the nature of, and planning for, the transition between the two organisations, although there may be further opportunities to raise such issues.

The clause cuts to the heart of questions about the administration of the transition. It will transfer a substantial number of functions under the 1991 Act to CMEC, except those listed in subsection (2)—the exceptions are dealt with clearly in the explanatory notes. I note in passing that the Work and Pensions Committee, in a report in March this year, stated:

“The CSA has an unfavourable history regarding transition between systems.”

If transitions from the old to the new within the CSA have proved to be such a problem, what consideration has the Minister given to the framing of the clause to deal with the potential pitfalls in transferring functions from the CSA to the new body? In his report, Sir David Henshaw stated:

“I believe there are strong reasons to justify making a clean break from the current Agency and creating a new body with a mandate to deliver a ‘fresh start’ for child support. This body should be separate from the task of dealing with legacy issues from the current system, including the management of existing debt.”

I am probing the Minister to go a little further on the matter. Perhaps he has not had an opportunity so far in the Committee to explain why the Government have chosen not to follow up that recommendation to keep the functions separate and to use the CSA to wind up historic debt and so on and to deal with other issues under the old system. That would allow CMEC to make a fresh start with future applications.

There is a question of the extent to which the creation of CMEC is delivering the clean break that Henshaw recommended and which the Committee wants to see. Two members of the Select Committee are here: the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare and the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire. Although one must remain silent, we hope to hear from the other in our debates. As they will remember, in its evidence to the Committee, One Parent Families stated that

“it would appear that the CSA (its staff and computer system) will simply be re-branded as C-MEC from 2008 onwards.”

Natascha Engel (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab) indicated dissent.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

The hon. Lady shakes her head: I am sorry that we shall not be hearing from her any more.

The question is that if the previous functions under the 1991 Act are to be transferred nem. con., with the exceptions of the six listed items in subsection (2), to what extent is the measure really a clean break? That is open to question. I invite the Minister to explain how he sees the issue. The Select Committee also expressed concern that CMEC will run three different systems in parallel for a time. Again, that seems not to represent the clean break proposed by Henshaw.

In that context, it is worth referring briefly to the issue of public confusion and misunderstanding about what is happening. CMEC will take over roles from the previous system. There has been talk in the press of the abolition of the CSA and a clean break, which has rightly reflected the Government’s own line on the matter, but it has given rise to a great deal of confusion in the general public and among the base of people who make use of the CSA and who may in future make use of CMEC.

Simply lumping everything in with the new agency is perhaps not the best way to make things clear. I hope, therefore, that as well as the points that the Minister will undoubtedly wish to make, he will also respond to the important issues of the public’s understanding of what is going on and whether the Bill really is the fundamental change that my party wishes to see.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

I have a couple of brief points to make. On the point that the hon. Gentleman has just raised, when reviewing Sir David Henshaw’s report I looked at some of the work on transition between organisations. I would appreciate it if the Minister outlined the thinking within the Department about how the transition from the existing organisation to the new one might be managed. Many hon. Members, including the Minister and his colleagues, talk about a clean break. Sir David’s report said that there are a number of successful business models in the private sector for making a success of a clean break and on how to deal with a new business, a new model and the old arrangements. A key lesson from successful operations of that type was that the two different activities require different skills, organisational cultures and performance management.

As the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said, we have not heard a great deal about how transferring all of the functions and all of the people, as proposed by the next clause, will create a new organisation with a new mindset, a new culture, and—most importantly for the outside world—a new image. By that I do not mean just a new brand or identity, but a difference in performance that people can see as a real change. Persuading people that there has been a real change and a break with the past when they see effectively the same processes, the same people and very little difference, is going to be quite difficult.

It will be encouraging for the Committee if the Minister outlines some of the thinking in the Department because the commission will have to hit the ground running. If that culture change does not succeed right at the beginning, I am afraid that it will be too late. If the new organisation starts working without successfully doing that, it will not be possible to do it later. Will the Minister run through that for the benefit of the Committee?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I shall begin with the points raised by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean and work back to the others. In a sense, there are real problems with what he is asking. On the one hand he wants to ensure a clean break and is raising questions about whether that can be achieved by transferring functions. The implication, as I hear it, is that he wants to achieve a clean break by completely bringing all the functions of the CSA to a full stop somehow, as if it were possible to switch off one system, pack it up, put it away and then switch on another one and start again with something new. With respect to him, that cannot be done because there are at least 650,000 children involved for whom the most critical thing is that we ensure an uninterrupted and steady flow of maintenance. It is therefore extremely important to have as smooth as possible a glide path, if I might use the phrase again, from the existing cases within the agency into the new commission. Let me put it this way: despite all the problems that we are familiar with in the context of the agency, I would hope that those parents for whom the system currently works—and there are many for whom it does work—will not notice the difference. It is important that smoothly running flows of child maintenance should continue. For that reason, it is not possible simply to switch off one agency and start another. The carry-over from one to the other is critical.

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

For the avoidance of doubt, I was not suggesting that. That is not what is happening; the commission is going to pick up the responsibility for those cases that do work. However, given that we know that the CSA has not been the most successful of organisations, how can we be sure that we are going to get a successful commission that works across the piece both for its new customers and for those who have not been very well treated, as well as for collecting the historical debt?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

Remember that it will not happen all in one big bang. As we set out in the White Paper, it will take a number of years to achieve the transition from the state that things are in now to the state in which the commission is fully up and running and is responsible for every aspect of child maintenance. It will be about 2013 before that happens, and we will apply the lessons learned from the CSA about the importance of taking time to get a complex transition such as this right. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey asked why we had not proceeded with David Henshaw’s recommendation to have, in effect, two bodies: a legacy body and a new commission. We thought carefully about that but did not accept it because we want to go down what we believe to be the more efficient route. It is our firm view that it is crucial to have a single controlling team overseeing all aspects of the legacy cases as well as the new ones. The process needs to be as seamless as possible for all the clients who are involved in it. I am sure that if we were to move to a two-body situation, that would add confusion for clients. In dealing with matters relating to their family, they might find themselves working with one organisation handling legacy cases while also having to have a relationship with another body dealing with subsequent cases. There are many complex cases, and that would not be a satisfactory state of affairs. For those reasons, it was much more sensible to go for a single body overseeing all the legacy work as well as the new cases.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

I understand the Minister’s position. However, given that at least two systems run side by side in the CSA, the unfairness felt by many parents will be made worse by the fact that there will be a third system in CMEC, that one organisation will be running all three, and that it will be several years before all cases get on to the new system. The public perception is that it is a new organisation with a new system. Many of us fear that the fact that there are three different systems will undermine that perception and might institutionalise in CMEC the problems that exist in the CSA.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I do not share that concern. There is a difference between a transition between institutions—such as moving from the agency to CMEC—which is what we are talking about, and a transition between formulae, which is what happened within the agency after the 2003 change. Those are not the same thing. In fact, the formula change that came in as a result of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 has been widely accepted and is supported as being a clearer way of arriving at maintenance assessments than was the previous model.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Does the Minister agree that it will be important to give consideration to the right kind of communication to service users? It would be possible to drown them with too much information, or the wrong kind, or to stir up or alarm them unnecessarily about destabilising changes in the arrangements. He wants a seamless transition of institutions, which is sensible, but at the same time there will be words on the street and people will jump to conclusions. Will he think long and hard, in conjunction with the new management, to ensure that this is got right and explained both passively, on websites and so forth, and by active communication as well?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

Yes, it has to be seamless for clients. That is the bottom line. We are trying to ensure that we are providing the best possible level of service to clients. The smooth transition from one service to the other is of critical importance and will, of course, inform us as we think about how we deal with the detail of the switch, over time, from agency to commission.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

Hearing the Minister’s response to the intervention from the hon. Member for Angus led me to feel rather sorry for the staff of the CSA, about whom we will talk more under clause 13. However, it is appropriate to mention that, because we have already debated how staff numbers are dwindling. The Minister has answered that point—not to my satisfaction—but it now seems, from the way he did so, that staff in the same teams will, potentially, be dealing with three different systems for a while and there will still be a limited number of staff. That is a critical issue. What are the Minister’s intentions in terms of staff training, so that people can manage the substantially increased work that it sounds as though they will have? If necessary, is he prepared to make the resources available, so that the commission can employ the additional people that may be necessary to handle this transfer of functions?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

The hon. Gentleman is taking me into the next debate. Suffice it to say it will be for the commission to devise the necessary transitional arrangements and for it, as I have said to him before, to determine the appropriate staffing level. There will be a constant dialogue on the resources between the commission’s senior officials and my Department. I think that his points are covered, but I will have more to say about staffing when we get to clause 13.

We are currently dealing with clause 12, which is a key element of the Bill and transfers to the commission those functions that the CSA currently carries out on behalf of the Secretary of State. For example, from the day appointed for the transfer, the commission will have responsibility for functions relating to the assessment, collection and enforcement of maintenance and to the duty to have regard to the welfare of the child. To be precise, the clause transfers the statutory child support functions as amended by the Bill. The transfer of staff and of property, rights and liabilities are provided for in subsequent clauses. The clause also gives effect to schedules 2 and 3. A few functions are excepted from transfer, as set out in subsection (2): some are retained solely by the Secretary of State, while others are both retained and transferred to the commission. I would like to mention each of those briefly and explain why they are excepted.

The right of appeal will be both conferred on the commission and retained by the Secretary of State. Although the commission will be a non-departmental public body, the policy that it operates is still ultimately the responsibility of the Secretary of State. It is therefore essential that the Secretary of State is still party to the proceedings for any appeal to the child support commissioner or a higher court, so that he can challenge legal interpretations that might undermine the policy.

Functions under section 46 of the 1991 Act relate to decisions on the amount of benefit a person is to receive. They do not relate to child support, and are therefore not transferred to the commission. The power to authorise a responsible person for the disclosure of information will be both conferred on the commission and retained by the Secretary of State. It is important that the Secretary of State retains that function, as he will continue to have some child support functions, such as making legislation, and his work may involve handling information. However, it will also be necessary for the function to be exercised by the commission, and paragraph 16 of schedule 7 makes the necessary amendment to ensure that that is so.

Legislative functions—that is, commencement powers, powers to make consequential amendments and the power to make secondary legislation under the 1991 Act—will also remain solely with the Secretary of State, because it is he or she who is ultimately responsible for legislation.

Finally, the provisions of the 1991 Act which provide for the Secretary of State for Scotland to pay travel expenses for a person attending proceedings before a child support commissioner in Scotland, will remain with that Secretary of State and will not be transferred.

Establishing the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is a key part of creating the new and radically different child maintenance system that we seek. Transferring the revised child support functions and duties to the commission simply allows us to establish it as a new independent body, specifically empowered and focused on promoting parental responsibility and choice and maximising maintenance arrangements.

Schedule 3

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I beg to move amendment No. 58, in schedule 3, page 61, line 31, leave out paragraph 51.

This is a probing amendment. Paragraph 51 inserts a new section, 50A, which states:

“Any decision falling to be made under or by virtue of this Act by the Commission may be made, not only by a person authorised to exercise the Commission’s decision-making function, but also by a computer for whose operation such a person is responsible.”

I shall be interested to hear from the Minister whether it is a standard insertion in Acts that apply where computers may have a role in the administration of facilities. I make no apologies for repeating a point that was made earlier: the failure of computers to operate properly is one of the principal reasons why the CSA has such a bad reputation for making the wrong decisions in the wrong way at the wrong time and coming up with the wrong answer. The Minister admitted as much this morning when he referred to the internal audit of the CSA’s computer system, which he said had found 506 problems, which is not a small number, of which 219 have been fixed, leaving 287 remaining. He was frank about the problem, for which I commend him.

I assume that the Minister thinks that the problems will be fixed and that by the time CMEC comes into existence its computer system will be up and running and carrying out its functions. If it is not, the clause seems rather a sweeping measure, as it provides that a decision made by computer is to be regarded as a decision of the Secretary of State, or, in future, of the commission. The fact that it is a standard provision should in no way be taken to undermine my concerns about the idea, because unless the Minister can offer reassurances that the IT problems will be sorted out, the concept behind the proposal will not engender public confidence or the confidence of Members of Parliament in the operation of the new system.

The amendment provides a good opportunity for the Minister to say a little about the IT systems that CMEC intends to use, how the Government intend it to operate those systems and in what respect it will be different from how the CSA operated its IT systems, which the Minister admitted were beset by problems from the start.

The Government seem to have rejected the idea of a completely new IT system, so the proposed insertion in the schedule provides new responsibilities for those computers, if only legally, in name. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but at the same time it seems that CMEC will take over the legacy computer system of the CSA, albeit, one hopes, with the remaining 287 faults corrected. No doubt a number of new IT releases will be brought in to allow the new formula and the new rules set out in the Bill and in the regulations to be applied.

The report by the Work and Pensions Committee referred to the Child Support Agency’s record of serial IT failures and made the point that there is no evidence that a new system will be any more effective than the last two. The National Audit Office report on IT projects, “Delivering successful IT-enabled business change”, which I am sure is familiar to every member of the Committee, highlighted the complexities of the technical problems encountered when joining new and old systems in a variety of settings.

In responding to this brief debate, perhaps the Minister will explain his strategy for CMEC’s computer system. If it is a final decision, will he say why he has decided that the legacy computer system will be improved rather than having a new system? If that is the case, how does he intend to address the issues that were highlighted by the National Audit Office about the problems that exist in transitions between IT systems when patches and new releases have to be put in place? I would guess that in part the failure of that process in the past has been the cause of many of the problems that our constituents have experienced with the CSA. If a similar process is to be entered into again, what steps will the Minister take to ensure that it does not result in the same lack of effectiveness, lack of competence and extreme frustration and anger on the part of users of the system?

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

The Committee will be pleased to hear that I will be brief. I am guessing that the Minister has a technical explanation for the proposal, but I hope that he will address the philosophical concept of computers being able to make decisions in the normal sense of the word, which relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey.

Computers can only implement instructions laid down for them by human beings. Given past problems, the responsibilities of some of the software providers and the implementation of the IT systems, it would be worth the Minister explaining whether this part of the schedule transfers any responsibility or if, as I suspect, it is just a technical measure to avoid a legal challenge made by people paying maintenance to any aspect of the process that involves an IT system. Perhaps he will explain the use of the words “decision” and “computer” in respect of the wider philosophical point.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s invitation to get philosophical, which I will do in a moment. I always welcome such invitations.

I want first to respond to the questions raised about IT systems by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, who reiterated some of the facts that I gave the Committee about the current situation. Of course we must get the IT right, as I said.

The hon. Gentleman asked about future arrangements. CMEC will simply take over the existing CSA IT systems, bearing in mind that in the meantime it will have gone through the operational improvement plan enhancements, which I outlined in more detail this morning. The CSA’s existing IT contract will novate to CMEC, and from that starting position it will be open to the commission to determine its IT strategy, giving consideration to its objectives and available resources.

Paragraph 51 to schedule 3 inserts new paragraph 50A to the Child Support Act 1991. That simply replicates an existing provision under the Social Security Act 1998; and section 2 of that Act stipulates that decisions can be made or issued not just by a person acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, but also:

“by a computer for whose operation such an officer is responsible”.

That applies specifically to decisions made under, among others, the Child Support Acts of 1991 and 1995. The provision was originally introduced to allow automated decision making.

Social security and child support legislation states specifically that decisions must be made by particular officers or the Secretary of State, and, by extension, officials acting on his behalf. Technically, prior to the Social Security Act 1998, no decision could be made by a computer. At that time, many processes were automated; computers would take relevant data and often make complex calculations, for example, about the amount of benefit owing. However, because there needed to be a “decision maker”—that is a technical term—an officer would have to sign off a computer printout for each person affected. Section 2 of the 1998 Act did away with the need for that laborious and bureaucratic clerical process. The amendment would require that process to be reinstated for any decision taken by the commission. That would, no doubt, require changes to existing processes and IT, and would build back in inefficiencies that were removed in 1998.

I reassure the Committee, as the Committee was reassured in 1998, that staff rather than computers will be used to make decisions requiring the exercise of discretion or judgment. The decisions that will be automated are those that follow set rules and processes, such as for maintenance calculations. As the hon. Member for Forest of Dean asked me to do, I can reassure the Committee on the general notion of computers making decisions, which sends an Orwellian chill down the spine. We should think of it more as computers determining an outcome, based on criteria or rules established by the true decision makers—the commission’s personnel or, indeed, us. The software applies the law to the facts of the case. Computers are not exercising judgment between options, which is what most of us would normally understand by the concept of a decision. Furthermore, they are simply doing what they are told to. The ultimate responsibility remains, of course, with those who do the telling.

I hope that with those reassurances, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey will withdraw the amendment.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

The Minister is clear on the philosophical and legal nature of the amendment. I do not want to venture into the metaphysical territory that he explored. It was enlightening, however, in that I had not been aware that social security legislation and other such legislation contained what might be described as a computer-says-no clause. That is a useful piece of information for an after-dinner speech, and it would go into my diary, if I kept one.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

Will the Minister say something about the issue frequently complained about by our constituents—of computers churning out different assessments, perhaps on the same day? Is there anything within paragraph 51 in respect of those responsible for computers having some sort of duty to ensure that they are not churning out wildly different maintenance calculations that arrive on the same day, on the same doormat, and cause real anger and consternation?

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

We have been having a discussion about computers making decisions and a computer making one decision might be one thing, but a computer making half a dozen or a dozen different decisions on the same day and sending them all to the same person at the same time, is not acceptable. It does happen and it is exactly the sort of thing that the operational improvement plan fixes are designed to put right.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 13

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

I have two points. The first we touched on briefly in the last debate and it focuses on the people who are going to be transferred to CMEC. Many of the problems that have been experienced by parents and families in the maintenance process have not been caused by Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations. In some ways, the staff of the agency are as much victims of the process. It came up during the evidence-taking session with the Minister and the chief executive of the agency that the morale in the agency was quite high and the staff were looking forward to this process taking place. It was worth getting that on the record.

I have one specific question for the Minister, in light of our debate on clause 8. He was keen not to fetter or limit the scope and flexibility of the commission, which is why clause 13(3)(a) amends the TUPE regulations to change the trade union recognition procedures that are standard in TUPE recognition, and removes the limitation that is normally there. That seems to fetter the role of the commission slightly and make it more difficult for it to take a different position in relation to trade union recognition. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain the logic behind that as TUPE regulations do not normally require that to be the case.

Paul Rowen (Liberal Democrat, Rochdale)

I agree that the clause is important. I was grateful to the Minister for agreeing this morning that the results of staff survey would be placed in the Library. I understand why subsections (2) and (3) are included. They modify the TUPE regulations so that existing trade unions who represent CSA employees can continue to do so. I am sure that most Members agree that that is a particularly important process in that it gives certainty to those employees that they will continue to get the same recognition.

I want to ask the Minister about subsection (5) and the circumstances in which he envisages an order-making power to exclude some people from transferring under the TUPE terms being used. I note that it is a negative resolution, so there is little opportunity for debate unless it is prayed against. Who does the Minister think would be covered by this subsection? Clearly, if it is widely exercised, it would cause concern to current employees of the CSA. Perhaps the Minister can tell us which employees could be affected by this subsection and why it is subject to a negative resolution.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

As hon. Members know, we intend to transfer the child support functions, which are currently the responsibility of the Secretary of State, to the commission in 2008, at which point the CSA will cease to exist and the commission will be made responsible for delivering child maintenance services.

Clause 13 will ensure that, when those functions are transferred, all the people employed by the CSA will also transfer to the commission. In other words, it will ensure that, from day one, the commission will have the people that it needs to fulfil its responsibilities. There are exceptions, as the hon. Member for Rochdale said, and there are good reasons for them. We therefore expect to use clause 13(5) to exclude from the transfer those who are working at the CSA as consultants or working there under contract for a private sector organisation at the time of transfer.

The people employed by the CSA are its biggest asset. They will be critical to the development of the modern service that needs to be put in place. Our staff will provide the commission with a strong base on which to build. At this point, I should like to pay tribute to the agency’s staff. Over the past few months, my fellow Ministers in the Department and I have held question and answer discussion sessions at various CSA offices throughout the country, because we wanted the opportunity to discuss with staff this substantial change. Those meetings were widely welcomed by the staff involved, who, quite understandably, had a series of questions and some concerns about the big change that is happening in their organisation.

What came out of those meetings——and continues to come out of them as we hold them——was the huge commitment of the CSA staff, not only to their current task, to which their commitment is beyond any question, but to making CMEC work. After all, they want to be part of a successful child maintenance operation and they are prepared to give their all to help us to achieve that. Many of them have worked for the agency for a long time and have been in the difficult spot of working with a flawed design, which has been a tough task.

I can report that the staff are pleased with the introduction of the operational improvement plan. They have seen the tangible benefit of that additional investment. They see it as essential preparation of the ground, which we are going through with their help, for a smooth transition to CMEC. We need to do our best to look after the staff, who have worked extraordinarily hard and with great commitment to do their best with the CSA. They want to help us to deliver the marked improvement that CMEC will represent.

Andrew Selous (Conservative, South West Bedfordshire)

I want to put on record the official Opposition’s gratitude to the staff of the CSA. We all recognise that they share our frustration that child maintenance has not been conducted as successfully as they would have liked. I have met CSA staff who have travelled to my constituency office to deal with individual cases. They have been unfailingly courteous and have shared my frustration at not being able to resolve some of the cases on which we have worked together. I therefore echo the Minister’s remarks.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments, as I am sure will staff throughout the agency.

Clause 13 will provide much-needed assurance to staff involved in the transfer. It will ensure that the protection offered by TUPE applies to the transfer, which will provide a clear guarantee to staff that the transfer will not affect their employment or their terms and conditions. The Committee will see that we have made separate provision to protect pensions in subsection (4).

I was asked why we are amending the trade union paragraphs. TUPE regulation 6 provides for a group of employees transferring under TUPE to retain access to their existing trade unions. However, because of the way in which the regulation is worded, it could be interpreted not to apply to the transfer of people to the commission. Clause 13(3) therefore includes a specific provision to ensure that the commission must recognise independent trade unions currently recognised by the Secretary of State.

The clause ensures that we are entirely in line with the Cabinet Office statement of practice on such transfers, which sets out clear guidelines on the treatment of staff and which should be followed whenever there is organisational change within the public sector. That is unequivocal about the fact that staff involved in transfers of functions should be treated fairly and consistently and their rights should be respected. Specifically, it states that departments must

“ensure that legislation effecting transfers of functions between public sector bodies makes provision for staff to transfer and on a basis that follows the principles of TUPE.”

That is exactly what this clause does. A number of provisions in the Bill should help to allay any concerns that our staff might have. The Bill provides that people will retain their terms and conditions on transfer, that they will continue to have access to the principal civil service pensions scheme and, as I have been saying, that their existing trade unions will be recognised by the commission.

I know that there are concerns about whether terms and conditions can be changed immediately after transfer. Let me reassure CSA staff now that the new employer cannot lawfully impose different terms and conditions without the agreement of the individual employee or trade union, and even then can do so only if the new terms and conditions are more favourable to the employee.

As an additional measure, we will enable staff who move to the commission to have access to Department for Work and Pensions vacancies for at least three years. We are also in discussion with the Cabinet Office to secure approval for people working in the commission to apply for inter-departmental vacancies advertised on the civil service recruitment gateway website.

Clause 13 is critical both for the success of the commission and for the reassurance of the people currently employed by CSA.

Clause 14

Mark Harper (Conservative, Forest of Dean)

I want to make two brief points. The first concerns transparency, which we have already debated at length, so I shall not revisit the arguments. How does the Minister intend to publish the information when the Secretary of State makes a scheme of transfer? Will it be made available by the commission or the Minister, or placed in the Library of the House? What has he in mind from a transparency point of view?

My other question is on subsection (5). That refers to the certificate confirming the transfer to be given by the Secretary of State, whereas the explanatory notes say that the certificate will be given by the commission. I suspect that it should, indeed, be the Secretary of State, and it would be helpful if the Minister would clarify that.

Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)

I have a few questions to add. The clause looks innocuous, but one or two matters could usefully be fleshed out to help us to understand how the clause would be implemented should the Bill become law. I appreciate that the Minister’s throat is getting a bit dry after the number of speeches that he has been making, but I suspect that this will be his last, at least for today.

The clause relates to the transfer of property rights and liabilities from the Secretary of State to the commission and vice versa. It would be useful if the Committee could understand how the Minister envisages that working in practice. I presume, although the Minister should clarify this, that the measure applies to buildings currently occupied by the CSA, computers currently used by them and other fixtures and fittings of their buildings. Presumably, those things would be transferred to the commission. The clause is needed because the CSA is an Executive agency and its property is currently owned by the Secretary of State. A transfer would mean that, in future, that property would belong to the commission.

If that is the case, perhaps the Minister could explain what rights or interests over transferred property the Secretary of State may seek to retain in the case of such a transfer of property to the commission. Would it be a controlling interest that would give the Secretary of State a veto over any future disposals that the commission may make? For example, if the commission decides that it wishes to sell property, will he have the right to veto that decision or could the money that might be raised from the sale of property be returned to the consolidated fund, rather than becoming additional money in CMEC’s account?

I think that I am right in saying that the CSA occupies seven regional centres throughout the United Kingdom. Is it the Minister’s intention for CMEC to have initial access to all those centres and that the commission will take decisions about its property needs in due course or might he be inclined to dispose of some of that property to raise funds for the Exchequer before the commission is set up?

Finally, is the Minister considering any disposals or alternative uses for the property? Reduction of staffing has been a constant feature of these debates, so that may be an issue in that there may be a need for less property and fewer centres. Under this Government as under previous Governments, there has been a tendency to centralise services, core centres and so on. Does he predict that that is likely to happen in the future, with relation to property, computer systems and other goods and chattels?

I shall stray slightly to talk briefly about property disposals that may take place. There have been several debates about the future use of property that is owned by the public sector in relation to meeting housing needs. If the Minister were to give directions to the commission, would he advise it about how it might seek to dispose of property should it wish to do so? That property could be used, for example, by housing associations or other housing providers to provide affordable housing. I am sure that that would satisfy the Opposition and meet demands for brownfield sites.

Does the clause enable the Minister to give such directions to the commission to ensure that, if it is disposing of property, it will be done in a way that could meet other Government objectives? The point that I have just made would be one such relevant objective and, with that in mind, I look forward to the Minister’s response.

James Plaskitt (Labour, Warwick and Leamington)

First, I shall try to deal with the points that have been raised about property. In general terms, the CSA has access to property via existing contracts under TUPE. All rights under those contracts will transfer to the commission. Long-term decisions about estate strategy will be a matter for the commission, which will review the situation as it evolves.

Clause 14 concerns the transfer of property rights and liabilities to the commission. The commission will need to operate from day one to enable those existing contracts and assets to be transferred from the CSA to the commission. It will benefit significantly by accessing the current contract, rather than being obliged to renegotiate afresh. First, most of the contracts are Department-wide and therefore make extensive savings through economies of scale. Secondly, many of them have been entered into on a long-term basis to achieve maximum efficiency. It is therefore in the commission’s interests that rights and liabilities are transferred under these contracts. Most contracts in which the commission has a partial or total interest will contain provisions allowing them to be novated or assigned—that is, allowing the straightforward transfer of the contractual rights and liabilities from the Department to the commission—and ownership of both assets can then simply be transferred. For example, if the supplier had contracted with the DWP to supply stationery to the CSA centre, the contract would be amended so that it should instead supply stationery to the commission. In a few specific cases that may not be possible. For instance, if the provisions in the contract are not extensive enough to allow for transfer to the commission, the power will simply allow the Secretary of State to transfer the property rights or liabilities in question through a scheme. Similarly, if it proves necessary for the commission to make use of property owned by the Department, the scheme could be created to provide for exactly that. It is not unusual for the transfer of property rights and liabilities to be provided for in this way. The clause echoes closely the provisions of section 41 of the Food Standards Act 1999.

On liabilities, the clause is intended to allow us to transfer contractual rights and liabilities and not to transfer the Secretary of State’s liability for previous actions. For example, the Secretary of State will retain liability for cases of maladministration that occurred before the handover.

These straightforward measures simply ensure that the commission is provided with the tools and capabilities it will need to function effectively as an organisation from the first day that it is set up.

David Taylor (Labour, North West Leicestershire)

Order. There will now be 77 days of summer reflection.

Further consideration adjourned.—[Mr. David.]