Child Support (Enforcement) Bill

Baroness Pidding Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 14th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Pidding]

That the Bill do now pass.

[Baroness Pidding (Con)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Redfern, I have a few brief comments to make. I express my sincere gratitude to my noble friend for her stewardship of the Bill in this House. She has been struck down by that ghastly virus and cannot be with us today, but I am glad to say that she is making a good recovery.

It is an honour to pick up on the hard work of the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, in introducing the Bill and leading both its Second Reading and Committee stage. I am pleased that the Bill has now reached its final stage in this House today. I thank the Minister and his officials for their support, as well as those noble Lords who supported the Bill on Second Reading. I am of course grateful to my honourable friend Siobhan Baillie MP for introducing the Bill in the other place, and to Katherine Fletcher MP, who stood in for Ms Baillie during Third Reading.

The Bill will make essential improvements to child maintenance processes. Crucially, it will get money to children more quickly. Finally, I say on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, what a privilege it has been to take the Bill through its stages in this House, and for me to follow up today. I hope that it can now move to Royal Assent and implementation as quickly as possible. I beg to move.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, for piloting the Bill through this House and, along with the rest of the House, wish her a speedy recovery. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, for standing in for her today so crisply and effectively. Thanks are due too to the Minister and his team, both for their work on this Bill and for their briefing of Peers to help us understand the context in which it sits. I am grateful also to Gingerbread and the charities that work so hard in this area.

We on these Benches wholeheartedly support the principle that non-resident parents should pay child maintenance and that there should be enforcement for those who fail to pay. The Bill should make a small but welcome contribution to that end by speeding up the process by which the non-resident parent who is in arrears can be made to pay what they owe. I hope that in future, we will see a further reduction in the amount of child maintenance that goes unpaid. There is still work to be done to increase compliance with the child support regime and to ensure that it becomes the norm that both parents continue to support their children, whatever happens to their relationship with one another.

For now, I simply thank again the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, and Siobhan Baillie MP, and wish the Bill well.

Benefits: Reductions

Baroness Pidding Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pidding (Con)]

My Lords, first, I join all other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, on securing this important and timely debate and in paying tribute to the tireless work of the late Baroness Hollis.

For too long, the benefits system has been a byzantine nightmare: a complicated arrangement of six different benefits coming from three different government departments. This complexity created obstacles for claimants entering the workplace. Under the previous Labour Government, our benefit system created a poverty and dependency trap for claimants and their families where, ironically, it could be more worthwhile to claim benefits from the state than to work.

The old system disincentivised work through cliff edges at 16, 24 and 30 hours worked per week. Workers claiming benefits could increase their hours but gain essentially no financial benefit from doing so. That meant that those choosing to work could have an effective tax rate of more than 90% on their income.

Universal credit changes that. It makes work pay. Because universal credit incentivises work and does away with the old system of cliff edges, 86% of people on universal credit are trying to increase their working hours. They are doing so because they can be sure that, the more money they earn, the more money they will get to keep for themselves. Indeed, analysis shows that people in work and claiming universal credit are on average £600 a year better off as a result.

Universal credit is projected to help an additional 200,000 people into work, adding £8 billion per year to the economy when fully rolled out. That is more money for the Government to spend on our public services and infrastructure. But, more crucially, those 200,000 more people in work are 200,000 more people taking pride in earning for themselves and their families. In turn, that means many more children growing up in homes with working parents, rather than in workless households. We know from research that children do worse in workless households. Children in workless families are almost twice as likely to fail at all stages of their education as those in households with at least one parent working.

However, no system is perfect, and I welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to spend an additional £4.5 billion to help with the full rollout. The Economist argued recently that universal credit was a policy worth implementing, and suggested that, if done properly, this reform could be a “shining example for others”.

The Government have committed £51 million pounds to Citizen’s Advice centres to deliver support for new claimants. They have provided online guidance—immediate access to work coaches—to support claimants, and have trained 1,800 universal credit work coaches to support claimants with mental health issues. The end result is worth it. We must have a benefits system that is easier for claimants to navigate, and that supports and incentivises working. We need a benefits system that encourages those that are structurally unemployed into employment, so that their children do not fall victim to the same fate. The previous benefits system—which incentivised claiming from the state over work—is not fair to those claiming it, to their families, and to hard-working UK taxpayers who ultimately finance it.

Because of this Government’s commitment to get Britain back to work, there are thousands of families where children grow up seeing their parents coming home from work every day. We cannot overestimate the positive effect of this: such behaviour sends an immensely powerful message to the next generation. We need a benefits system that supports this, not one that actively discourages claimants from seeking work.

In closing, I pose two questions to my noble friend the Minister. Does she agree that, whereas the legacy system stifled work opportunities, universal credit unlocks them, and that it is crucial to continue to roll out universal credit to extend opportunities to work to all?

Pensions: Women’s State Pension Age

Baroness Pidding Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Let me go through the communications: 14 million personalised pension estimates have been sent out since 2000; 16 million unprompted forecasts were sent out with information on the raising of the pension age; 1 million letters were sent out between 2009 and 2011; 5 million letters were sent out between 2012 and 2013; and, in the 2012 survey it was discovered that only 6% of women retiring within 10 years thought that the pension age was still 60.

[Baroness Pidding (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that the new state pension provides a boost to women’s pension income?

[Lord Freud]

Many noble Lords took part in debates on this issue in the House. One issue that we discussed was the Green Paper about the new state pension and how that would affect the women involved. We made the concession. But after that we introduced the new state pension, which has been carefully focused on the poorest women. By 2030, 3 million women will be on the full rate and gaining £550 extra each year.