Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 62BL and 62BM, and in doing so I draw the attention of the House to my interests, which are in the register. I am a former non-executive director of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission and a former chief executive of the National Council for One Parent Families.

I want to ask a specific point about these government amendments, which seem to be producing a new formulation that would require an applicant wanting to apply for child maintenance through the CSA to consider with the commission whether it is possible for them to make a private arrangement before being allowed to make such an application. Can the Minister please make it clear to the House just what the applicant would have to do? If I am making an application and I simply say, “I wish to make an application”, and the agency says, “Have you considered making a private application?”, and I say, “Yes, but there is no way that he is ever going to agree to it”, is that enough? Am I then allowed to proceed, or is it intended to be a bigger hurdle than that?

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I welcome the announcement of the additional £20 million for family support services for separating families, which is part of this package of reforms, and in doing so I must of course immediately declare a very direct interest as departing chief executive—this week—of the charity Relate. We provide help and support to separating families, to mothers, fathers and children and to wider family members. I recognise also that this is less contentious than the issues surrounding the reform of the statutory system, which we will be debating a little later, but it is worth a quick comment—not least because of the fact that each year around 350,000 children are directly affected by parental separation.

I am sure that all noble Lords across the House will agree that it is better, wherever possible, to encourage separating parents to make voluntary maintenance arrangements and to provide them with all the necessary practical help and support to do so. I am equally sure that all noble Lords recognise that this avenue will never be possible or appropriate, or even desirable, for all parents, particularly when issues of domestic violence are involved. That is what the statutory service is there to do, quite rightly, but it must be in everyone's interest that as many separating families as possible are encouraged and actively supported to make their own arrangement, not least so as not to clog up the statutory system for those who really need it most. The fact that some 50 per cent of children living in separated families have no effective child maintenance arrangements in place is surely evidence that the current system needs an overhaul. It is self-evident that any new system should be based as far as possible on reducing conflict and encouraging collaboration.

The fact that the funding announced today will allow parents to access more consistent support services as soon as possible across the country, and that it responds very directly to concerns raised by the DWP Select Committee a number of months ago, will be in everyone's interests, particularly those of children. This form of earlier intervention must be a wiser use of resources than waiting for problems to become so intractable, and for conflict to become so entrenched, that voluntary-based arrangements, frankly, become quite impossible.

As a former chair of the Kids in the Middle coalition of charities, I know that high levels of conflict in family relationships are bad for the well-being of everyone involved, particularly the children. Research makes it clear that the two most damaging issues for children when parents separate, which often make effective and enduring co-parenting far more difficult, are high levels of conflict and a lack of contact between both parents after separation. It will hardly be a surprise that the two often go hand in hand and, crucially to the debate today, that where there is contact between the child and the non-resident parent then often financial support arrangements flow as well. There is good evidence for the impact that co-ordinated services can have in this area, addressing financial, legal, housing and practical advice but also emotional support, mediation and a range of other things. I will not detain the House any longer by going through the research evidence that exists in this area, but I find it persuasive.

I stress, as I did in Committee, how detrimental it is to any child to grow up not simply without enough income and financial support but without any role model of a father—as generally the non-resident parent is—as a key figure in that child’s life, providing practical, emotional and financial support.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Monday 28th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I rise to support and speak specifically to Amendment 113B, to which my name is attached. In doing so, I remind the Committee of the interests which I have in the Register, in particular that I was a non-executive director of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, having stood down from that position shortly after my introduction to the House. I am also a former chief executive of the National Council for One Parent Families, which has now merged with Gingerbread. I am very grateful to Gingerbread and other organisations for their briefing.

It is a huge disappointment to me that this issue has come at the end of the Bill because, along with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and many other noble Lords, this is one of my favourite subjects. Frankly, I could happily talk about child support for a very long time. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, is looking sternly at me, I shall limit my remarks to only one of the amendments and then speed on to allow him to offer an infinitely more informed view.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has explained why the amendment is necessary. In particular, it would re-establish the notion of the objectives that are currently the main objectives of the commission, which will disappear as a result of its being abolished and brought back inside DWP as an executive agency. No doubt in due course these will become objectives of the Secretary of State, but I want to explain why it will be a problem if they vanish altogether from legislation.

At the moment, the commission’s main objective is to maximise the number of children who live apart from one or both of their parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place. There are two subsidiary objectives, the first of which would encourage the support and the “making and keeping” by parents of voluntary maintenance arrangements. The second would support the making of and compliance with statutory arrangements. A further objective of the commission is:

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

Not only must it do that but it must also have regard to those objectives in deciding how it discharges its various responsibilities.

As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said, Maria Miller, in the House of Commons, as I may now say, has said that the Government remain committed,

“to maximising the number of effective … arrangements”.—[Official Report, Commons, Welfare Reform Bill Committee, 24/5/11; col. 1103.]

That is welcome but I should like to explain why it is not enough. When I was a member of the board, we discussed and debated the priorities of the commission, what we should do and how we should do it. We came back repeatedly to the objectives set out by Parliament. Those were very much in front of us at all times.

If we were tempted to forget them, the very able civil servants who worked for the commission and the department would remind us of them at relevant moments, which they were right to do. They carried considerable weight. In fact, they carried far more weight than the assurance of the Minister of the day—distinguished though he was, of course. It is right that the objectives set down by Parliament should carry more weight than the views of any Minister who happens to hold office on any particular day. That is what Parliament is for. There is a big diminution in weight in moving from having clear objectives set out in legislation to having simply the assurance, however welcome, of the Minister of the day.

CMEC was beginning to make some significant improvements. It was created in 2008. Last year, 970,000 children benefited from child maintenance, including more than 100,000 from private arrangements, which must be due considerably to the CMEC option service and the fact that the commission had a statutory obligation to go out and pursue private arrangements. In March 2008, the figure was 750,000, so there was quite a big jump.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, mentioned possible cost reductions of the order of 30 per cent. This is important because—I am sorry to bring this to the attention of noble Lords—there are people with suspicious minds who fear that the Government’s primary aim is to save money, rather than to move to a better system of child support. Like other noble Lords, I would not dream of having any truck with such a notion. But perhaps the Minister could help Members of the Committee to make sure that they are in a position to understand and to rebut these claims when they are made by people outside this Chamber.

It is important because, if there is no broader objective to maximise the number of effective arrangements in place, Ministers might feel that they have done their job simply by deterring people from using the statutory system of child maintenance. They do not have any obligation to make absolutely sure that those people are going elsewhere and making arrangements, rather than simply not making any arrangements at all. If the Minister were willing to accept that this is an important objective, he could reassure us all. In the absence of that, there is a very real danger that these charges will come to be seen—we will go on to discuss them in detail—not simply as a means of raising money but primarily as a means of deterring people from using the statutory system in order to save considerable amounts of money in administration to the state. Frankly, it is hard to see how savings of the order that have been described by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, can be achieved otherwise.

I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, has given the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, the opportunity to step into the breach on so important an occasion. Should the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, hear at any point someone saying, “I am right behind you”, I suggest he takes a look behind him to be sure that that is true. I am delighted to see him at the Dispatch Box on such an important occasion. Perhaps he will take the opportunity to reassure the Committee, first, on whether the Government accept the content of the amendment. Are they committed to maximising,

“the number of those children who live apart from one or both of their parents for whom effective maintenance arrangements are in place”?

Is the principle acceptable? If it is acceptable, is he happy to put this into legislation? After all, it is likely that the Official Opposition are supportive since it was their Bill which brought these words into legislation in the first place. If we are all in agreement, perhaps this happy outbreak of unanimity can be celebrated by having an amendment accepted in Grand Committee. I look forward to that. If he is not able to do that, will he explain why not, what he believes the consequences will be and how else we can go out and give assurances to the cynics in that difficult world?

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 113B. In so doing, I declare an interest. I am currently the chief executive of Relate, which provides a wide range of services to separating families. I am also part of an advisory group of people from the voluntary sector which advises DWP Ministers on what a network of integrated support services might look like. From that point of view, it is important that that is clearly stated on the record.

I want briefly to support the case that has been put forward by my noble friend Lord Kirkwood as to why it is important that we incentivise non-resident parents to engage in the gateway process, as well as parents with care. There are two points I want to make. First, the gateway and the application charge—and I know that we will come to the charge in a later grouping—bite at the moment on parents with care wishing to use the statutory child maintenance system. The aim of this is to incentivise them to try to negotiate a voluntary agreement with the other parent instead. I support that. It is right and proper, where it is practical, that incentives to do so are built in. But there is no equivalent mechanism pushing the non-resident parent actively to engage in the process of trying to reach a mutually agreeable arrangement. As the legislation is currently constructed, it is only after a parent with care has paid an application fee of £100 and a statutory calculation has been made that any incentive will be given to the non-resident parent to reach a private agreement. That is basically very unfair.

My second point is a more positive one: the gateway stage is an opportunity for meaningful conversation between both parents. It aims to explore the scope for reaching collaborative arrangements, to assess what help either or both parents might need in order to arrive at such arrangements and to signpost and refer one or both parents—and, indeed, the children involved—to suitable provision and the help that exists for separating parents and families. Non-resident parents who are responsible for paying child maintenance should, I feel, be especially involved in this process.

I conclude by saying a couple of things that come very much from my experience at Relate. It is very important to children that both parents after separation continue to be involved as co-parents of those children. The relationship between the adults may be completely and utterly at an end, and indeed new relationships may well have been formed; but for that child, the active involvement—of course, where safe—of both parents is absolutely critical, emotionally, in practical ways, financially and in a range of other ways. It is critical that these new arrangements, however they are finally constructed, put the maximum possible incentive on both parents to see how they can discharge their responsibilities to be effective co-parents after separation—a responsibility which I think that most of us think is for life.