Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2019

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Lord McKenzie of Luton

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, I have just two quick questions. First, where the recipient who is due to make payment is subject to a benefit sanction, what impact does that have on the amounts that are collectable, as proposed in this order? Secondly, the £8.40 can be an amalgam of the collection fee and the maintenance payment. So far as the government accounts are concerned, how is that split and dealt with?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her explanation of these regulations, and all noble Lords who have spoken, particularly my noble friend Lord McKenzie; he always comes up with questions I would never have thought to ask, and they are always excellent. I hope the Minister had thought further ahead than I did—although I see someone running to the Box so perhaps she had not.

I very much agree with the points made about child poverty and the role that child support plays in helping to provide a platform on which single parents can build an income which helps lift their children out of poverty. So we do not oppose these regulations. It is important, wherever possible, that both parents should contribute towards the cost of raising a child after a break-up. An adult may leave their partner but they do not get to leave responsibility for their children.

I accept that the regulations are designed to provide a series of changes and clarifications to make it easier to collect arrears and maintenance payments under the Child Maintenance Service scheme. I will concentrate on a few specific points: the proposal to allow deductions for child maintenance to be made from universal credit where a non-resident parent has earnings and meets the criteria to be eligible for the flat rate; the increase in the amount, plus collection charges, that can go towards paying arrears; extending the scope; and the enforcement points.

The proposal to allow deductions of £8.40 from benefits for arrears in cases where the non-resident parent is no longer paying ongoing maintenance seems sensible. I can understand that for someone on a low income, £8.40 is a lot of money, but it is entirely possible that the single parent on a low income could also be on benefits, and both parents may well have suffered from the cut in living standards brought about by the benefits freeze and the other cuts in benefits. That seems to be an element of fairness that has to be addressed.

It is also very important that non-resident parents are clear that they will be chased for any arrears they owe. I ask the Minister for a broader update on this. She mentioned that we debated some child maintenance regulations last November. At that point the key thing the Government did was to write off billions of pounds of arrears from the old CSA system, and the quid pro quo for that, because we pushed them at the time, was that they would promise to pursue enforcement. This really matters because otherwise there is a moral hazard question. If a message goes out to parents: “If you just hold off long enough and don’t pay, in the end the Government will give in and write it off”, clearly that creates a disincentive to pay the money that should be paid for your children. So it is really important that we do not get back into that question. Ministers made the case in those regulations for a clean break with the old system, but that places a huge onus on them to make sure that arrears do not build up again in the new system.

I looked at the latest statistics and I am a bit worried. Since the new Child Maintenance Service began, a total of £259.2 million of child maintenance is unpaid, which should now be paid through the collect and pay service. That is 11% of all child maintenance due to have been paid since the service began. In the last quarter of last year, only 66% of paying parents using that collect and pay system were compliant; and compliant does not mean that they pay all of it but that they are paying some of it. So only two-thirds who were using the actual statutory system of compliance were paying anything at all. I may have misread those figures, but can the Minister confirm whether that is right? If the figures are right, is she happy with them? If she is not happy with them, how much difference does she expect these regulations to make to that performance?