Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Skelmersdale and Baroness Sherlock

Monday 28th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, my noble and learned friend has produced a very cunning amendment indeed. It is cunning because it follows and detracts, just slightly, from the worst effects of the Government’s policy announcement. However, is the Government’s policy announcement the right one? Who is the sinner in this situation? It is the absent parent. My noble and learned friend is absolutely right that to fine the parent with care who has done everything possible to get to an agreement is quite wrong. The real sinner in all this is the absent parent. Surely the charges ought to be reflected on him and it ought to be for the state to chase him, which has always happened through the CMEC arrangements. That would be my preferred solution.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I convey my thanks—and I suspect those of many other noble Lords around me—to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, for having brought this before the Committee and having done so in so eloquent, powerful and almost irrefutable a way.

I want to add only two things. One is a question to the Minister. We have talked a lot in this Committee about behavioural effects. I want to understand the point of this charging. If we think it through rationally for a moment, if the aim of the new system is to encourage absent parents to pay up, the logical thing to do would be to charge them if they do not. Why then would one charge the parent with care? The only possible reason to do that would be to deter them applying to the CSA in the first place, because as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, explained so clearly, the parent with care can do nothing to affect the outcome the Government say they want. Therefore to penalise her for failing to do so would obviously not be fair, so that cannot be the aim. Will the Government please explain to us what is the aim of charging the parent with care?