Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, the speeches that we have heard so far have been extremely powerful and I very much supported the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. I shall refer to Amendment 113B in the name of my noble friend Lady Sherlock, as well as Amendment 113DA in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. I feel strongly that structures should follow the objectives and not that we should adapt the objectives to be the outcome of whatever structures we think we can best achieve, which is what is going on, I fear, in Amendment 113B. Amendment 113DA is simply wrong and I am frankly amazed that the DWP has come forward with this proposition. It is morally offensive and I do not know from where it has come.

Like others we have the CSA engraved on our hearts. The 1992 legislation was a catastrophe primarily because it insisted on overturning existing court objectives and becoming retrospective, which means that the new system never caught up even though it was entirely well intentioned. I remember defending our intentions on the 2000 legislation in front of the committee chaired at the time by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. We found it difficult to persuade the Treasury to budge beyond a £10 hand-back to women, so we could never get women to co-operate in setting the CSA on their old partners, as there was little in it for them.

The moves established by my noble friend in 2008 to allow women to keep all their maintenance was a triumph, but the problem with voluntarism, which also accompanied it, meant that it became a charter for bullies who did not want to pay, as indicated by my noble friend Lady Lister. We know that the people who pay are the men who need to pay most, not the men who need to pay least. They are the men who have been married, divorced, are older, earn more, have a profound attachment to their children and expect and want to pay. They are honourable and decent men and they are the ones who pay most. They pay and behave admirably. We also know, however, the ones who do not pay. They are the young, feckless men who have never actually lived with the child, who is perhaps the result of an overnight relationship, if we can dignify it with that term—a casual sexual act. They think that they were trapped.

There are the chaotic self-employed who never get their accounts right and never find the money to pay for their children. A group that surprised me are the men in uniform who are often very bitter, judgmental and followers of the language of fault—“She had an affair so it is her fault and I don’t pay”—with little regard for the children. Finally, there is the group mentioned by my noble friend Lady Lister—the men who have remarried, with second families whose new partner is often very hostile to any payment. These men change their address, their job, their name, and even their country to avoid paying.

Add to those problems a flaky computer and the problems of HMT, which is not only unwilling for women to keep their money but refuses to share key information so that NRPs can be tracked through their current records. We were not allowed to deduct even a £5 benefit payment at source. It would have been obvious for HMT computers to talk to DWP computers, but that was not possible either. It is no wonder that there has been a struggle ever since.

I fear that increasingly—with these measures, I am convinced of it—the concept of child support has taken a wrong turning in this country. Unless we accept the amendments moved so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and my noble friend Lady Sherlock, that wrong turning will become a highway down which the failure to pay child maintenance will rapidly escalate. I strongly believe that statutory payment should be not the last resort but the first. That is how we establish the appropriate level of money that should be paid; you establish a speedy pattern of payment. We know from Australia and all the international research that unless you establish payment early and ensure that it is paid regularly for at least a year, it dies within 18 months or two years. Establish payment early and get it paid regularly and there is a hope that you will get amicable contact arrangements. Then the whole thing becomes a virtuous circle.

Having voluntary payment in which the father can bully his way out of payment, as he too often has done, means that it never gets established. If instead we had statutory payment to begin with and then after six months or a year following regular, reliable payments the reward was voluntary negotiations, that would be wonderful. That would combine the best of all worlds. You would establish the pattern of payment, and then, if the father co-operates in that activity, you could allow that couple to make their own future arrangements. That way the child does not suffer. This way, I fear that the rights of the child to income and support from the father—it is the father in all but 3 per cent of cases—are going to get lost in what I have to say is the department pursuing cost cutting rather than ensuring adequate support for children.

We know that regularly paid maintenance is not only good for children in the signal that it sends from fathers about being committed to their children’s lives, but that it can be the payment above all—all the Alan Marsh research shows this—that lifts a lone parent with a couple of children from below the poverty line to above it. It can be transforming. It is like privatised, old fashioned family credit if it is paid and paid regularly. It will be so paid only if it is established early, and that means through a statutory system in which good behaviour allows you to go on to the voluntary path. I very much fear that in going down the path not just of voluntarism but of trying to get rid of CMEC, which at least was trying very hard to ensure that money was paid to children, we will lose the real benefits that are available to children through the poverty objectives and we will be overcome by the structural problems of seeking to reduce costs. That is highly unfortunate.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here the whole time. I had to chair quite an important meeting on stalking, but that is another matter. I had not realised until just now that the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, to which I have put my name, is in this group.

[Noble Lords]

It is not.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

I am sorry. I will wait.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for introducing this group of amendments and acknowledge his long-standing interest and expertise in issues of child maintenance. Like him, I pay tribute to the staff of the CSA and CMEC who, over many years, have stuck with the various iterations of child maintenance that they have had to deal with and sometimes struggle with.

My noble friend Lady Hollis gave us a brief history of child maintenance. It is right that one of the problems and the reason why the first of these amendments in particular—I support them all—is so important is that along the way the CSA has sought to be different things and to achieve different objectives. In 1991, it was substantially focused on the clawback of benefit, so no benefit accrued to children. The 2004 amendments recast that and focused the CSA on child poverty in particular, but, as my noble friend said, it was stymied to a certain extent by not being able to make progress on the disregards. I defend the 2008 changes—noble Lords would not expect me to do otherwise—for a number of reasons. It potentially gets round the problem of those who do not want to pay by the assessment being on the gross income of the non-resident parent, which is obtainable from HMRC. That has not yet been implemented, but it was a key issue in stopping non-resident parents messing up the system, which is what happened to the two previous systems. Voluntary it might have been, but there was an absolute right for either parent to make use of the statutory system with charges, which we are going to come to, that did not deter people on low incomes.

--- Later in debate ---

If the average single parent family spends £43 a week on food and is asked to pay a £20 up-front fee and a further £30 application fee, where is it going to find that £43 to feed the family? As they say round our way, you must be having a laugh asking for that money. I think that that is the case. Such charges cannot be right. We must have a system that will safeguard the most vulnerable and not one that succeeds in discouraging low-income single parents, and those where the amount of maintenance likely to be paid is modest. If we cannot bring this about, the result will be that nearly half a million children still reliant on the statutory scheme to collect and, if necessary, enforce payment of child maintenance, will lose this vital source of income.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I was more than happy to put my name to this amendment because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, seemed to be making the right point in this amendment. I am only sorry that my noble friend Lord Northbourne is not in his place because the important parenting responsibility of fathers is one of the areas which he has been pushing for years. As has been stressed, sadly, we are really talking about single parents, 97 per cent of whom are mothers, who are in this position. There was a hope that the citizenship classes which the previous Government introduced would be about your responsibilities to your future children, not about sorting out disputes between you and your own parents, and thinking that the responsibilities of parents ought to be shared.

I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, but I agree that it is wrong in principle to charge single parents, mainly women, who have no alternative, when the other parent refuses to pay maintenance. That is not only unjust; it is, as has already been said, indefensible.

Gingerbread has given us a considerable number of quotes. As the right reverend Prelate said, they are very moving. I shall end by quoting a letter that Gingerbread sent to me, for which I am grateful. The writer was clearly quite sympathetic, in theory, to the Government.

“While I can understand many of the government’s cuts and tax rises—a number of which will directly affect me—I cannot understand these proposals. If only you knew how driven single parents have to be to even apply to the CSA. When I first turned to the CSA five years ago I eventually gave up. It was in such hopeless disarray … Fortunately, a judge laid out maintenance in my divorce agreement and my ex-husband paid up. But two and half years ago he stopped paying and I was forced, with many misgivings, to turn to the CSA. Luckily for me it had been reorganised and was able to progress my claim second time around, although it still took months. When the payments finally started coming via the CSA—you cannot imagine the weight that was lifted off my shoulders. I finally felt I could plan ahead for school trips, clothes and other essentials. The relief has been immense. The truth is that the proposals will only penalise the children the CSA is meant to help. Women generally only turn to the CSA when they have exhausted all other avenues. It’s an act of desperation. Those in government who preach about mediation and private agreements mean well, but they have no idea how difficult some ex-partners can be—some years ago, I would never have believed it myself. My message to the government is this: you will be hurting the very people you are trying to help. And, I fear, partners who only receive small payments will just give up altogether. It will be their children who will suffer. For me it will mean the worry returns—I will have to cut back and I already know that negotiating with my husband is an impossible task. So I will face having money intended for my children taken from me by a government which I trusted to come to my aid, and incurring his wrath over the fees he in addition will have to pay”.

That says it all. It is sad indeed that, although so many of us around this table and outside, would agree “Yes, let’s get everybody to sort out their own arrangements if humanly possible”, there really are situations where it is not going to happen. Until we get education on early intervention going in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, hoped that one day we would be able to encourage the Government to provide for, I fear that we are going to have to fight arrangements like this. It is with that that I happily endorse the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in what seems to be one of the most important amendments that have come before this Committee in our long hearings. If it is not successful tonight—and no assurance is given—I very much hope that we will return to it on the Floor of the House on Report.

As the noble Lord, Lord Newton, said, those of us who had to deal with some of the Child Support Agency cases in the 1990s will know how desperately searing they were. It was not just one or two, but dozens, and sometimes even hundreds. I used to try to sort out problems with the local officers, either in Caernarfon or in the office that was administering the CSA in north-west England. It came to the point where I started writing to the Minister about each case because I thought that was the only way in which the message would get home. Poverty was referred to a moment ago. If one quotes the figures for the difference between south-east England and other parts, the average GVA per head in Kensington and Chelsea is over nine times that in Anglesey, and that is an average figure. Within Anglesey, there will be poorer people, as of course there will be in Kensington and Chelsea. It does not really matter where they are; it is what they are suffering. We want a system that can be sympathetic towards them; we certainly do not want a system which prevents people making appeals when things are going wrong. It must be our responsibility as a Committee to get that sorted out; if we cannot, then it will be decided on the Floor of the House.