Child Support (Enforcement) Bill

Chris Clarkson Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 17th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

Happy St Patrick’s Day, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes), and I put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) for initially tabling the Bill, and to my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) for being Manchester’s top hon. Member for Stroud tribute act. As everybody knows, she has a clear and consistent record on this subject, and it is very good of her to step in on behalf of our colleague, who—as she says—is committed to something else in her constituency, but dearly wanted to be here.

I also put on record my thanks to the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), and the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), for the work that they have done on this Bill. We often consider important Bills on sitting Fridays, but we do not see all the work behind the scenes to make them into functioning legislation after the Government decide to back them. It is a tribute to the Ministers that they got this Bill into good order.

It is a privilege to speak on this Bill because it addresses some of the key gaps in the current child maintenance collection system. I was recently asked whether I had a special interest in this area, and it will come as a shock to no one in the Chamber that I do not have children—my biological clock is ticking—but I am a child of divorced parents. I am very lucky, as my parents are happily divorced. They like each other much more now they are not married. There was never any acrimony in that relationship, but the truth is that around half of marriages now end in divorce, and some of them do not end in the best circumstances.

Although we rely on the best human behaviour for parents to come to an amicable arrangement, and many can do that, there will be instances in which it simply is not possible. With the best will in the world, interfacing with the courts, especially post-covid, makes it an almost insurmountable task for some parents to get the money they need to bring up their child.

I will try to be brief and to the point, because this is an excellent Bill that I actively support. The welfare of children will be drastically improved by this Bill. Delays in obtaining a court order for the payment of child maintenance have a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of children all over the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) made the eloquent point that this is about the welfare of children. It baffles me that there are parents who genuinely have a casual disregard for the wellbeing of their own offspring in the bizarre game they play with their former partners.

One of the Bill’s central tenets, enabling the DWP to make a liability order in certain circumstances without first going to the courts, addresses a key problem in the current system and is particularly pertinent given the rising cost of living. I welcome clause 2 and the administrative liability orders, which are an elegant solution to the problem of attrition whereby some parents can afford to wait out their former partners—I think that is extremely cruel.

I agree with the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) that it is incredibly frustrating to read about some of these cases. Some individuals exercise coercive control over a partner who then takes the very difficult and sometimes painful step to separate themselves from this person who has dominated their life so much, only for that person to exercise further coercive control by withholding the funds needed to bring up their child. I have dozens of examples from my own casework, but I will highlight just two.

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

Two dozen?

[Chris Clarkson]

Absolutely. We will be here all afternoon.

In one case, a lady spent 12 years trying to get payments from her former partner. Her son is now 25 years old and is a qualified accountant dealing with child maintenance cases. That is the absurdity of the system.

In another case, a woman had fought for more than 10 years and had six court dates before she was finally paid the £16,000 she was owed in unpaid maintenance. She was working multiple jobs just to put food on the table, even though her former partner had the ability to provide the funds her child needed.

I was pleased to support the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Bill, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), as it takes into account the role abuse can play in this process. The two Bills are obviously different, but they have an underlying connection.

The two cases I have highlighted magnify some important points. First, they establish that delays in child maintenance harm children. Secondly, the Bill will help to re-establish trust in the system, as single parents will not have to battle for decades to collect child support. It is important people have faith that the system will be there for them when they need it.

I am proud to support this Bill, which will give financial certainty to thousands of families up and down the country. My hon. Friends the Members for Stroud and for South Ribble, and everyone at the DWP who has worked on this, can be extremely proud that they are doing something that, while seemingly simple, will make a massive difference to a large number of people.