Child Support (Enforcement) Bill

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 17th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell). He always speaks incredibly well on a Friday, and today is no exception. It is also a pleasure to support my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie), who has done such a lot of work in this sphere and done a wonderful job in highlighting this issue and piloting the Bill through Parliament. I give credit to my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher), who has also done a wonderful job standing in for my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud. I would certainly not know the difference—particularly without my glasses on.

Child support is such an important issue. I was delighted to be in this place to support another Bill on the same topic towards the end of last year, the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Bill, brilliantly championed in this place by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart). The fact that there are two Bills on child support before Parliament underlines what an important issue it is and shows that reform of the system is needed so that, in the very unfortunate event of a family breakdown, parents—we must be honest, it is usually fathers—are not allowed to financially abandon their children.

Having children, looking after them and supporting them financially is a huge responsibility, and no one should be able to decide that they simply do not want to pay for a child that they have had. I am therefore very pleased that the Bill means a parent will no longer be able to get out of paying the amount of child maintenance cited in a child maintenance order by playing games, and in particular playing games with our court and administrative system. The Bill will be hugely beneficial to mothers who are doing the incredibly difficult but vital job of providing the day-to-day care that these children need: they will not have the continual, nagging worry about whether a father will pay his dues.

Failure to pay child maintenance has a massive impact on the families who rely on it, as is amply demonstrated by the number of cases and queries that appear in all our postbags and inboxes. I want to raise a particular case with which I have been involved. Quite soon after I entered the House, a lady came to my constituency surgery. Her relationship with her partner broke down, very sadly, while she was pregnant. She discovered at that stage that her partner had been cheating on her, and she has described him as an abusive liar. I cannot imagine the trauma that a woman must experience when she finds out that her partner is cheating on her while she is still carrying his unborn child.

My constituent’s ex-partner has never made his child maintenance payments consistently, apart from a few sparse payments here and there. He works full time, but as soon as the Child Maintenance Service sees that he is working on a PAYE basis for longer than a few months, he either changes jobs or claims that he is not working, and works “cash in hand” to try to get out of paying. He has also been convicted of breaking two non-molestation orders. He has been taken to court before and made to pay some money, but unfortunately as soon as the court has seen him make a few payments, the case is transferred back to the Child Maintenance Service and he very soon stops paying. Obviously arrears then accrue, and he now owes more than £10,000 in unpaid maintenance. He is living the life of a rich man, yet he supposedly cannot afford to pay for his child.

No one should have to go through what my constituent has been experiencing, and I am delighted that the Bill will go some way towards ensuring that parents do not have to go through it any more. Sadly, as we all know, since the CMS was set up 11 years ago, nearly £500 million of maintenance has not been paid. I am pleased that the Government have taken steps towards resolving that, and I believe that the Bill will continue to improve the position.

We have already heard some explanations of the two child maintenance payment systems, direct pay and collect and pay. It is quite complicated, but I think that it bears repetition. For direct pay, the CMS provides a calculation and a payment schedule, but payments are arranged privately between the two parents. That is, of course, far the most favourable way to proceed. Where necessary, for collect and pay, the CMS calculates how much child maintenance should be paid, collects the money from the paying parent, and pays it to the receiving parent. Collect and pay tends to involve cases in which a more collaborative arrangement between parents has failed or not been possible to achieve, or there are high levels of conflict. Paying parents on collect and pay are therefore considered to be less likely to meet their payment responsibilities and, indeed, evidence shows that to be the case.

Clause 2 in particular will assist in the collection of payments from unwilling paying parents. It provides for the Secretary of State to make a liability order when the paying parent has failed to pay an amount of child maintenance, and a deduction from earnings order is inappropriate or has been ineffective. The clause provides an assurance that administrative enforcement measures will be appropriately considered before more stringent measures are taken. As I understand it, in practice, that will mean that enforcement measures will be able to be taken much more quickly against parents who have failed to meet their obligations. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that in his summing up.

Clause 3 expands the power to make administrative liability orders by setting out in regulations provision for the variation of a liability order, for example, where the amount of arrears upon which the liability order is based is subsequently amended as more information about the paying parent’s income is obtained. This is important to constituents such as mine where the father has consistently lied about his earnings. Clause 4 gives the Secretary of State the power to set out in regulations provisions that relate to a parent’s right of appeal against a liability order. Those provisions will include the paying parent’s right of appeal to a court, the period within which the right of appeal may be exercised, the powers of the court in respect of those appeals, and provision for a liability order not to come into force in specified circumstances. The provisions in clause 4 will prevent court time from being used to consider day-to-day CMS business that can be completed operationally, again speeding things up. Importantly, the provisions will, therefore, not place any additional or unreasonable constraints on a parent’s ability to seek an appeal.

The Bill is important in ensuring that the CMS can make the necessary improvements to enforcement processes and get money to children more quickly. We must ensure that, when someone asks for help through the CMS, they get help quickly and in a way that makes them feel supported. We must also ensure that parents who are messing about with court procedures know that there will be sanctions and action against them.

This is an incredibly important Bill. It will allow parents in situations like those of my constituent to receive the money they are owed much more quickly and efficiently, and it will help to protect vulnerable children; I am delighted to see that it has support today from across the House. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, who is not here today, for giving us the opportunity to debate this issue and for her sterling efforts to ensure that children receive the money that they deserve.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call shadow Minister Karen Buck.