UK Poverty

Debate between Sheila Gilmore and Mark Spencer

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Why did the Conservative party support the Labour Government spending plans up to 2007, and never, as I recall, suggest that changes should be made to avoid a recession?

[Mr Spencer]

Of course, the Labour party now supports our funding pledges, so there is friction between what is being said about reversing some of our changes and other statements about supporting our spending regime. It will be interesting to hear the Labour Front-Bench justification of that.

In another life, I was a farmer, involved in food production and supply. Interestingly, the OECD says that 9.8% of people had difficulty affording food in 2006-07, but the figure had fallen to 8.1% in 2011-12. That shows we are going in the right direction. There will always be individuals who get themselves into difficult circumstances and where the system has frankly gone wrong. The hon. Member for Wigan raised several such cases and I have encountered some in my constituency office, when clearly the system has broken down and some incorrect decisions have been made. It is my job as a Member of Parliament to try to help people through the system and solve their ills, and we have succeeded on a number of occasions in helping individuals in difficult circumstances to work their way through the system to the right point.

Child Support Agency

Debate between Sheila Gilmore and Mark Spencer

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing this important debate. It is an issue that, even during our discussions on reform, often comes at the end of a lot of other matters and has sometimes not received the full amount of time that it deserves.

I do not for an instant pretend that the CSA has not had problems, but I am concerned that we are making a wrong analysis of them, and it is possible that we could again make a gigantic mistake. Many mistakes were made when the CSA was set up in 1993, and one reason for that was because at the time, the views of those who worked in the field were almost totally disregarded.

I had better declare an interest because I am a family lawyer by profession although I am not currently practising. The CSA was introduced to meet a need because the previous systems were not working well. Then as now, many children and families were not receiving the money that they should have been getting, and the Government did not invent the CSA simply to be difficult. When it was introduced, however, it was an all-or-nothing system that was not terribly helpful and produced a huge work load right from the start. That was probably the wrong end to go from. I am still convinced that the CSA should have been started, at least in the early stages, on a slower basis, perhaps dealing only with some types of situation, and that we should have listened to some of those who were used to working in the field.

Many of the problems that the hon. Lady mentioned are endemic to the situations in which people find themselves, rather than caused by the Child Support Agency. The hon. Lady mentioned self-employed people, and they are always extremely difficult to tackle. They were extremely difficult under previous legal powers when we went to court, or used the system in Scotland that did not involve going to court—I will mention that in a minute. Trying to get from the self-employed what we felt they ought to be paying was extremely difficult, and their ability to produce accounts that made it look as if they did not earn much was notorious. That was always a problem, as were people who disappeared and went overseas. I had a client whose husband worked on oil rigs. Every time we got an earnings assessment for him, he would simply give up that job and take another. He was a scaffolder and very well paid, and his ability to thwart the system, as it was then, was great. I do not, however, believe that that situation would have been any easier for the CSA. We must address the real problems, and not necessarily blame the CSA.

[Mr Spencer]

Surely the hon. Lady will acknowledge that within her constituency there will be people who experience enormous frustration when trying to communicate with the Child Support Agency. People get moved between different offices around the country; the CSA loses information and does not acknowledge the simple facts that are happening in people’s lives. That is the fault of the CSA rather than the lifestyle of those individuals.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I must say that my case load on this matter is not as large as some people’s appear to be. Some of the cases are almost a legacy because they come from the previous system. I have some long-standing cases, and in my experience, although I do not seek to defend the CSA, it is not necessarily much worse than dealing with other large Government agencies.

I am worried that we are in danger of making another big leap based on a wrong premise. The Minister’s assumption—this also came through in the opening speech by the hon. Member for Loughborough—is that the statutory child support system is the cause of discord and bad feeling between parents. However, if we start off with a wrong premise, we will come to a wrong conclusion.

The hon. Lady cited research that indicated that two thirds of people with family-based arrangements were happy with them, whereas only one third of CSA clients were happy. Some 74% of those with family-based arrangements considered them to be fair, compared with 42% of those with CSA arrangements. However, the crucial point missing from that analysis is that the people who end up using the CSA are those who cannot reach family-based arrangements. Those who can reach such arrangements do so, and we are not comparing like with like if we come to that conclusion and decide that we should basically shrink the existing statutory system. If I understand the situation correctly, those currently within the system will be asked to close their cases and restart the process by trying to get a family-based arrangement. If they cannot, presumably they will come back through the process. The idea is to shrink the system due to the analysis that the CSA is what causes discord between parents.

My experience as a family lawyer is that separation is a very difficult situation. People do not separate because they are getting on well. They do not usually separate because they can communicate well. Often they are angry and often they have good cause to be angry. That anger is not something that is just stirred up either by the courts, which is one of the assertions that we hear, or by the Child Support Agency. People are angry. They do have difficulty getting money, and there are reasons why that will always be quite difficult.

Generally, when people separate, both partners lose financially. It is a financially difficult situation for them, and often it does not get better after a few weeks, months or even years of separation, because new liabilities come into play. People form new relationships and they find it even more difficult to cope. These things influence people’s attitudes to one another, and some people clearly are not willing to come forward to make an agreement. My concern is that we are making the wrong assumption—that having a statutory system is causing discord—and if we start from the wrong point, we will reach the wrong conclusion, and the solution will not be the one that cures the problem.

I would like to make a practical proposition to the Minister. It is drawn from Scots law and could fill a gap. The Government should think seriously about it, especially if they are determined to shrink the child support arrangements. In Scotland, it is possible to have not just the vague, family-based arrangement that everyone talks about, but a legal minute of agreement, which is enforceable in the same way as a court order would have been under the previous system. These minutes of agreement are usually negotiated with the assistance of solicitors. Many people have them drawn up, and they have worked extremely well. As I said, they are directly enforceable. All the same steps can be taken to enforce them as could have been taken with a court order. That model would enhance the system here tremendously. I offer it up, from Scotland, as something that perhaps the Minister will want to discuss with the Ministry of Justice. They may want to discuss how something such as that might be introduced into the English legal system to enable people to have something that, yes, is agreed—it is negotiated and agreed—but also has legal enforceability.

There is one minor point about minutes of agreement that the Minister might also want to consider. Under the previous CSA arrangements, after one year of having a minute of agreement, it was possible to go to the CSA and renege on it—that was possible for either partner, in effect. The Law Society of Scotland suggests that it would be better if that were a four-year period, and I concur. I think that if people have been properly advised and a minute of agreement has been drawn up—people can ask for a minute of agreement to be reduced in certain circumstances, such as if they have been coerced—a four-year period would be sensible.

Another couple of issues have been raised about how the much-diminished statutory scheme will work in the future. These have to do with finding out about the earnings and assets of some of those who are the most difficult to deal with. Under the present regime, the CSA can have regard to evidence about people’s assets and lifestyle that suggests that their income is not what they say it is. My understanding is that the Government propose to remove the effect of two regulations that achieve that at the moment. I believe that they are regulations 18 and 20 of the child support regulations. That, too, would be a mistake, because it would enable people to construct their affairs in a particular way. Regardless of gender, it is very frustrating for the parent with care, who is struggling, to see the other parent living what appears to be a fairly affluent lifestyle, yet able to present official records suggesting that they do not have the money to pay for their child. That makes people angry, but it often has to do with the attitude of the partner. The Government should reconsider that.

Fundamentally to take away the system and say, “We want people to make their own arrangements,” especially if they will not be legally enforceable, is a mistake and underestimates the difficulty of making those arrangements. Furthermore, that is happening at a time when changes to legal aid may make it harder for people to obtain legal advice so that they can turn the arrangements into more formal ones, and to obtain advice on what their rights are. Sometimes—perhaps not always but sometimes—informal agreements are not very good ones. Let us say that one parent says to the other, “I’ll give you 20 quid a week. That’s fine. Just don’t shop me to the CSA.” I know people who have been through that. The weaker partner, the one who has perhaps traditionally been quite afraid—I am thinking not just of domestic violence as it is narrowly defined—may well accept that when actually it is grossly unfair. People need proper support. I am not convinced that the £20 million that is talked about will be sufficient to put in place for people the level of advice, support and mediation that will be required if the Government press ahead with their proposals.

It is regrettable that, because the Government have framed the question in the way that they have and made this assertion—created this straw man—about the CSA being the cause of so much family discord, that will lead them into a situation in which even fewer children will get maintenance.