Committee stage in the Lords
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Lord Kirkwood of KirkhopeLiberal Democrat- Quote
- moved Amendment No. 192:
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Lord SkelmersdaleConservative- Quote
- Although Clause 33 is a peculiarly Scottish clause, the fact that a minute of agreement that has been in force for fewer than 12 months will exclude a person in Scotland from making an application for a maintenance calculation reflects on the discussion that we had earlier, on whether one year was the correct time in which to have the ability to overturn a court’s decision. To that extent, it applies equally to England as to Scotland. I do not want to repeat the arguments that I adduced last time, but it has been put to me since that one way to solve this problem would be that once a court has become active in a divorce case, for example, any alteration of that court’s decision should not go to CMEC at all but continue with the court. Another way in which to solve it, which was the one that I adduced earlier, was to have a much longer period than the one year stated much earlier in the Bill, which Clause 33 reinforces. I am beginning to come round to the second solution rather than the first.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton)Labour- Quote
- I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for the amendment, which led to rather a broad discussion on the subject. I start by clarifying that Clause 33 is there to clarify that minutes of agreement for periodical child maintenance made on or after 3 March 2003 and registered in the Books of Council and Session or the sheriff court books are to have the same status as maintenance orders made on or after 3 March 2003 under Sections 4(10) and 7(10) of the Child Support Act 1991. In prior discussion there was some confusion over whether that was the case. The noble Lord said that court orders were imposed, but court orders for child maintenance are not imposed, because they are consent orders and represent agreement between the parents. That is the parallel that we seek to identify here. As we discussed in a previous sitting, the existing 12-month rule applies when parents have a registered minute of agreement made on or after 3 March 2003. The 12-month rule has two purposes. When agreement between parents breaks down, it provides a swift and readily available route into the commission so that children are not left for considerable periods with either no maintenance or inadequate arrangements. It also encourages agreements that contain levels of child maintenance broadly consistent with the amount calculated under the statutory scheme. We do not wish to restrict any effective maintenance arrangements to any particular period. However, if things go wrong, or parents decide that another type of arrangement would be more suitable for their children, we believe that they need a readily available route into the commission. That is why we do not think that the first proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, about keeping it in the court is the right way. Children must not be left for periods of time with either no maintenance or inadequate arrangements, nor should we lock parents into agreements that are no longer working. It is true that registered minutes of agreement have many advantages but, if circumstances change and the original agreement needs adjustment, difficulties may arise. Some of those agreements can have change embedded in them, although that is not the case in every situation. If parents cannot agree, there are limited circumstances in which they may apply to the court to vary the financial arrangements and, in the case of parents who were never married or in a civil partnership, the opportunity for variation is often severely restricted. The 12-month rule gives time for agreements to bed in and work, which is why we think it the right period, but allows intervention by the commission to keep maintenance flowing to children if the agreement breaks down, and therefore puts parents with registered minutes of agreement on the same footing as any other separated parents. I hope that that has dealt with the kernel of the proposition and will help the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment. I shall reflect on some of the wider points that he raised and perhaps return to the matter in due course.
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- Lord Kirkwood of KirkhopeLiberal Democrat
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- I have two things to say about that. Circumstances in Scotland are different in a number of respects. One of the most fundamental is that the Scottish courts, unlike the English, are accustomed to doing maintenance calculations—at least they did in my day. I may be talking slightly out of turn because it is a long time since I practised in the courts. The family law situation in Scotland is a much smaller jurisdiction anyway—there is a much smaller group of practitioners and the scale is also different, although I understand that court orders are administered in the same way in terms of how the court handles them. My main plea is to have further discussions about how registered maintenance agreements are conducted. If that could happen between now and Report I would happily settle for that. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 193 to 195 not moved.] Clause 33 agreed to. Clause 34 agreed to. Clause 35 [Additional special case]:
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- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
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- moved Amendment No. 196:
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Baroness Hollis of HeighamLabour- Quote
- The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, has raised an issue. I agree with him that in some cases parents may seek to maximise or minimise contact in order to affect their maintenance payments, and some non-resident fathers would be concerned that by seeing the child only during the day, when they may incur the cost of going to McDonald’s, the zoo or whatever, they would get no abatement of their maintenance because the child is not staying overnight. I accept that in some cases there can be a problem, but the noble Lord’s solution may be worse than the current situation. If we wish to encourage contact, it is undoubtedly right that as far as possible the child or children stay with the non-resident parent. Conventionally, that may be every other weekend and part of the school holidays. That means that the non-resident parent has to have enough space, the extra bedroom, the bunk beds, the change of clothes, the additional food, the pizzas and whatever that he will need to look after those children. The costs are incurred whether the children effectively stay four nights a week or every other weekend. There is an ongoing cost. Therefore it seemed right to abate some of the maintenance that he would otherwise pay, because he is incurring continuous costs however many nights the children stay. The question is then about what the appropriate abatement is, given that some of the money that he would otherwise pay to the parent with care for the maintenance of the child should be abated because he is incurring additional costs, even though her costs continue to flow. There is not a direct trade-off that by him spending money, she saves it; they both incur costs. It was thought inappropriate to go for the day, because there were the questions of when it started and finished and whether we started having bills of fare or tick-offs for cafeteria lunches as opposed to a picnic in the park. We went for overnight accommodation. My fear is that if we go back, as the noble Lord suggests, to a higher hurdle—104 nights a year or even higher—that will reduce the amount of contact the non-resident father is willing to engage in. From experience, every other weekend plus some of the holidays captures that 52- to 104-night window. If the noble Lord is saying that the non-resident parent must have the equivalent of at least 104 nights—two nights a week through the year—we will be asking many non-resident parents, often not in affluent circumstances, to incur real costs in having an extra bedroom in the flat, extra furnishings and so on with no abatement towards maintenance. In which case, unless there is already a very strong attachment, some of those non-resident parents will say, “Why bother? I’ll just take them out during the day and won’t have them to stay overnight”. That may suit them, but if we want to ensure the bonds—particularly for young boys; if the parent with care has a series of new boyfriends it is very important that the boy continues to have contact with his natural father—I do not think that is helpful. While the noble Lord is right to say that there can be manipulation of the situation, the Government’s proposals, which largely reflect the existing situation, are the best achievable in circumstances where there are conflicting pressures and problems about who pays for what and when.
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- I thank the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for the amendment. The clause to which he attached it focuses on something slightly different from the issue of shared care arrangements. I shall deal with that first and then try to pick up some of the points made about shared care. Currently, there are no specific measures to cater for cases where there is split care. Where both the mother and father apply for maintenance, the Child Support Agency makes two maintenance calculations, and maintenance is collected from both parents. That is a situation in which one parent has one or more of the children but the other parent also has one or more of the children, so they are both parents with care and non-resident parents. At the moment two calculations are done. This is clearly not the best use of resources. It also leads to complaints in cases where the agency struggles to collect maintenance from one parent, particularly if they are the one with the higher liability. Clause 35 will allow for the offsetting of maintenance liabilities between the two parents, so that only the parent with the highest liability will actually make a payment. This will be a more efficient use of resources as there will be only one maintenance liability to collect. It will also make more sense to the parents. This measure is part of a package designed to simplify the assessment process in the future scheme. However, if the costs incurred by both parents in caring for their children were to be taken into account in the maintenance liability—whether there was split care as provided for by this clause or otherwise—that would lead to more complexity, which would contradict what we are trying to achieve. The process of working out maintenance is not designed to take account of the individual costs of raising children. It would be extremely difficult to arrive at such a figure which takes account of individual circumstances; for example, differing levels of income. Amendment No. 196 would also create scope for disputes between parents. For example, they might not agree on the amount of money the other parent said they were spending on the child. They would also have to provide evidence of such costs, and experience has shown the difficulties currently experienced by parents when trying to agree what level of shared care is being carried out. I can return to the issue of shared care, which we debated in a previous sitting. My noble friend Lady Hollis is right that the formula that we are taking forward is the current arrangement. There are some administrative changes to it to make it less likely that there will be a whole flow of changes of circumstances which have to be taken into account. We arrived at the conclusion by having extensive discussions with stakeholders about what alternatives there might be as regards reflecting shared care. Basically there was no consensus, but a whole range of views. On balance, we thought that there was no imperative to change the current arrangements, which is why we are where we are. My noble friend is again correct—it is right to reflect that there are clearly some costs and provision of facilities involved if shared care is to be encouraged. I do not think raising the threshold is the right way to proceed. Administratively, what we are doing is trying to get parents up front to agree the band of shared care that would operate, so that that can be built in early into an assessment. One of the problems with the current system is that disputes over levels of shared care and constant change, particularly around some margins, prevent early or speedy assessment and give rise to a good deal of disruptive and continual change to assessments. Administratively, we are trying to move away from that. In essence, this clause, which the noble Lord sought to amend, is not focused on shared care; it is concerned with split care and the ability to offset, so just the higher of the maintenance assessments has to be involved—just a payment one way. I hope on that basis that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
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- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
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- I apologise for putting the amendment to the wrong clause. Like the noble Baroness and the Minister, I am 100 per cent in favour of netting off in the special examples given by the Minister and in the notes on the clauses. I think I must have private discussions with the Minister or, perhaps, his officials. It really depends on how the current one-seventh/half relationships work. If they work as they could, and as we were earlier told that it is possible to change a maintenance arrangement in a week, that is one thing; if they are annualised, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, suggested in her helpful critique of what I have just said, that is another. Perhaps there is a genuine point here, and there could usefully be further thought upon it.
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- Currently, if there is a dispute or change in perceptions of whether the 52- or 104-night threshold is to change, then there is a request for a change in assessment and a recalculation. In many cases, that gives rise to a lot of disputes. Even when there is agreement, there is a lot of paperwork and administration in constantly changing the assessments while still using the same approach. We are trying to lock in to annual assessments, just as we are for the basic assessments, so that we remove quite a lot of the prospects of changes of circumstances and the admin burden that goes with that. However, I am more than happy to have a further discussion with the noble Lord if that would help.
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- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
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- I am grateful for that. Of course, there will be occasions when one parent takes the child or children on holiday one year and not the next, and so on. One can realistically think of all sorts of variables which ought, in all fairness, to come into the calculation. I accept the criticism from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, but how one achieves this is a distinctly moot point. It would perhaps not do any harm to consider it a lot further, which I am unable to do at the moment, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 35 agreed to. Clause 36 agreed to.
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- moved Amendment No. 197:
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- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
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- The Minister trailed these provisions at Second Reading. Of course, it is absolutely right that CMEC should get all the information that it can without jeopardising the current rules of court. It will usually be the parent with care who releases the information, and it would be quite wrong if he or she were penalised—as the Minister says he or she could be—under the current rules of court. However, the Minister is slightly jumping the gun, as he admitted, in that he is not sure how this is going to work. It seems clear that there will have to be some alterations to the rules of court to achieve this, and I wonder what consultation the Minister had had or is planning to have with the Lord Chief Justice and the court system generally, not only here but in Scotland.
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- Lord Kirkwood of KirkhopeLiberal Democrat
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- I, too, welcome the amendments. The Minister was right to trail them at Second Reading. They are essential, and I am very pleased to see them in the form in which they appear before the Committee this afternoon. I have a number of questions that the Minister may be able to deal with. First, new subsection (1) refers to disclosure of information, “to a person providing services to the Commission”. The new section inserted at Clause 32 deals with transfer of arrears—debt books being handed to debt collectors to collect. I would like reassurance that subsection (1) in Amendment No. 197, which relates to, “a person providing services to the Commission”, would exclude debt collectors. I guess that it does. I do not know quite why that sort of phrase should be included in the new section. Perhaps it is just to make provision for unseen circumstances. The rest of it makes perfect sense to me but I do not know why a person providing services to the commission would need to be informed about this sensitive information. It will certainly make it harder to get past the judges. Can we have some clarity about that? Secondly, new Section 49AA(2)(c) talks about the party “reasonably” considering that the information is relevant. I do not understand why we need the word “reasonably”, as I cannot think of any circumstances where anything other than the party judging for him or herself that the information was relevant would be enough. I do not understand why the test of reasonability is there. It might be something to do with human rights or, again, it might be to defend these clauses against the judges, who, in my experience, are rightly sensitive about core information being passed round. That is part of what we would expect them to do, although I think that sometimes they overdo it. If they observe form to the extent that it gets in the way of child maintenance being delivered, that is a separate thing, but I do not understand why the test of reasonability is included. Thirdly, new Section 49AA(5) suggests that one can have lay advice in England and Wales but that in Scotland a legal representative is needed. There may be some reason for that but it is not apparent to me and I cannot understand why there should be a difference. There may be a different set of circumstances in England and Wales in terms of unrepresented litigants and people who can sit beside them in court, but I do not know why it should be that way for England and Wales and yet it is explicitly stated that a legal representative is required in Scotland. This is a brave amendment and I am pleased that the Minister has brought it forward. I think that the provision will be contested as judges will not like it much, but I am pleased that the Government and the department have decided to take them on. However, new subsection (6) provides a bit of a weasel way out. Either we do this or we do not. There is a fallback provision later in new Section 49AB(4), where the Lord Chancellor has a residual role. I may have misdirected myself here as that may refer to an earlier amendment. However, my main point is that Parliament should be firm about this being a priority because it will make a significant difference. I understand perfectly well the points that have been reasonably made by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, about getting the consultation right here—we do not want to run into the courts—but new subsection (6) seems to give the game away slightly. I want some reassurance that people will not just roll over if the courts say, “No, you’re not having it because that’s not the way we do things here any more”. “No veto to judges” is my plea. Having said that, I think that these are important changes and improvements and I hope that they are given effect and used properly. If the Minister finds undue resistance from the judges, I hope that he will come back and look for help from his parliamentary colleagues. I, for one, will stand shoulder to shoulder with him to ensure that they are not stupid about the way that they seek to retain procedures which have been in place for ages but which might get in the way of child maintenance being made effectively in future.
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- I start by thanking both noble Lords for the enthusiasm with which they have received the amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, asked whether we are jumping the gun because we have not worked out how this is going to work or whether it will require a change to the rules of court. The answer is that it will not. This is an alternative to an amendment to the rules of court. We need to talk through some of the practicalities: the nature of the forms on which disclosures are made and the extent to which they may or may not refer to the fact that disclosure can be made to the commission. It is that sort of practical issue that needs to be worked through and talked through with the powers that be rather than any concern about whether the provision is fundamentally effective. We are confident that it is. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked why we need the word “reasonably”. As the noble Lord will know better than me, the disclosures made in the proceedings that we are talking about could cover a range of issues, not all of which will necessarily be relevant to the functions of the commission. It is right that a proper judgment has to be made by the person making them available to the commission. The noble Lord asked whether that would exclude debt collectors. The note that I have from the Box is that it would because the calculation would precede the allocation of a case to debt collectors. A caveat to that is that part of the information that might be disclosed might be the location of a non-resident parent and such information would be highly relevant to a debt collection process. If I need to write further on that, I will, but in some circumstances it could be made available. If at some stage in the future the maintenance calculation itself is contracted out, in whole or in part, it is right that the person providing those services has that disclosure rather than the commission, or in addition to the commission.
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- moved Amendments Nos. 198 and 199:
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- moved Amendment No. 203:
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- moved Amendment No. 205:
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- Lord Kirkwood of KirkhopeLiberal Democrat
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- At the risk of delaying proceedings, I should like to raise a question. I may be missing something here, or I may just be being old-fashioned, but the liable relative rule is about to be extinguished in a way that we need to be careful about. I am grateful to Professor Nick Wikeley of the University of Southampton for drawing this to my attention but these conclusions are entirely mine. There is a danger—I put it no higher than that—that Clause 42 will send out a signal that in future child maintenance will be purely a private matter and that the state will have no residual interest in whether it is paid. That is an extreme way of putting it, and I shall explain why I think that we have to guard against that message taking hold and becoming the conventional wisdom. In social security law, there has always been, as far back as the Poor Relief Act 1601, a public duty to maintain children. That is well understood. Close kin, as defined in the public laws, were always considered to be the primary source of support for their relatives in times of hardship. In recent times, the National Assistance Act 1948 enshrined that public law duty in Section 42, which clearly sets a duty on spouses to support each other and to maintain children. That provision was encapsulated in Section 105 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992. There is a public law duty for spouses and civil partners to maintain each other and for parents to maintain children. The Committee has to understand this afternoon that Clause 42 proposes to substitute a new Section 105(3) in the Social Security Administration Act 1992 that will extinguish, as I understand it, the public law duty to maintain children. It folds the responsibility for the maintenance of children back into Section 1(1) of the 1991 Act, the parent Act of the Bill in front of us, which states: “For the purposes of this Act, each parent of a qualifying child is responsible for maintaining him”. Section 6 brings a new opportunity to have options and make choices. It is therefore perfectly possible—indeed, it is anticipated—that repealing Section 6 will remove the public duty. People will then be able to pursue maintenance for children through the CMEC system. There is the question of ex-partners—it is not likely to be a big problem in practice, because I do not think that there are many ex-partners who are really well provided for—but, if we lose the opportunity under the old liable relative provisions to pursue people who do not maintain their children, and if they leave their partner, have an income and do not opt into the system and the parent with care does not require them to go into the CMEC system, then in the new scheme the state could have no come-back if the parent with care opted out for a quiet life. You could characterise this as taxpayers providing open-ended, means-tested support via child tax credit, income support and, pro tem, child benefit support for children. In the long term, we could end up with no way of attaching a liability to people under the former liable relative rules that we had. That is a fundamental change in the principles of social security law. There are some consistency issues about other parts of social security law. If we are going down this route, a consistent policy would mean that all public law maintenance obligations should be repealed. There are some inelegancies with pension credit because that is nothing more than income support for people over a certain age threshold. I notice with interest that Clause 35 of the Health and Social Care Bill repeals Section 43 of the National Assistance Act 1948, which deals with local authorities’ ability to recover liable relatives’ costs for residential and social care. Clause 42 is not a mere consequence of, and natural development from, the abolition of Section 6. We should not pass it without being very careful that we understand what we are doing. I may be reading too much into this and my interpretation may not be right, but I would like some reassurances from the Minister—if not today, then by letter or in some other way—that at some stage in the future the Public Accounts Committee and the Comptroller and Auditor-General will not suddenly realise that some non-resident parents will be beyond his reach in terms of maintenance of children and liable relatives using the body of social security law that we have enjoyed in the past. We need to be careful if we pass this clause, as we undoubtedly will, that we do so in that knowledge. The Minister must assure us that these things have been carefully thought through and that this will not come back and haunt us in the future as a mistake because we were not aware of the full consequences of Clause 42.
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- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
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- Not for the first time, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has encouraged me to think. When I first saw this clause, I wrote by the side of it “but not their children”. Although Section 1 of the original 1991 Act on child support deals very happily with the duty of each parent to support their child, the Act that we are talking about, the Social Security Administration Act 1992, goes very much wider than that. If it is, as I fear, an all embracing provision, it does not apply to this Act, this Bill or indeed the 2000 Act at all. It applies to other parts of the social security system. I hope that I am wrong and that the noble Lord will be able to satisfy me of that error.
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- I shall try to explain why the provision is included in the Bill. Section 105 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 provides for the recovery of benefit expenditure where income support or income-based jobseeker’s allowance is paid in respect of a person who someone else is liable to maintain. For income support purposes, this means a spouse or civil partner and children. For jobseeker’s allowance, the ability to recover extends only to spouses or civil partners. Clause 42 amends this provision by removing the reference to liability to maintain children so that the position is the same for both benefits. We want to encourage parents to make their own arrangements for the maintenance of their children. Having taken that step, it makes sense for us to remove legislation which might act counter to our intentions and create uncertainty for parents.
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- Lord Kirkwood of KirkhopeLiberal Democrat
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- I am happy to concur with that conclusion. It is certainly true that the Government’s policy is to move all financial support in the direction of child benefit and tax credits. We know that that is already happening for new claimants, but the latest date for transfer that I have—it has been much delayed in the past for existing IS claimants—is 31 December 2008. I am certain that that deadline will slip, so it will be a long time coming. It is certainly true also that HMRC has no recovery powers, liable relative or otherwise, for tax credits. Child tax credits are obviously slightly different—I think that they are the same as a benefit—but, technically, they are not considered to be part of the benefits system, so people may have anticipated that change already. I am fearful that we will look back on this legislation in the future and think that we have made a bit of an error. I was around at the time when the jobseeker’s allowance change was made. The case made for that was that the Child Support Agency was going to fill the gap. Everyone was confident on that glad morning in 1996, but it just did not work out. If noble Lords look back at the exchanges on the jobseeker’s allowance legislation in 1995-96, they will see that expectations raised by Ministers at the time were not fulfilled. However, the Minister is prepared to go away and join us in a collective think about this. It is in everyone’s interest to get this right. A little more thought is probably necessary to make sure that we do not take a step that has unintended consequences. Clause 42 agreed to. Clause 43 agreed to. Clause 44 [Conditions of entitlement]:
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- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
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- moved Amendment No. 207:
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Lord AddingtonLiberal Democrat- Quote
- I think the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, may have something here. It is right to discuss something new. If there is a good reason why we should not do this, I would be interested to hear about it. It is not a big ask, to put it bluntly. I do not think that it would hurt the Government or the scheme to proceed in this way or in a similar way.
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, has something here. Amendment No. 207 refers to Part 4 of the Bill, which deals specifically with mesothelioma. The amendment requires that the first set of any regulations made under Part 4 would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny under the affirmative resolution procedure. At present, only regulations made under Clause 43, as the noble Lord has pointed out, which state that the Secretary of State may prescribe the amount of any lump-sum payment, will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. Amendment No. 207 goes further and would require regulations made under Clauses 45 to 47 to be subject to the affirmative procedure in the first instance. Clause 44 sets out the conditions of entitlement that must be satisfied for a lump-sum payment in respect of mesothelioma to be made. I intend to table a government amendment on Report, which will require that the first set of regulations made under Clause 44 be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. This change follows a recommendation in the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. As a number of the conditions of entitlement for the new mesothelioma scheme are to be contained in regulations, it would be appropriate that in the first instance they are subject to more detailed parliamentary scrutiny. However, unlike Clauses 43 and 44, which set out the conditions for entitlement and lump-sum payments, Clauses 45 to 47 are concerned with administrative detail, such as determining claims, carrying out a reconsideration of a determination and setting out the appeal route against a determination. We feel that it is unnecessary to subject such administrative detail to the affirmative resolution procedure, and there is also a precedent in that similar regulation-making powers set out in the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, on which the new mesothelioma provisions are based, are also subject to the negative resolution procedure. Given that those regulations, which focus much more on detail, such as how much a payment should be and the conditions of entitlement, will be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny under the affirmative resolution procedure, I hope that the noble Lord will feel satisfied and will be able to withdraw the amendment. I think that that deals with his substantive point.
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- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
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- I am extremely grateful, first, to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for damning my amendment with what I might describe as faint praise and then to have the faint praise made slightly brighter by the Minister. Many years ago, I inherited a pair of ivory-backed hair brushes, which were beginning to lose their bristles. It looks to me as though my amendment has lost a few bristles in the Minister’s consideration. Having said that, I am well aware—as I was when I tabled the amendment—that what I am proposing as a whole goes somewhat in the direction of overkill. I am glad that the Minister has now put on the record that he will refine this into a sensible affirmative first provision for Clauses 43 and 44. Is that right?
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- Clause 43 is already covered. Clause 44—
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- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
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- But not Clauses 45 to 47?
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- Correct.
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- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
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- With that, and with very many thanks, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 44 agreed to. Clauses 45 to 51 agreed to. Clause 52 [Regulations: general]:
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- moved Amendments Nos. 208 and 209:
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
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- moved Amendment No. 214:
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- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
- Quote
- moved Amendments Nos. 215 to 218:
- Time
- 16:45
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- Speaker
- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
- Quote
- moved Amendment No. 219:
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- 16:45
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- Speaker
- Lord SkelmersdaleConservative
- Quote
- On behalf of the Opposition, I reciprocate the Minister’s words. We have had an exhaustive exploration of the whole subject of child maintenance and when we get to the next stage we will be able to refine our arguments dramatically. I have appreciated the Minister’s way of handling the Bill and the prompt advice that he has received from behind both shoulders.
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- 16:45
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- Speaker
- Lord Kirkwood of KirkhopeLiberal Democrat
- Quote
- I shall make that unanimous. This is the first Committee stage in which I have really been involved, and it is astonishingly more detailed, instructive and valuable than such stages are in another place, in my experience. That is something that I shall no doubt have to get used to. I was just getting warmed up as we came to the end. I look forward to further proceedings on the Bill. The Minister has conducted himself well and the Bill team has supported him excellently, which has been to the benefit of the whole Committee. I have enjoyed it and learnt a lot from the process. I give thanks from these Benches, too. On Question, amendment agreed to. [Amendment No. 220 not moved.] Clause 56, as amended, agreed to. Clauses 57 and 58 agreed to. Clause 59 [Commencement]:
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- 16:45
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- Speaker
- Lord McKenzie of LutonLabour
- Quote
- moved Amendment No. 221:
- Time
- 16:45
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