Child Support: Unpaid Maintenance

Debate between Lord Henley and Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope

Thursday 30th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question. I am not going to go into what we are doing about arrears. However, I shall talk about the 2012 scheme of child maintenance. By bringing in more simplified methods of calculation, we are helping parents to sort these matters out. We are also encouraging parents to sort these things out themselves without necessarily using the department. We are now at a stage where in nine out of 10 cases parents are paying towards the child maintenance that they owe, and paying the appropriate amount. Therefore, we are making progress but there are still some who are not doing what they can.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

But is the Minister aware of the concern that the government arrangements to manage the outstanding £3 billion-worth of arrears are not yet clear? Arrears are still sitting in the CSA legacy schemes. They need to be sorted out because the biggest risk to the 2012 scheme is a botched job in closing the legacy CSA schemes.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as I said, this goes back a long way. It covers Conservative Governments, Labour Governments and the coalition Government. We have all tried to sort this out. I am afraid that a lot of this money is lost for ever. We are looking at a new arrears scheme and will consult on that to try to get what we can, but I am sure the House would agree that the first priority should be to get money that can still benefit the children of today rather than trying to get the money that was owed yesterday, or the money that is owed to the department. The bulk of the money is very historic.

Benefit Cap

Debate between Lord Henley and Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for highlighting that point, something ignored by noble Lords on the other side. Trying to get away from the culture of welfare dependency into a culture of work dependency is exactly what we are trying to do, and it is what we have achieved. That is why I wanted to highlight to the House—I could repeat it to my noble friend but I do not think that that is necessary—just what the 2014 evaluation showed. We will look for an evaluation of those further changes in due course.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister’s undertaking to provide another evaluation subsequent to the 2014 evaluation is welcome, but I have to say to him that no one I have met outside the Government believes the assessment that was published in 2014 so he is going to have to work harder in future to secure the policy success that the Government are looking for. In the course of the next evaluation, will he look carefully at the sustainability of the work that clients achieve, the proportion of the case load that is moving into disability benefits and the proportion of the case load applying successfully for discretionary housing payments? The discretionary housing payment spend for the rest of this Parliament will be £1,000 million.

[Lord Henley]

I am sorry the noble Lord does not believe the evaluation that appeared in 2014. A very good evaluation it was, and it produced some very good figures that I do not think the noble Lord himself could question. I have quoted the figures from that evaluation and I will be able to produce further figures in due course when another evaluation appears. However, it is not just about changing the culture, although that is very important; it is also a question, as I am sure the noble Lord will accept, of fairness. We do not think it is right that those in benefit should be receiving incomes higher than those on average earnings.