Health and Disability Reform
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I encourage the noble Lord, with his knowledge and experience, to input into the consultation, as I suspect he probably will. He will know that the consultation is limited in scope to PIP, which is open only to claimants aged 16 and over. That is quite broad, but it is payable regardless of whether you are in work, education or, as he spoke about, training. We are keen to hear from people from all walks of life and backgrounds, and encourage everyone, including students, to respond to the consultation.
I take note of the noble Lord’s point about passporting. I know about EHC plans from my previous brief. It is important that the student diaspora and those who represent it also input to the conversation.
As I said, we believe there may be better ways of supporting people in living independent and fulfilling lives. This could mean financial support being better targeted at people, including students, who have specific extra costs, but it could involve improved support of other kinds, such as for physical as well as mental health, leading to better outcomes.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, I commend the Statement and the Green Paper. I regard the Secretary of State as someone with a warm and sincere heart, and a clear head. I think he is an impressive Secretary of State in a complex area. I also commend his Permanent Secretary, who is a quite excellent man.
Obviously, the understanding of disability and ill health changes all the time. This benefit has been around since 2013, and it is time for a strategic review. Earlier this week, we were talking about the late Frank Field. When I worked on benefit agencies with him, it was quite different. With these vast sums of money, we should focus and make sure that the money is spent wisely and well. There is only a certain amount of public money, as another party may discover in a few months’ time, although I can say nothing about that. Money cannot go both on doctors and nurses and on welfare payments, so we have to look strategically.
There are partners. Charities have a big part to play, and the Church is important in dealing with mental health. I remember the effect of Pentecostal choirs on West Indian boys with schizophrenia. They went to the Pentecostal choir, and said that they felt like new men, and I am not surprised.
I want to talk particularly about employers. Good employers have transformed the support that they offer to people with mental illness problems. Prevention is much better than cure, if you can reach out and help someone in the workplace to talk about their mental health problems. I agree about stigma. If you have schizophrenia then you say you have depression, and if you have depression then you say you have the flu. There are a number of employers that have impressed me, which I would point out to the Secretary of State, where there are ally groups supporting people’s mental health, and where facilities and services are provided. Yes, the Government have a part to play, but so does the wider community. Work, for most of us, is a lifesaver. I have never been more miserable than when I was stuck at home during Covid, and I do not think I am alone.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I thank my noble friend for her kind comments about the Secretary of State and the Permanent Secretary, with whom I am working closely, as she will know.
My noble friend made an important point about the variations among individuals who have conditions. As she alluded to, some claimants will have considerable extra costs related to their disability, while others will have fewer or minimal costs. This is why we have brought forward the Green Paper, looking at whether there are ways in which we can improve how we support people, where that is better suited to their needs and to the way they want to run their lives. I should also say that it is right that it is fairer to the taxpayer than the current system.
My noble friend is right that my department has been undertaking a huge amount of work with employers and that, with the rise in mental health conditions, sometimes people in work feel that they cannot stay in that job because of their condition. A lot of work has been going on to persuade or help them to stay in work, while holding their hands and giving them detailed, experienced, skilled advice on how to cope with their lives. That is working, and I could go into more detail on it, but it just shows that we are alert to the increase in mental ill health that has come about for a variety of reasons, not just because of Covid.
Child Poverty
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Bird (CB)
I welcome the chance to sort out the problems of poverty in an hour and a half. I welcome the idea that, in such a short amount of time, we can sort out the problem that a third of all our children are in or around poverty—that is 4 million children in the United Kingdom.
I alert people to my belief that, in the seven or eight years I have been in the House of Lords, I have never come to a debate or discussion where the root causes of things are dealt with. I believe strongly that one of the main problems we have is that Governments, Oppositions and people who have worked for many years in and around poverty are always dealing with the effects of poverty; they do not deal with the root causes of poverty. So when I proposed this small debate, I was actually trying to be revolutionary. I was trying to move the House of Lords—and, I hope, the House of Commons—towards the idea that instead of continuously dealing with the effects of poverty, we move the argument towards the root causes of poverty.
Throughout the world—it is not just the United Kingdom—in the region of about 80% of all money spent on social intervention is spent on dealing with the emergency and problems of coping with poverty. There is very little money spent on prevention or cure—the two opposites. Since the time I came into the House, I have been like a scratched record; I have gone on, again and again, asking when we are going to spend our time on eradicating poverty rather than ameliorating it and trying to accommodate it. That has been my real argument.
I think that His Majesty’s Government and His Majesty’s Opposition, and the previous Governments and Oppositions, have always dealt with the terrible reality poverty throws up. Tonight, I want to be a revolutionary and ask why we do not all look at something quite real. Why is it that, for all our efforts over decades—my decades go back to the end of the Second World War—we have always tried to deal with the obnoxiousness that is thrown up by poverty but we have never done a scientific analysis of the root causes of poverty? We have never had a Government or an Opposition, or an argument within our universities and charities, or among those who get involved in the struggles of the poorest among us, ask when we are going to do something about eradicating poverty.
I am sorry if I sound a bit Joan of Arc. I came into the House of Lords with one strict instruction from the people who encouraged me to come here, which was to help to dismantle and get rid of poverty, not to shift the deckchairs on the Atlantic. My instruction was not to make the poor more comfortable but to actually get rid of the concept of poor people.
I come from poverty, and maybe that is what drives me on. I come from people who came from poverty, who came from poverty and who came from poverty. The interesting thing is that when I grew up, I realised that they were surrounded by poverty; they could not get away from it. The mind-forged manacles that go with poverty meant that they perpetuated it. I have done my best within the lives of my own children to get rid of poverty in their futures, but the larger part of my family is still perpetuating poverty. Why? Because the root causes of poverty were never dealt with in the course of their lives.
To me, the big problem with poverty is the inheritance of poverty. In the United Kingdom, about 4 million children—a third of our children—are in poverty. It is interesting that a third of our children are in and around the problems of poverty, and in spite of all our efforts they remain so. What are we, the Church, the charities or the political parties going to do about it? Will they wake up one day and say, “Actually, we’re getting no nearer”? We know that in the last year, 100,000 more children have arrived in poverty.
We need an enormous mind shift, but I do not see it happening. I do not see anybody building the intellectual appliances or the university courses to find out why we are always trying to address the problems of poverty as if a bit more to the poor will actually change anything.
I came into the House of Lords and was astonished at the number of people who wanted me to get involved in agitating to give poor people more. I was determined, however much it would damage my reputation, not to do that. If the only thing you inherit is poverty, how do we break that situation so that you do not inherit it?
Can I just check: if we have more time, does this mean I can speak for another five minutes?
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
Speak for ever, as long as you let me speak for ever too.
Lord Bird (CB)
I love democracy.
I was born in the London Irish slums of Notting Hill, but we moved to Fulham. On my road, I fell into being a friend of a guy whose family, like mine, came from Ireland. His father had accumulated a number of jobs. He was a very clever guy, even though, like my family, he was ill educated. He became very wealthy and bought his house, so he had a house in Fulham Broadway at a time when my family were living around the corner in social housing—what was called council housing. He became very prosperous and employed 20, 30, then 50 Irish people to make money for him, so that he could buy a house, then a bigger one. There were two kinds of poverty. That guy did not inherit poverty, but my family inherited it and made damn sure that we and other members of my family inherited poverty and the mind-forged manacles that go with it.
What do we actually do to break that situation so that people in poverty are given something—a “je ne sais quoi”, a little thing—that will mean they do not imitate the inherited poverty of their own family? To me, that is the big issue: Patrick Crowell and his mum and dad built a business, made money and became middle class and prosperous, but my family remained in poverty. Their children and their children’s children are still in poverty and stuck in social housing, having all sorts of problems.
I want to know how the House of Lords and the House of Commons, with all their great brains, can help us dismantle the mind-forged manacles that come with poverty and its inheritance. That is my passion. Over the next few months, as we move towards a general election, I will be campaigning through my work in the Big Issue, and in Parliament in general, for a reinvention of social housing.
Do noble Lords know that there are so many people in this world who are defenders of social housing? These people absolutely love it and think it is absolutely brilliant. But do noble Lords know that the children of people who live in social housing rarely finish school, get their qualifications, get skilled and move out of poverty? Do noble Lords know that a fraction, an infinitesimal number of people in social housing, ever get to university or college so that they can then start living a fuller life away from poverty? Do noble Lords know that in housing associations, on average 70% of people are unemployed? I do not want to be interpreted as rude or insensitive, but if you really wanted to condemn somebody to poverty for the next 100 years, you would give them social housing.
Lord Bird (CB)
Forgive me—I am now going to stop—but I wanted to move on to say that this is why I am campaigning to change the way we deal with poverty. We have a situation in which eight government departments are dealing with poverty, but we do not have a convergence to dismantle it. Some 40% of government expenditure is spent on poverty; we really need to change it. I am calling for the creation of a ministry of poverty prevention. I thank noble Lords very much for their time.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to be able to speak in the gap, because, like the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Meacher, and many others, I worked for Frank Field for four years. I was paid a poverty wage—£12 a week. I was not born in poverty, but I spent 10 years of my life immersing myself in the issues of poverty at the CPAG, encouraging families below the poverty level to keep expenditure diaries. That revealed that if you do not know where the next penny is coming from then you cannot possibly spend economically. Of course, you can budget carefully if you have a stable income, but if you have no idea when you are going to be in work or out of work, in your house, with your partner or without your partner, and maybe you have not had the best education, it is really difficult.
Interestingly, I will remember for ever a West Indian woman working below the poverty level who budgeted and fed her children nutritiously, but she had been brought up understanding about poverty in the West Indies. She came from a culture of poverty that could cope, unlike so many others. It is an interesting point about how you can give people the equipment to manage and to cope.
This was a time of working poor. Keith Joseph, later Lord Joseph, who basically made me a Tory, introduced family income support. It was a time when the trade unions were not at all keen on family benefit. I went to the T&G with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, to try to persuade that union to support child benefit going to the woman—a stable income. It was very reluctant because it liked supporting income for the man, and all the trade unions then were really male dominated. The world has changed.
There were three people in my life who really cared about poverty. Lord Keith Joseph was the first to talk about the cycle of deprivation. I was at the Pre-school Playgroups Association AGM in Church House when he made his speech about the cycle of deprivation—leaving school early, having no qualifications, having your first child early, and a vicious cycle of poverty. He was criticised for it, but I think few would doubt it now.
The next person who cared about poverty was the late Lord Frank Field. He did not talk only about benefits. My noble friend—sorry, the noble Baroness; she is my friend, but I should not refer to her like that—knows all there is to know about benefits; she has a forensic knowledge. But Lord Field had a wider view. He used to talk about being a five-star parent. He felt strongly about parenting and about families.
The third person is the noble Lord, Lord Bird. Now, I do not agree with a word he says, but I absolutely agree with his passion. To say there are no university departments that take poverty seriously is daft—go to Hull, to LSE, to Essex. To say that the Resolution Foundation, the Child Poverty Action Group and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation do not know all about poverty—they do, and they are very knowledgeable. But what the noble Lord is so right about is that he is passionate, and he is not going to give up.
Now, remember the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bird. He talked about his probation officer, who basically told him to get a grip and get a job. He talked about Baroness Wootton, a great heroine of mine and juvenile court chairman. My concern is that we can be very patronising and dismissive about poverty, but why do some people get through? Last week, I was with Alan Johnson, who certainly ought to be Lord Johnson; why has the Labour Party not put Alan Johnson in the House of Lords? Please do so, urgently. He is now the Chancellor of the University of Hull, where I was for 17 years. His upbringing was appalling: he was brought up by his mother, who died very young, and then by his sister. How has he become such a success? Some of this relates to the individual, and the ability of people to get through.
I will ask the Minister two questions, because I know I have gone on for too long. A lot of this is about parental conflict, and he leads the department’s Reducing Parental Conflict programme. What can the Minister tell us about reducing parental conflict? I want him to tell us about child maintenance developments, and the childcare programme.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and when he grows up, I hope he will become as good as Lord Field.
Love Matters (Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households Report)
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, the standard set in 1 Corinthians is a high standard for some of us to meet. I have been married for only 56 years to the same person—not as good as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I think our marriage survives only because we are in separate Houses; he is the Father of the House of Commons, and I am here.
Quite often, I have referred to a comment to me by the late Dukey Hussey, who was in this House. He said, “Murder, frequently; divorce, never!” Within that context, I endorse the comments from my noble friend Lady Stowell that marriage gives an additional piece of glue holding people together: a coalition. I might have gone off him quite often, but we are married and therefore it is obligatory. I urge noble Lords to say that there is a role for marriage, but it has to be handled sensitively and appropriately.
I speak also as somebody who worked in a child guidance clinic as a psychiatric social worker. I was on the board of the Children’s Society and, of course, I was the Minister responsible for implementing the seminal Children Act 1989, which has stood the test of time. I remember so well the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and her inquiry. Having previously been a juvenile court chairman, I was so aware of the issues involved. The difficulty with children is that something can be true, but it can be fantasy. Taking children away wrongly is a terrible thing to do; leaving children in their homes and disaster ensuing is a terrible thing to happen. Very few understand the complexity of these decisions.
I am a committed Anglican. I was a lay canon at Guildford Cathedral. However, like the Church of England, the Conservative Party I joined was one where no one was ever so vulgar as to ask what you really believed. I own my own beliefs and faith; they are not imposed. I am not sure how well I would do at an examination if asked exactly what I believed—either by the Tory party or by the Church of England. However, I am totally committed to the Church of England as it is.
I also speak as a grandmother of eight. I simply say that I come from an extended, close, united tribe. There is mutual support, sharing, caring and holidays. Even then, bringing up children is a nightmare. They are demanding; they are difficult when coping with jobs and holidays. Now, children are supposed to be occupied every minute of the day—it is a very bad thing—with coaching on tennis or football or piano. There is no peace for a child now, which may be one of the reasons for some of the mental stress of teenagers. They are so exhausted with this battery of improvement they have from their parents. When people used to have more children, there was less intense pressure for them to be perfect and live up, let us be frank, to their parents’ ideal.
Having been chancellor at the University of Hull for 17 years, and through my work for Frank Field at the CPAG and as chair of the juvenile court, I know only too well the chaos, despair, deprivation and complete lack of support that so many families face. The dilemma of real poverty is not only a lack of resource but the complete unpredictability—you are not quite sure which house you are going to be in; you are not sure whether your partner will be there. It is as much having no agency, no control and no ability to plan your life as it is the financial difficulties. I used to say that if you had a PhD in nutrition, maybe you could get by on the poverty wage, but then you had everything else organised in your life; these are families—as the Church knows so well—who do not have that opportunity, control and support. I therefore see these issues in that context.
I warmly endorse and support Love Matters, and I commend the most reverend Primates and the right reverend Prelate on all their wonderful work. To me, it is realistic and pragmatic: it accepts the world as it is. It does not hanker after a sentimental, suburban picture of family life—which I really doubt ever existed anyway. I have always thought that overidealistic goals make everybody feel a failure. It is like dieting—if you have a picture of the perfect shape that you ought to be, you will always be a miserable person. It is similar in family life; as Winnicott used to say, you only have to be a “good enough” mother, you do not have to be a perfect mother. I think that is a great comfort. Many noble Lords will have seen the Royal Shakespeare Company’s wonderful production of “Hamnet”. It reveals family life in Shakespeare’s time, which did not look all that tidy either.
I share the tributes to Professor Janet Walker. I congratulate the most reverend Primates for choosing such an excellent person as chair. She was a probation officer for 10 years, working with extremely troubled offenders; she has done over 50 research studies into all aspects of family life; and she was director of the impressive Newcastle Centre for Family Studies. Recently, as I know my noble friend Lord Robathan will particularly like, she has done a report for the MoD on the pressures for military families. Again, it is useful, powerful and unsentimental, and it really hits home.
The most reverend Primates suggest that
“Our flourishing as a society depends on the flourishing of our families and households”
and families and households must be
“at the heart of our collective thinking and actions”.
I absolutely agree with that. I really endorse, approve and admire the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury’s book, Reimagining Britain, which at the time I thought was particularly powerful and relevant to the real world in which we find ourselves.
We can analyse the problems—and there are a lot of problems—but I feel passionately that we should celebrate the many impressive initiatives across the country, which are so often facilitated by churches responding to local needs and problems. The Church has always reached out—we just have to look at the introduction of education; the work of the Children’s Society; Bob Holman, who started the first children’s and family centre in Bristol, which I remember visiting; and the work of the National Council for Carers and their Elderly Dependants, now Carers UK. The latter came about because a Methodist minister noticed that the single women with elderly dependants were not coming to church. It is a very big problem if you do not go to church, because someone will start a charity to support your cause. The Church has been as a practical catalyst and facilitator, to reach out and ensure that we do all we can for the most vulnerable and most frail.
I pay particular tribute to the charity ATD Fourth World. Even the most apparently hopeless parents—parents whose children have gone into care or parents who feel they have failed against some standard of what they should be able to achieve—want to be good parents. They want to be the parents that they never had. They want to do the best for their children, and the failure compounds their own sense of failure. Lord Joseph, formerly of this House, talked about the “cycle of deprivation”. We know those parents for whom it is almost impossible to be the stable role model, providing unconditional love for those for whom they are responsible. I well remember many early child abuse cases. It is really hard to understand. What triggered the abusing behaviour in a particular stepfather—Heidi Koseda’s case, I think—was that the child would not say that he was her father. The child would not say that she loved him; she would resist and resist, even with the consequence of harmful abuse. It was the man’s desire that he should be treated as her father and be a good person.
The Church can provide wonderful role models of consistency—but there must be consistency. I used to talk at the Trinity College Centre in Camberwell. I would say to those privileged and clever students who came from Trinity College, Cambridge—I know a few people who have been there—that they should not promise anything to those children that they could not deliver. The children’s whole lives had been filled with people who had promised a present, a holiday, a bicycle—anything—and who had failed and disappointed them. If you say that you are going to send a Christmas card, send a Christmas card. You do not want to compound these children’s sense that all of life is adults who say one thing, do another and do not really care.
We accept that unconditional love provides the blueprint for strong relationships and human flourishing. Of course, people need to have their basic needs met, but it is relationships that really matter. As the report acknowledges, it is the conflict between parents that is so damaging—more so than separation itself. Separation is wretched, but people can live in single households, as has been so well expressed in the report and in the House today. It is the dispute, aggression and vilification of each other that causes the real damage to the children. I therefore welcome the Government’s recognition of that priority through the reducing parental conflict programme, making funding and support available centrally and locally, helping to address conflict and thereby improving children’s lives.
I particularly commend an organisation that I had not previously known about: the Positive Parenting Alliance. It talks about the #ParentsPromise, helping people going through separation and divorce. What I like about this is that it is not only the usual suspects who are supporting it—the charities and foundations—but there are also HR directors engaged in this initiative, which I believe is really relevant and to the point.
I have a concern that families who do not live up to the idealistic norm may not feel welcomed in church. It seems to me that those who are separated or divorced need the Church all the more. Michael Marshall, in his colourful way, used to say that churches should be for the bad, the sad and the mad—I take the point and I hope that noble Lords all do as well. The attitude to divorce is quite quaint, given that divorce—or, rather, annulment—was a rather important factor when the Church of England was established all the way back in 1534 by Henry VIII. Perhaps we should be more considerate of no-fault divorces and non-conflictual separations in the Church. As the report says, we should move
“from the language of hostility to the language of peace”.
The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 was widely welcomed, but we must use that 20-week waiting period for support, information and advice for parents. It is fundamental that parent couples can talk openly and comfortably about their struggles without feeling criticised or alienated. Of course, even when there is divorce, they remain parents. Being a parent is not a role that you can divorce yourself from. The challenge is to ensure that those divorced parents retain an ongoing relationship with the children.
I want to say more about Anglican clergy and laity. In saying that, I refer to ministers and priests of all religions: they are a dedicated and powerful force, handling what can be a relentless task. I was once asked to speak to all the northern bishops’ wives by the Bishop of Carlisle, and I said, “Being married to a priest is exactly like being married to an MP. The Member of Parliament spends all their time helping other people’s children, helping other families, supporting them at Christmas, but their own family is completely on the back burner: it is a very difficult role”. Indeed, when I was the Children’s Minister, I was absolutely never at home, working all the time. I finally said to my daughter, “Darling, if a strange woman knocks on the door and says she’s your mother, let her in; it might well be her”. I think this is something experienced by a great number of similar people.
In paying tribute to the clergy, let me quickly mention Clive Potter, the vicar at my local church, St John’s in Milford, where he served for 16 years. He did not get a PhD in theology, he has not had a particularly privileged life and he has been the most wonderful parish priest: uncomplicated, virtuous, available, Christian. We said goodbye to him last weekend with great love and admiration. On the laity, I say in passing that Clare Sandy, just the most wonderful woman, who died last week, was always there to support and help the bad, the mad and the sad.
Our work is hugely enhanced by the number of female clergy—it is remarkable for those of us who remember there being no female clergy—and particularly in this place. I am delighted that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester is here; she was the pioneer and she survived the test of time. It is tremendous that there are now five female Bishops, I believe.
I want to make a small point about the Lords spiritual. I passionately want the Lords spiritual to remain, but I do not think they enhance their prospects by looking like a Persil advertisement. I have spoken to virtually every Bishop about removing the robes. They do not need to wear them. So long as the Bishop saying prayers—officiating—is wearing a robe, they can keep the Robing Room, but all the others should modernise their attire and look more normal, even in their dog collars and attractive shirts. I have said this politely to so many Lords spiritual, but now I have had to call upon the House to help in my campaign.
I have so much more to say. I can say only that love matters and the Church matters.
Child Support (Enforcement) Bill
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone ExcerptsFriday 19th May 2023
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, what a formidable speech. I felt some sympathy for the Minister, having the previous Minister literally breathing down his neck. I think we know what this bodes for the future. I start with very warm congratulations to my noble friend Lady Redfern on the sensitive and thoughtful way in which she introduced the Bill. We should also thank Siobhan Baillie, the MP for Stroud, who has done a lot of work on it in another place.
We have heard a wonderful, magnificent example of a Minister who has become obsessed with her subject, which I completely understand. We know that, with my formidable noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott, she will not let this subject go; she will be making sure that this goes through. She was a Minister who, like many, did not govern by press notice but by heavy lifting, getting into the detail and seeing what really works. It is easy in government to think that a press notice is an implementation plan. That is not the case. Making something happen and making something change takes far more detail.
This is the most gripping, intractable and difficult subject. I go back as far as the Finer report, commissioned by Barbara Castle in the 1970s—a Labour report, but Barbara Castle did not feel that she could quite swallow the recommendations. I feel that I must share with the House the comments of Margaret Thatcher—another force, like my noble friend—on the Child Support Agency in 1990. I would like the House to discuss where we differ from these objectives:
“We will set up a new child support agency … The whole process will be easier, more consistent and fairer. Our aim is to give the lone parent back her morale and her confidence. Then she will be able the better to use and develop her own abilities for the benefit of her children and herself”.
Those words are slightly quaintly expressed, but we have been struggling over the decades—both Governments—as to how we can make this work better.
I have long been committed to issues that affect children and families. I started work for the noble Lord, Lord Field, at the Child Poverty Action Group, earning £12 a week. That work was particularly about the budgeting behaviour of families at or below the poverty line, on social security benefits. Many of them earned in their poverty; there were lots of different mechanisms. The key lesson that I learned from that is that poverty is debilitating and difficult in many ways, but that unpredictable income is almost worse. You can manage on a low income if you can be confident of the amount that will come through. It is much easier to plan, even on a meagre budget, if the income is consistent. Being unable to rely on a regular source of income creates acute tension, unhappiness and resentment. That is why it is critical that we try to make the maintenance payments reliable, regular and not a source of endless anxiety and unhappiness. It is a reason why I have long been a supporter of child benefit; it is the one benefit that women can rely on—and it usually is the women.
I also oversaw the implementation of the iconic Children Act 1989, steered through this House by the former Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay of Clashfern. Much of the legal work was done by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale. The purpose was to safeguard and promote the interests of children; their interests should be paramount. Lord Mackay used to say that a “natural adjunct” to the Children Act was the Child Support Act. The tension has been to try to make the two Acts, the financial mechanisms and care mechanisms, work in parallel. As all are agreed, we have not reached the destination, but it is still the right place to aim for.
We saw how the Child Support Agency made way for the Child Maintenance Service. It is estimated that there are 2.3 million separated families in Great Britain, with 3.6 million children in those families, and that 60% of separated families have child maintenance payments. Parents in separated families receive approximately £2.4 billion a year in child maintenance payments; we are aware that these are essential to those families’ well-being and financial security.
Children are expensive; children are demanding. They want what their peers have. Parents want to give their children the best they can. How well I remember when I worked for the Child Poverty Action Group how many mothers got themselves into terrible debt at Christmas shopping from catalogues. They would not let their children wear National Health Service spectacles. I from a more confident position was happy to buy nearly everything my children had from a jumble sale—second-hand bikes and toys—but the pride and determination that one’s child will have the best one can give them is deeply entrenched and it is why these financial payments are so important.
Many in this House have experience of working with disadvantaged families. I know that the noble Baroness—whom I like to call my noble friend—Lady Sherlock, who is going to wind up for the other side, has long-standing engagement and commitment, as does my noble friend.
Preparing for this debate, I wondered whether I was getting out of date, so I talked to the best constituency caseworker I know. She expressed in strong terms her deep concerns about the ongoing functioning of the Child Maintenance Service. Dedicated caseworkers inevitably become close to those they help and identify with their anxiety and pain in grievous situations. We all understand that the break-up of a relationship is not only about poverty; it is about the end of a dream and it is almost like an amputation for some. It is fuelled with suspicion, hurt and resentment. There are many psychological and emotional factors, but the fact is that poverty, not being able to rely on an income, compounds all those difficulties.
My caseworker noted a number of parents, usually fathers, doing everything they could to avoid paying maintenance, as my noble friend said: setting up companies to conceal income, refusing to pay, being devious and, in some cases, being absolutely dishonest. The children frequently then have the indignity and pain of seeing the absent parent driving around in a smart car, going on expensive holidays and treating subsequent children with relative luxury. All this reinforces why this Bill, while not being the total answer, has an important part to play.
Mention has been made of Gingerbread. The CAB is similar; it has endless evidence about these examples. In seeking redress or justice, the lone parent has to invest time, frustration and deep resentment, which can of course be cumulative and result in stress and even ill health. As I said, most mothers or fathers do everything they can to give their child the best possible upbringing.
The National Audit Office has said that it can take years before payments are made to receiving parents if the paying parent simply refuses to comply. Running on for years, it is a relatively Bleak House experience of fuelling emotions that nobody wants to have when trying to be a calm, civilised parent and creating a relationship, and one of respect, with the absent parent.
The House will be aware of the 2022 National Audit Office report on child maintenance. Encouragingly, parents now rely less on the state to help them to make maintenance payments—an objective of the 2012 reforms. It is estimated that one in three separated parents have a child maintenance arrangement for which the agreed maintenance is paid in full, but in 2022 the CMS reported that more than a third of parents paid no maintenance at all; of those who do pay maintenance, fewer than 45% pay more than 90% of the amount due. Cumulative arrears amounted to £493 million; the figure is estimated to reach £1 billion by 2031. It is evident that there has to be action and that there are ongoing problems with child maintenance collection and enforcement activities.
Research shows that 60% of single families living in poverty and not receiving child maintenance would be able to escape poverty if they were simply paid the money they are owed. How difficult it is to be a balanced, affectionate parent, having a good relationship with the other parent, while going through all this impossible difficulty and complexity. We have to make it easier.
The Child Maintenance Service has experienced falling compliance figures since 2021, following what had been a period of improving compliance. I appreciate my noble friend’s comments about the Child Maintenance Service: the people in the organisation are dedicated and they care. They are at the receiving end of extremely emotional, often quite angry and maybe irrational people who feel that they have lost out, so they need the patience of a saint. I want to acknowledge the good work that the CMS is doing—but we have to do more.
Under current legislation, direct payment is the default option unless both parents request collect and pay. If the paying parent refuses to comply, as I have said, it can take years before payments are made to the receiving parent.
This Bill is not going to solve all the problems. We have discussed the different measures by which the CMS can ramp up enforcement and collection more quickly. Time is reduced pain; speed will reduce the agony faced by so many. Other measures in the Bill are not enormous but are important and will result in swifter, more effective action.
The Bill constitutes an important step to improve compliance and enable the CMS to do its work better. I doubt that it will be the last word on the subject but it is thoughtful, carefully prepared and practical. I certainly believe that it will improve the lives of affected children and families, up and down our country. I commend all those who have been involved.