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Mr. Andrew Mitchell: In the case that the hon. Gentleman has cited, the Child Support Agency would not be involved. Where a mother and father agree on the maintenance that should be paid and the taxpayer is not involved by paying benefit, that is an arrangement between them and there is no need for the agency to become involved.
Mr. Corbyn: I appreciate that, but where one of the parents is on benefit, the CSA does become involved. I was referring to that situation. I hope that the Minister understood my point.
Mr. Mitchell: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again but, in that situation, it must be right and proper for the CSA to hold the ring--that is what Parliament decided when the Child Support Act 1991 was passed--between the mother, the father and the taxpayer. It is wrong that the taxpayer should have to pay unnecessarily. Taxpayers often bring up children of their own on low incomes. We must have an eye to that in deciding the fair maintenance level that should be paid.
Mr. Corbyn: It is all very well for the Minister to say that, but there are two problems. First, the child is not any better off as a result of money being taken from the other parent--necessarily if the family is on benefit. Secondly, the Minister will be aware of the disruption that can be caused to other arrangements and other relationships, which is a serious consideration. There must be much greater flexibility.
Mr. Michael Lord (Central Suffolk): I want to make just two points, but before making either of them, may I say how sad it is that we must have a Child Support Agency in the first place. It is a sad comment on the state of our country. Whatever financial arrangements are made for children
when marriages or partnerships--as they are now sometimes called--break up, the children are almost always deeply damaged. We fool ourselves, as a House and as a nation, if we think that by making proper financial provision for them--at whatever level--we can compensate for the damage that has been done. We should not think that money, new arrangements and what is sometimes called quality time with children can put things right.
My first point relates to whether legislation passed by the House does what the House expects it to do. When we debated the Bill that became the Child Support Act 1991, we all thought that its purpose was to chase errant parents who were contributing nothing to their children's welfare; but once the Act was in operation, the priority seemed to be increasing existing payments, about which we already knew, because they were the easier targets. Meanwhile, the errant parents got away with it because it was harder to catch up with them.
The figures suggest that we are now getting those people into the net, and that they are contributing to their children's upbringing. Nevertheless, I urge my hon. Friend the Minister not just to increase the payments of absent parents to a reasonable level--it should not be an unreasonable level, as hon. Members have pointed out--but, despite the complications, to pursue even more vigorously parents who are paying nothing. That, after all, was the driving force behind the Act.
Secondly, as a member of the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, I must say that I am appalled that we could introduce a Bill that would have such far-reaching consequences, and affect so many people in relation to such sensitive issues, without having the faintest idea how we would cope once it was in operation. Our Select Committee has seen example after example of grotesque incompetence--and nothing is worse than the fact that, the day before the button was pressed to launch the system, it must have been clear to those involved that it simply would not work. On one occasion, in the Select Committee, I compared it to the charge of the Light Brigade. The idea that the administrative system could deal with the volume of problems and the deluge of correspondence was clearly nonsense, and it should have been recognised as such long before the legislation was initiated.
Every hon. Member can cite individual cases. I encountered a happily married man who was suddenly told that he would have to start paying for an eight-year-old son who did not exist. Despite his protestations--his letters telling the agency that it had the wrong initials and the wrong details, and my letters trying to put the matter right--the case dragged on for months, doing huge damage to the man and his family, until, finally, the agency admitted that it was wrong and relieved the family of their distress. There has been much talk of compensation this morning, and I agree with what has been said, but I think that all that my constituent and his wife want is to be left in peace. They wish that they had never been assaulted by the Child Support Agency in the first place.
Mr. Michael Connarty (Falkirk, East):
As a fellow member of the Select Committee, the hon. Gentleman will remember that that happened twice to a constituent of mine. Although he was assured that his experience would not be repeated, in the following year the same claim was made against my constituent in relation to a child whom
Mr. Lord:
I entirely agree, but my point is that there are some things that money cannot put right. Those responsible should bear that in mind, and think carefully before they act.
I believe that the system operated by the CSA is fundamentally wrong. It has now introduced an arrangement known as "total functionalisation". The hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) will know that one of my big beefs in the Select Committee is about communication, and the way in which we get things wrong through the use of jargon. "Total functionalisation"--two words that no one can understand--is a prime example. I understand that it means that, when an organisation such as the CSA is being set up from scratch and there are misgivings about how it will work, instead of one member of staff being responsible for a particular client there is something resembling a car production line: different people have different inputs at different stages, whether the case relates to birth certificates, national insurance numbers or whatever.
If one person does not have individual responsibility, it is not surprising that there are problems. It may not be possible to remedy the situation in the short term--I acknowledge that there are huge pressures on the CSA--but I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to think seriously about changing the system fundamentally, so that individual members of staff can have individual responsibility for individual cases and see those cases through. We should know who is responsible for a case, our constituents should know and, most important, the member of staff concerned should know that the buck stops with him or her.
Ms Liz Lynne (Rochdale):
I realise that we have very little time, so I shall try to be as brief as possible.
We are debating some important reports, and I think that it would be wrong not to mention the report of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as well. It stated that lone mothers and children had obtained no net financial gain from the Child Support Agency and that there was no evidence that lone mothers were getting back into work, or being encouraged to do so. It also stated that emotional harm was being done to children. We know that that is true from what we are told by constituents in our surgeries; I know from a man who was sitting in my surgery in floods of tears.
The man in question had had a reasonable relationship with his ex-wife and an excellent relationship with his son, who lived some distance away. He used to visit his son
regularly, take presents, and make masses of telephone calls. As soon as the Child Support Agency became involved, his ex-wife used it as a stick to beat him with. She started to say to his son, "Your father does not love you any more. He is not giving you presents; he is not coming to see you as much." The man--who was a tough man--sat in my surgery in floods of tears. He had just received a telephone call from his son, who had told him, "I don't want to see you any more. I don't love you any more," and then put down the receiver. That is the emotional harm. That is the cost of the CSA in human terms.
In his report, the Parliamentary Commissioner says that the same mistakes are being made as were being made at the time of his last report. There are cases of mistaken identity, inadequate procedures, delays and confusion, but now new faults have been identified, such as breaches of confidentiality. At long last, the Minister is to appoint an independent complaints examiner. I welcome that, but let us consider mistaken identity.
Is £100 any compensation for what might happen to a family when a letter accusing a man of fathering a child arrives on the doormat? Of course he will discuss the matter with his wife, but the untold damage that results from wrongly accusing a man of fathering a child--perhaps during the course of his relationship with his wife--cannot be compensated by £100. Those mistakes should not be occurring.
The DSS says that the CSA is getting better, but it still has a dismal record. In April 1995, 50 per cent. of cases were being cleared within 26 weeks. I gather that provisional figures show that, by the end of March, the rate was 48 per cent.--down, even, on April 1995.
In response to a parliamentary question about confidential information, I was told that, up to 31 October 1995, eight staff had been dismissed and that 10 had been disciplined. The CSA has a worse record than any other agency in the Department of Social Security.
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