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Amendment No. 29 is intended to ensure that, once the current contract for the CSA IT system ends, the system should be replaced by a new one, with the development work done through a new contract awarded following open competition. IT services within the CSA are, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, identified, currently provided through department-wide contracts. These contracts contain clauses that cover the possibility of future changes in our organisation. These will be used to ensure that the commission is able to continue to make use of IT services in the same way that the CSA does now.
However, although IT services will initially be provided through the current department-wide contract, it will of course be for the commission to decide the right approach for the future.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My understanding—perhaps I misunderstood—was that under the EDS contract, it owned not only the system but the information on it, so that had one sought to transfer contracts, none of the data would have gone with it, so one would have had to have started from scratch. Obviously, that was always impossible. Is that still the case, or did I misunderstand the situation? I am perfectly willing to believe that I did misunderstand it, as I claim no expertise at all in computers or contracts.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: It is not a matter that has been brought to my attention in the various discussions that we have had over the month, but I will specifically check on that and revert to my noble friend.
As I was saying, at the highest level, there are two questions that the commission must resolve. The first is whether to seek provision of IT services independently, or whether to remain within the scope of DWP contracts and negotiate in conjunction with the department. The second is whether to replace or maintain the existing CSA computer system.
These are obviously hugely important matters and I believe that it would be wrong to impose a solution, as would the amendment, on the commission. We are, after all, recruiting an independent and expert board precisely because we want it to take decisions such as these.
Furthermore, on perhaps a more technical point, I believe that the amendment oversimplifies the range of potential options. It is possible, for example, that the commission would want to maintain the current system for some services and functions, but develop a new solution for others. The proposed amendment would prevent such an approach. However, regardless of the approach that the commission takes, I can be absolutely clear that whatever contracts it may enter into, they
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Amendment No. 204 would require the Office of Government Commerce to provide assurances that the information technology system meets all the standards and specifications in the contract to supply information before the HMRC data are supplied to the commission, or to a person providing services to the commission in relation to its child support functions. As I am sure we are all aware, the intention in Schedule 6 is for the commission to benefit from the information gateways which already exist between the Department for Work and Pensions, the Northern Ireland Department and HMRC. So it has access to all the necessary information required to carry out its child support functions. We are all aware that the information provided by HMRC will be essential to the operation of the commission, and so we will take all precautions necessary to ensure the smooth and effective establishment of systems suitable for this purpose.
I want to inform Members of the Committee that we are currently investigating, and I am in discussion with HMRC on the details of the HMRC data transfer. Additionally, the Office of Government Commerce is already involved and is providing assurances on the overall child maintenance redesign programme within the department that oversees the establishment of the commission. For those reasons, I believe that the proposed risk assessment from the Office of Government Commerce is not necessary. I would also want the commission carefully to consider and make decisions in its IT requirements, clearly undertaking appropriate reviews, and in time before the planned maintenance system comes into operation in 2010.
Perhaps I may pick up on a couple of comments that were made about EDS and the existing system. Clearly, there have been problems with it. A great deal of work has been carried out to improve the stability of the new computer system—CS2—and operational performance has improved to the point where contracted service levels are consistently being met. The agency is planning a major IT release by the end of this financial year, which will resolve many of the remaining performance issues. Of the 506 system defects agreed in 2005, 219 of the most critical were resolved as of October 2007. The enhanced systems will establish a more stable IT platform on which the commission will be able to build. In particular, the agency’s telephony has shown tremendous levels of improvement. The average time taken to answer calls from the queue fell from one minute 40 seconds in 2005 to only 21 seconds in September 2007. So progress has been made.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made broader reference to the OIP, but perhaps we should find another occasion to go through some of the detail of that. Perhaps I will just use the opportunity to say that if you look at performance to date—we are not two
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I hope that with that explanation, the noble Lord with withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope: Obviously, I will withdraw the amendment. I will study carefully what the Minister has said. I think that Parliament needs more reassurance than he is prepared to give us collectively. There are issues with commercial confidentiality and so forth. If the Office of Government Commerce is involved, is there not some way that, with the commercially sensitive parts of the reports removed, Parliament can be given first sight of the assurance about the gateway and other processes that are going through as the reletting process unfolds?
I am prepared to leave the matter there and return to it. I really do think that this is an essential element of getting this new policy area right.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: Perhaps I can take the opportunity to tell the noble Lord that my note says that EDS own the intellectual property rights to the system but the data on it are ours.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope: On that happy note, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Addington moved Amendment No. 31:
“( ) to contribute to the reduction of poverty among children who live apart from one or both parents”The noble Lord said: This is my first contribution on this Bill. The amendment would insert a provision into Clause 2. As my noble friend said at the start of today’s proceedings, the heart of the Bill or the driving focus seems to be in Clause 2. The aim of a reduction in child poverty should be seen upfront in the Bill. Why is that seen to be necessary? Probably because it is nowhere else. As we go through the names of the clauses we see the objectives, the functions, the promotion of child maintenance and the provision of information and fees. It is conceivable that certain types of activity will be prioritised because they are administratively more rewarding and easier to fulfil than ones that might actually assist with child poverty. For instance, there may be areas in which the amount of effort and resources required to deal with cases can become difficult. Those cases may be at the edge, involving those who are closest to the poverty line, when smaller amounts of money are pushed into the budget to ensure that children are maintained properly, to give the greatest benefit to the children and the caring parent. Those may be areas that take up an inordinate amount of resources and it might be decided that they are outside the box.
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This is not so much a probe as a dig to find out where that duty is hidden in the Bill to maximise the benefits for children who are potentially in poverty or close to the poverty line. If the duty is not hidden in there somewhere, it should be. I invite the Minister to show us exactly where it is, and where it is implicit in the Bill. It would reassure a lot of people outside that this issue has a drive and focus to it that we could all applaud. I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale: I find this a rather curious amendment from Gingerbread. I am not sure that it is appropriate to put words such as this in a Bill such as this. We all know why child maintenance is important; it is to ensure that a child who lives with one parent has sufficient financial support so that at least financially they are not disadvantaged in comparison with their counterparts in two-parent family homes. However, I wonder how and why the amendment is useful, and whether the reduction of child poverty needs to be stated as one of the objectives of CMEC. Not every case of child separation necessarily means child poverty. Does the noble Lord, Lord Addington, not agree with me that in a situation demanding the allocation of funds what is needed is fairness, which is the prerequisite for trust? Positive discrimination is not needed, as there are always some who object to the discrimination no matter how virtuous it seems.
I do not like the amendment, nor do I see a need for it.
3.15 pm
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope: I support my noble friend’s amendment for a pragmatic reason. One could put forward all sorts of arguments. There is a body of academic evidence. I was looking at some work done by the University of York, which has recently produced an analysis of poverty in England. It is a very thorough study, talking about the challenges of families living on low incomes being aggravated by the experience of abuse, domestic violence, relationship breakdown and so on. I am certain that there is a very clear link between family breakdown and poverty.
However, that is not the reason why I believe the amendment is important. It is important because the next three years of the public spend in the Comprehensive Spending Review will rightly be focused on child poverty. If that is the grade of public policy at strategic level, it makes sense in this Bill to focus on some of the lines of attack to try to bear down on the poverty experienced by parents with care—with non-resident parents elsewhere—so as to try to shoehorn them into the Government’s direction of travel. I would put money on the fact that, between now and the end of the Comprehensive Spending Review, the Government will start to look more seriously at this route for driving down child poverty to reach their targets by 2010. They will have to do something. They have done a lot, which is acknowledged, but they will have to do more. How will they do more? What options are open to them? This is one of them.
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If the Bill gives the commission more authority in the heart of Clause 2, as my noble friend says, that will enable the Minister, or his heirs and successors, whoever they may be, to go to the Treasury and say, “Here is a way forward; this commission, with a little help from its friends, could get to a government target more easily”. So, if we take it, we are staring an advantage in the face. By putting child poverty into Clause 2 as one of the objectives of the commission, that will make it easier for the commission and the Government to get to where we all want to be in 2010.
Even if one does not accept the academic, the political or the philosophical basis, there is a pragmatic, practical reason for doing this right now, because if we do not, we will not get the money that we might otherwise get. If people do not understand that, they need only look at the public service agreements that have just been published in the 2007 Pre-Budget Report, because they are very focused on child poverty. There used to be a PSA target for child support, but that has gone, so where will we get the purchase on the Treasury if we do not use child poverty as a lever to get extra money, to get the resources that the commission needs and to get the job done properly by 2010?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I support the position of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for two reasons. I am not sure how my noble friend will respond to this amendment, but my first reason is a philosophical point. I would be amazed if in the number of speeches that my noble friend has made about the Child Support Agency to staff, at conferences, to voluntary groups, he has not emphasised the ability of child maintenance to make a huge difference to the number of children in poverty. I would guarantee that one of his key arguments in his speeches is about the need to address child poverty and that the staff are not debt collection agents, but are in the forefront of trying to overcome child poverty. I would guarantee that my noble friend has made that speech on a number of occasions and that is where I believe it belongs—in speeches made by Ministers on the wider context of the Bill. While I do not dissent from one word of the wishes or outcomes addressed by the noble Lords who have spoken in support of the amendment, like the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, I am, however, wary of what I call rhetoric in Bills as opposed to the practical things that Bills seek to change and to effect by legislation.
My second point is a practical concern. Perhaps the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Kirkwood, can help me on this point before my noble friend responds. Is the implication of this amendment that CMEC would be expected to distinguish between parents to ensure that it helps the poorest parents first at the expense of other parents, irrespective of the cost? For example, to overcome child poverty and to get an extra £5 to a child, it is legitimate to spend £10 or £15 chasing that child who is poorer, as opposed to giving £20 to another child for which one would need to spend only £10 chasing it up. I understand the honourable nature of that intent, but that brings one up against the constraints of the business and value-for-money contexts within which the agency may work. At that level, it may be more appropriate to deal with
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Baroness Butler-Sloss: I am sure that everyone, not only in the Moses Room but throughout the country, wants to support the reduction of poverty among children—children with both parents and those who are separated from one parent. On this occasion, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, in thinking that this is not an appropriate phrase for this Bill. I have the gravest doubts that the Treasury would take such great interest in the fact that the commission is under an obligation, according to this amendment, to reduce child poverty. I wonder how on earth it is thought that the commission could do that. It does not seem to me to be part of the commission's job to do that, although clearly it is part of the commission's job to try to get money from absent parents. For those reasons I, too, oppose the amendment.
Lord Addington: I tabled the amendment in an attempt to try to work out where the Government believe the duty ties in with what they have done to reduce child poverty. Members of the Committee know that when I started talking about how the different government departments talk to each other to achieve the aims—they seldom do—I am really asking how this internal department is chasing around to achieve its aims. How would everything come together? I want to dig out where the incentive is to ensure that child poverty is part of the overall strategy. That is the real aim behind my amendment.
On whether one should go to greatest need first, and bearing in mind the cost of equity to someone else, possibly one should. The costs and the savings may be much greater for the entire government machine. However, that was not the primary objective of this amendment. I wanted to find out how the whole comes together.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: This has been an interesting, if short, debate on what is clearly an important issue. The Government are with the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friend Lady Hollis, for the reasons that they have outlined. Getting more child maintenance to more children is central to the reforms introduced by the Bill and central to the commission’s objectives as drafted. The key DWP strategic objective is to contribute to the elimination of child poverty. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, referred to the PSA target.
To the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I say that the whole issue has been dealt with across government. The Children's Plan in particular mapped out joint arrangements across government, led by the DCSF. Of course, the commission contributes to it by ensuring that we maximise the number of effective child maintenance arrangements that are in place. That is a contribution. It cannot reasonably have a broader contribution to touch on all the issues and
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By working towards its main objective, to maximise the number of effective—that is, working—arrangements in place, the commission will already be making a significant contribution to the reduction of child poverty. It is difficult to see how, in regard to the payment of child maintenance, the proposed amendment would help to reduce poverty among children who live apart from one or both parents to any greater extent than the main objective. The noble Lord will be aware that this main objective is supported through two subsidiary objectives. These supporting objectives require the commission to encourage and support appropriate voluntary arrangements, as we have discussed, and to support applications to, and compliance of, the statutory maintenance service.
All the functions and services for which the commission has responsibility will be shaped to meet the commission’s main and supporting objectives. As part of this, we would expect the commission to focus resources on those groups most in need of support, particularly those on benefits who will be taking their own decisions about child support matters for the first time. For example, while the information and support service will be available to all parents, we are working closely with Jobcentre Plus and HMRC, as I outlined earlier, to ensure that separating parents on low incomes can be identified and proactively referred to the information and support service.
However, the commission does not have responsibility for the many other matters that have a bearing on child poverty. The level of the maintenance disregard, for example, is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, as is the New Deal for Lone Parents, while the tax credit system is a matter for HMRC. As a result, we do not consider a wider objective on child poverty to be appropriate for the commission. Therefore, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Addington: When there are so many voices against me, I am well advised to pull back. I saw this amendment as trying to clarify how the whole matter comes together. The clarification of the limitations of role is also quite useful. It is well worth having information on where levers and monitoring should be applied. I thank the Minister for giving us slightly greater clarification on that. Having heard what has been said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 32 to 36 not moved.]
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope moved Amendment No. 37:
(a) maintenance arrangements under subsection (1) are to be regarded by the Commission as “effective”;31 Jan 2008 : Column GC401
The noble Lord said: This is the final subject of the quartet. The Committee is rightly spending some quality time looking at aspects of the objectives of the commission. This takes us to the definitions. Earlier in the Grand Committee, we had discussions on that. The Public Bill Committee in another place also looked at some of these matters. The amendment seeks further clarification of what is meant by words such as “effective” and “appropriate” at their respective places in the Bill as it stands. We know from what Mr Plaskitt said in the Public Bill Committee in another place on 19 July that “effective” means an arrangement that works and “appropriate” means an arrangement that is suitable to the circumstances of the parents in question. It is the right type of arrangement at the right level and it is sustainable. There was further discussion about that on Report and at Third Reading in the other place.
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