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The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the amendments in this group are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Northbourne, who gives his apologies that he is unable to be here tonight. The aim of the amendments is simple: to promote among parents the responsibilities of parenthood; to achieve the objectives of making it easier to collect child maintenance; and to further the Government’s policy as stated in Every Child Matters. Responsibilities are around safeguarding the child’s health, development and care.
Parenthood and family are vital to a child’s upbringing. Today, 15 per cent of children are born into homes with no resident father. About 50,000 children a year permanently lose all meaningful contact with their father, which is approximately 137 children a day across the country. The statistics get worse when you consider that a child who has experienced family breakdown is more likely to fail at school, fall prey to drug addiction and have alcohol problems. We know
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Unlike Scotland, England has no clear statement in statute law about the responsibilities of parenthood. A significant number of men do not realise or accept any obligation to provide for the needs of any child they bring into the world. If the Government and Parliament are not prepared to state clearly that in this country a father has an obligation, jointly with the child’s mother, to ensure that his child gets financial support and supportive parenting, it is unreasonable to expect teachers to teach that fact in school, or to first-time parents, or to those seeking citizenship in this country. If parents and prospective parents do not understand that obligation, many will continue to think that child maintenance is an unfair imposition and will do their best to avoid paying it.
Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 would increase the probability of parents fulfilling their maintenance obligations by putting those obligations in context and ensuring as far as possible that every parent and prospective parent is aware of the wider context. Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 would in the first place ensure that the obligation to pay child maintenance is taught to and is understood by young people before they become parents. Amendments Nos. 7 and 8 would ensure that all parents and prospective parents are aware of their responsibility not only to pay child maintenance but to give such other parenting support as they can to the child.
I expect—I might even say I fear—that, in his response, the Minister will echo the words of his noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham on 25 April that,
- “it is not for the Government to differentiate between the ways in which households are constructed, although it is for the Government to deal with the consequences, particularly for children, when problems occur”.—[Official Report, 25/4/08; col. 1825.]
The noble Lord told me that the Government would look at the red book that is given to parents. What progress is being made on that?
I urge the Government to stop trying to deal with the problems just by managing the consequences and, instead, to look at the root causes, because the children of this country deserve better. I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I welcome this group amendments and I have put my name to most of them. They all prompt further discussion as to the definition of child maintenance. This is in part because it was not until we started in Committee to consider the concept of maintenance that our discussion became animated for the first time. I have no doubt that even with so few noble Lords in the Chamber at this late hour this issue could have that effect for a second time. Moreover and more importantly, I was very disappointed by the Minister’s response in Committee that the emotional part of child maintenance is,
I agree with Amendment No. 3 moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and Amendment No. 5 to which she spoke. They are very sensible. As I will
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It is an important duty of the Government to protect the citizens of the country. If parents are made fully aware of the great responsibilities that having a child entails, then maybe the number of parents who maintain their children will be improved. This amendment recognises that CMEC will be in the perfect position to fulfil such a task, becoming, as it will, an interface between parental and state intervention through the activities of Ventura. Such proactive work will decrease the amount of cases that come through CMEC and free up some of its precious resources. We must never forget the old adage that prevention is very much better than cure.
I am afraid that Amendment No. 4 does not quite muster the same level of support from me. Development and welfare are important, but I fail to see—and I suspect that the Minister will fail to see—what “health” has to do with this Bill. We would all be delighted if CMEC could be a body with miraculous “Jim’ll Fix It” powers, but it cannot. Further, it is even less likely to achieve what the Bill proposes if its remit is widened to the impossible. The child’s health, although arguably indirectly linked to his maintenance, cannot be considered within this Bill and must not be made an obligation of the commission.
I spoke to my amendment so that I could talk a little longer about what I believe to be the very character, or characteristic, of maintenance—a subject which essentially defines the Bill. There is an important fact that we must not ignore: maintenance is more than money. I am glad to see through their Amendments Nos. 7 and 8 that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, see maintenance in the same way as I do.
While securing appropriate payments is an essential element in supporting a child’s development—and I would not disagree with what the Minister said on that in Grand Committee—it is most certainly not the only one. It is impossible to reduce the filial relationship merely to pounds and pennies. With children there is a profoundly important relationship, different than that of a fund manager—which, in a sense, is how CMEC could be described—that must be maintained and encouraged. For a child to have a happy, successful upbringing, parents must be committed to providing emotional support, time and, above all, love. Helping with schoolwork can be as important as paying school fees—even though there are not supposed to be any within the state system; and there are, of course.
I am not quite so naïve as to suggest that it should be CMEC’s duty to make this ideal a reality—although
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I do not want to sound all doom and gloom. I am encouraged that, despite what the Minister said to me, CMEC will not only be concerned with financial maintenance but will point parents towards emotional and educational resolutions for their current hardships. In March 2008, as has already been mentioned, the DWP awarded a £23 million contract to Ventura to run a call centre designed to provide an information and support service to help parents to arrange and keep child maintenance arrangements. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell me more details of how extensive this information and support service will be. I can only hope that it will be modelled on the very successful Australian model of child maintenance, in which the financial management system is backed by a network of family relationship centres to help to resolve disputes. Can the Minister confirm to me that that is the case? How will parents be alerted to this new service and will it be accessible to all parents, whether they live in Edinburgh or Penzance? After all, we were told by the noble Lord in Committee that there would be face-to-face contact. This is important because many parents with care will not be computer-literate or perhaps even telephone-literate. To be honest, I am not sure that I am the latter.
Although I support the amendments, I would not advise the noble Baroness to divide tonight, when the prospect of failure is high. However, I would push the Minister towards the meetings that he promised in Committee with his noble friend Lord Adonis on this whole subject. I hope that he will be able to report on them. Even though he may not have had meetings himself, he assured us that discussions were to take place between officials of the two relevant departments.
Lord Addington: My Lords, I agree with some of the sentiments behind the amendments but I do not think that this is an appropriate Bill for introducing them. Something of a regular theme of mine is encouraging various departments to speak to each other and encouraging the various bits of government to join up. As is often the case, the sentiments that are expressed in relation to one part of legislation are probably best carried out elsewhere.
We probably all agree with the sentiment behind the amendment. The arguments about a nanny state and so on loom large, and people fall on different sides of the argument on different occasions, but I suggest that this is the wrong Bill and the wrong vehicle for this type of support. Here, we are telling people that they
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Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I thank noble Lords for these amendments, which, again, give us an opportunity to discuss a very important issue. As we have heard, the underlying purpose of Amendments Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 appears to be to extend the remit of the commission from a body focused on securing effective child maintenance arrangements to one that also promotes the full responsibilities of parenthood. That includes matters relating to health development and welfare and the promotion of “parental care”.
I sympathise with noble Lords’ intentions. I know—this was cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has raised these issues with my noble friend Lord Adonis, particularly in the context of the Children and Young Persons Bill. I also understand the noble Lord’s desire to discuss more broadly the Government’s role in promoting parental responsibility—in particular, whether legislation would be the best route to communicate with parents who are uncertain of their parenting responsibilities.
As my noble friend Lord Adonis made clear in that debate, the Government fully recognise the need to respond to parents who fail to take seriously their parental responsibilities. We fully accept that some parents need advice and assistance, and the Government are steadily improving the quantity and quality of the services that are available. However—and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington—I do not believe that this Bill or this commission is the right home for these provisions as there is a real risk that they will dilute the effort of the commission from its primary purpose of promoting child maintenance and, in particular, ensuring that parents take financial responsibility for the maintenance of their children.
It is for the same reason that I cannot accept the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, which would restrict the commission’s ability to promote to parents their responsibility for providing child maintenance. This would limit the commission’s options for maximising the number of effective child maintenance arrangements that are in place. I am sure that this is not what the noble Lord intended, given the importance of this in combating child poverty.
Although I must disappoint noble Lords on the specifics of their amendments, I can perhaps provide some solace by recognising that we see a clear link between parental responsibility with regard to child maintenance and in its broader sense. In addition, I stress that the commission will clearly need to be understanding of, and sensitive to, the emotional environment that separated parents face. This will inevitably be part of the context in which it will
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It will be in the interests of the commission and its objectives to have some understanding of this wider context, but I would expect the commission to encourage such engagement anyway as part of a cross-government approach to supporting parents. We will encourage the commission to work alongside other organisations dealing with similar issues. We provide for that in the Bill. Clause 7 gives the commission power to enter into arrangements with other agencies and Clause 5 places a requirement on the commission to provide parents with the necessary information and guidance to secure an effective child maintenance arrangement.
We would see that as including referring and signposting them on to other organisations that can help on issues related to separation, family breakdown and parental responsibility. This is not the limit of our ambitions, but the lesson of past reforms to the child support system is that we should walk before we can run. I would also point out that the development of the information and support service, which we have discussed at some length in Grand Committee, demonstrates how we are already working closely with other government departments and bodies, particularly the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which have the cross-government policy lead on family policy issues. We intend the commission to engage fully in cross-government work on services for parents and children and I am pleased to say that the chair-designate of the commission, in particular, is already having an enormous influence in shaping developments in this area.
Perhaps I can say more about supporting vulnerable parents. We have always fully recognised the importance of that, particularly those whose children are at most risk of poverty. From the outset, this awareness has underpinned key parts of the legislation and reform system that we are putting in place. The information and support service is the primary component of the new system to protect parents on low incomes. We are putting arrangements in place with Jobcentre Plus and HMRC to ensure that as many parents as possible claim and renew their benefits and tax credits and are proactively guided towards the information and support service.
Secondly, we are establishing a large-scale, high quality national helpline service—in certain circumstances, a face-to-face service—so that parents can get helpful information on the different options for child maintenance. Thirdly, those services will support both parental decision-making and parents acting on the decisions that they make—for example, by transferring them across to the CSA, sending out a standard voluntary maintenance form to help them record and maintain the arrangement, and helping parents understand what level of maintenance they could be entitled to through the CSA. Fourthly, many parents will need the statutory service, which is
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The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, pressed me on progress with my noble friend Lord Adonis, particularly in relation to the red book. It is absolutely right that my noble friend undertook to look at extending the principle behind the red book, which is given to every parent to track their child’s health development through the first years of its life, by exploring how we can develop a personal parent-led record that will run from birth to 11. It could ensure that parents have direct access to the critical information that they need to support the development of their child. This could be a universal tool to enable children’s practitioners and parents to identify issues early and seek prompt referrals. I will have to report more specifically on precisely what progress that approach has made to date, and I am happy to do that in writing.
My noble friend Lord Adonis also undertook on Report to seek to ensure that the elements which form the definition of supportive parenting in the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, are promoted in guidance. It is the Government’s view that we are more likely to help every parent to do the best for their child through programmes that support parents and can draw as appropriate on effective guidance and support, rather than making changes to primary legislation.
I hope that I have covered each point that noble Lords have made. I shall say a little more about the work of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, with which the commission is engaged. This is in relation to a project called Parent Know How, a DCSF initiative aimed at delivering better outcomes for children and parents through access to the information, advice and guidance that they need to support them in their parenting role. The initiative has a particular focus on meeting the needs of parents who are not as well served by current sources of help as they could be. These groups include parents of disabled children, fathers from all backgrounds and parents of teenage children. The service is made up of seven helplines, where funding is provided to organisations such as Parentline Plus and One Parent Families. There are also 11 new channel services, including text messaging, social media and websites including Dadspace, a social networking website aimed at fathers, and the Single Parent Action Network—or SPAN—a nationwide network of one-parent families and self-help groups aimed at families living in poverty and isolation, empowering them to improve their lives and life chances.
We recognise that the information support service will particularly need to reach out to groups that research shows can struggle to access the information and support they need. We are working closely with DCSF, as I outlined earlier, to ensure that the information support service is joined up to the parenting services by links to several of the new websites dealing with family relationships and networking, and self-help groups. We will also signpost parents to Parent Know
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We do not see the merit of expanding in primary legislation definitions around parental responsibility. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, in particular, accepted that guidance was a real and effective route in taking forward those broader messages. Having said that, I hope that noble Lords will feel satisfied about the focus that the Government have on wider issues around parents’ responsibilities, how we are engaged in that, and the niche role of the commission in working alongside that without detracting from its primary obligation: to ensure that more maintenance is delivered to more children.
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Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, I am extremely grateful for his offer to write and when he does, will he be good enough to send me a copy of the red book?
Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I am happy to copy the letter to every noble Lord who has participated this evening. I shall send the noble Lord a copy of the red book.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for having outlined so fully some of the important initiatives that are being undertaken. I should like to state to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that this amendment and the other amendments in this group are not intended to promote a nanny state. We want to ensure that the message of responsibility comes earlier, before problems arise. Children are not accessories, nor are they routes to get benefits or housing. They are individuals who deserve supportive parenting. This is not about nannying anybody; it is about making sure that children get at least a basic level of supportive care and parenting.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for his report. I shall clarify for the record that the word “health” is used in a much broader context than physical health and covers emotional health, mental health and aspects of nutrition that lead to good physical health. That is why we put the word “health” in the amendment.
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