HC Deb 11 November 1980 vol 992 cc174-5
7. Mr. Freud

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the total number of attachment orders made in the last financial year.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mrs. Lynda Chalker)

In the year ended 5 April 1980 the Department made 469 applications to the courts for attachment orders. Statistics are not kept of the number of orders obtained; but we do know that, of those which were obtained, 302 are still in operation.

Mr. Freud

In view of the lack of success of the current court orders may I ask what the Government have done about examining the recommendations of the Finer report, which recommended effecting a central collection point for court orders of this kind?

Mrs. Chalker

As the hon. Gentleman will know, this has been looked into, but not in as much detail as one would like. It has a number of costs associated with it.

There are practical limitations on attachment orders. The court must, for instance, take into account the person's family commitments before it makes attachment of earnings orders, and new orders have to be obtained if a person changes his employer. It is not merely as simple as one at first thinks it to be, but consideration is certainly given to it in those cases where it can help the beneficiary of the attachment order.

Mr. Kilroy-Silk

Does not the Minister accept that the Finer report's recommendation for the setting up of an enforcement office was one of its most important recommendations, and that unless the Government implement that recommendation, far more maintenance defaulters will continue to go to prison, rather than, as the Finer report suggested, eliminating this as being an essay in social and economic futility?

Mrs. Chalker

I accept that there is grave concern about the matter, but, in the social assistance report, which dealt with the other changes being introduced this month, the general issue of liability upon spouses and upon parents to maintain their dependants who receive supplementary benefit was left for later consideration. The subject will be considered as soon after this month as the existing priorities in the first part of the review will allow.