Maintenance (Hansard, 15 October 1990)

§ 9. Mr. Favell
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what representations he has received on his proposals to ensure that fathers pay maintenance.

§ The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Tony Newton)
I have received correspondence on this subject from one of the major lone-parent organisations, members of the public and other interested parties. We shall shortly publish full details of our proposals in a White Paper.

§ Mr. Favell
Any plans that my right hon. Friend has to ensure that fathers recognise their duties to children, whom they helped bring into the word, will be most 913 welcome. Does he have any plans to point out to single mothers—mothers who have never been married—the enormous pressures that will be put on them by having children while they are unmarried? Any Member of Parliament hears from teachers, pressure groups, social workers and so on how enormously difficult it is for single mothers.

§ Mr. Newton
My hon. Friend's very helpful suggestions range rather wider than my specific remit for social security, but, indeed, our policies on child maintenance range beyond social security. I am concerned that we should have a clear-cut, more workable system to ensure that where maintenance can properly be expected it is paid. That is in the interests of lone parents, whatever the cause of the lone parenthood, and, above all, in the interests of children.

§ Ms. Abbott
Is the Minister aware that there is widespread support for the idea that fathers should take responsibility for their families but that there is also widespread fear that the proposals represent a backdoor way of cutting maintenance for single mothers? Will the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that no single mother will be worse off as a result of the proposals and of whatever legislation may arise from them than she would otherwise have been?

§ Mr. Newton
I think that the hon. Lady referred to cutting maintenance. Clearly, the aim of the proposals as a whole is to increase the amount of maintenance that is paid. But perhaps the hon. Lady simply made a verbal slip.
I cannot attempt today to anticipate all the details of the White Paper that we shall publish, but our aim is to improve the position of lone parents and, not least, to provide them with a better platform on the basis of which they can work if they wish.

§ Mrs. Roe
Can my right hon. Friend provide the House with figures to show the proportion of absent parents who are currently providing maintenance?

§ Mr. Newton
Yes. I can do that in round figures. Maintenance is paid in about one third of all the cases in which it might be expected. For lone parents on income support, maintenance is paid in slightly less than a quarter of cases. Both figures are too low and one of our aims will be to increase them.

§ Ms. Short
Everyone is in favour of fathers maintaining their children. Is the Secretary of State interested only in saving the Treasury money or does he agree with the Labour party that lone parents and their children should be helped to escape from a life of poverty and given a chance to be independent and therefore better off?
We all know that, under the present Government, increasing numbers of lone parents have been forced to live on benefits—by cuts in child benefit and by the removal of the right to claim the costs of child care when working part time. We need encouragement to fathers to pay maintenance, but surely we also need an increase in child benefit and a chance for lone parents to have access to child care and training so that they can escape from poverty and so that they and their children may be better off.

§ Mr. Newton
The hon. Lady may be mildly surprised to hear me say that somewhere, buried in her question, was a general proposition—about seeking to encourage 914 independence and the like—with which I would certainly agree, although I accept that there may turn out to be detailed differences of opinion between the hon. Lady and me about precisely how those objectives are to be achieved. I hope that I shall carry her with me on this, however: the Government have already taken a number of steps to improve the working of the system, even within the existing arrangements—including, most notably, a substantial increase in the earnings disregard for lone parents in respect of housing benefit, which has taken place this very month.

§ Mr. Burns
Is my right hon. Friend aware that any proposals that come before the House will take a considerable time to be implemented because of the pressure of parliamentary business? In the meantime, my constituents and those of other hon. Members will suffer severely because their ex-husbands refuse to pay them maintenance and can use delaying tactics in the court—for example, in the provision of the relevant and necessary proof of earnings and so on—and so evade giving any funding for their former families. Is there anything that my right hon. Friend and his Department can do in the meantime to help those ladies who are in genuine financial difficulties as a result of that practice?

§ Mr. Newton
I do not think that we can solve these problems entirely without the proposals that we shall be bringing forward, which will obviously take a little time. But there are things that we can do and, indeed, that we are doing. The Social Security Act 1990, which was passed during the summer and of which the relevant provisions are just coming into effect, gives us power to transfer DSS maintenance orders to a claimant who is going off income support and gives the DSS power to enforce a claimant's own maintenance order if that would be helpful. Both those provisions are directed at solving precisely the problems to which my hon. Friend referred.