§ Earl Russellasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to their Answer of 31st January (WA 111), whether they have a secure baseline for quantifying the financial consequences of the Child Support Act 1991 without figures for the numbers of single parents coming off Income Support before the year 1993–94.
§ The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish)The overall impact of child support policy will be evaluated against a range of objectives set out in the White PapersChildren Come First and Improving Child Support. The absolute number of single parents leaving Income Support in each year before 1993–94 is not essential for the construction of a baseline against which to evaluate the financial consequences of the policy, since other data are available to estimate the probability of a single parent leaving benefit in any particular year.