We want all children to have a good standard of living. Children whose parents are living apart are often worse off. Therefore, to tackle that, we want to help lone mothers to work and ensure that fathers pay their fair share through the Child Support Agency.

However, we must also begin to rebuild a consensus around the responsibilities of parents to support their children after relationships break down. The Government believe that children are entitled to the emotional and financial support of both parents. Every child has a right to the love, care and support of both parents. It takes two people to make a child. Both parents are responsible for conceiving a child, and both parents must fulfil their responsibility to that child as it grows up.

Parents are responsible for caring for their children as well as paying for them. That applies to fathers as well as mothers, and applies whether the parents are married, living together, separated, divorced or, indeed, have never lived together.

We in the House are familiar with talk about motherhood, but there is also the important issue of fatherhood. Fathers have much that they can—and should—provide for their children: much more than just their money. They have their time, energy, concern and attention. Fathers cannot be left to imagine that they do not matter to their children. If they feel worthless, they are all the more likely to behave irresponsibly. That is what the Government mean by children having a right to the emotional, as well as financial, support of both their parents. Our message, particularly to fathers, is: "We understand that your children need not just your money; they need you."

Today's debate will focus on the Child Support Agency and in particular will deal with how to ensure a proper system of child support, to secure a better standard of living for children after relationships break down. The Government believe that that can be achieved in two ways: by lone mothers working, and by absent fathers paying.

First, I refer to the mothers. Lone mothers in Britain are among the least likely to work and the most likely to bring up their children on benefit of lone mothers anywhere in Europe. In France, 82 per cent. of lone mothers work. That is more than their married counterparts. In Britain, the figure is only 41 per cent. Fewer lone mothers than married women work.

The Conservative Government left too many lone mothers dependent on income support. In effect, they said, "Here's your benefit. Come back when your children have left school." The result is that 1 million lone mothers are struggling to bring up 2 million children on the breadline, at a cost to the taxpayer of £10 billion a year and growing. However, research shows that 90 per cent. of lone mothers want to work. They do not want to depend on benefit. They want what all mothers want—the best for their children.

We have already set out our proposals to help lone mothers get off benefit and into work, which will include inviting them into the jobcentre, when their youngest child starts school, for advice on job search and information on training and child care. The Government believe that work is the best form of welfare for people of working age, and that includes lone mothers, but there is a connection between mothers working and fathers paying—our two objectives.

There is strong evidence that proper, regular maintenance helps lone mothers get back to work. The Policy Studies Institute, in its report on the first effects of the CSA, said:

"There is a clear connection between maintenance payments and the opportunity to get and keep paid work".

It also says—this is important for the income of children where parents do not live together—that lone mothers who work and get family credit, and receive maintenance, have a net disposable income 60 per cent. higher than those on income support. That is an extra £56 a week. Therefore, fathers paying is also part of helping mothers to work.

That brings us to the subject of the Child Support Agency. One reason why the Government called the debate is that we want to draw on the valuable experience of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House in regard to the agency and to hear their views. While the Labour party is extremely concerned about the issue, I recognise that it is not a party political issue. The Liberal Democrats have important views, which we want to hear, and we shall no doubt hear further reflections from the Conservative party, which introduced the system.

I support everything that my right hon. Friend has said. However, not only is the function of the CSA important; accessibility is an important issue. A child is frequently used by the two aggrieved parents. It is important that absent parents should have access to their children, to ensure that they receive proper care and attention, especially on the emotional side. Can the Government do anything to ensure fair accessibility to children when difficulties are experienced?

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. It is absolutely evident that a child's upbringing benefits from the involvement of his or her father, when the father no longer lives with the child. Obviously, that matter comes before the courts, but the Government's position is clear: wherever possible, access should be given, because it is good for the child. We want to support that and back it up.

It is important to start our debate by being clear about what went wrong with the CSA, what is still going wrong with it and what needs to be done to put things right. The reason why the Child Support Agency was introduced was that the court-based system for child maintenance was failing.

Under the pre-CSA system, too many fathers simply did not pay. That is why the previous Government introduced the CSA. Some 77 per cent. of lone mothers on income support received no regular maintenance payments. Awards were too low. The average award for one child was only 11 per cent. of the absent father's income—on average, some £15 a week. Moreover, there was no fairness. Maintenance awards were inconsistent and unpredictable: fathers earning £150 per week would not know whether they would end up with an award of £5 a week for their child or £50 a week.

The previous Government attempted to solve those problems—everybody agrees that they were substantial and needed to be dealt with—by setting up the Child Support Agency. There was all-party support for their aim to ensure that absent fathers took proper financial responsibility for their children. However, the previous Government's attempts to make absent fathers pay proper maintenance for their children were disastrous. I genuinely regret that.

Today's debate provides an opportunity to set out why the Conservatives failed, so that we can build our child support policy on solid ground. We can now see that they failed children and parents by misunderstanding the problem, failing to develop a clear objective for the agency, refusing to listen to the warnings and constructive suggestions from those who pointed out in advance the problems with their proposals, and by drastically underestimating the size of the problem.

The previous Government misunderstood the political consensus around the need to make absent fathers pay proper maintenance for their children. The belief that that meant that the solution that seemed best to them commanded general support lulled the previous Government into a false sense of security. They thought that, because everyone agreed that fathers should pay, everyone would agree with their system to make fathers pay. The Tories did not set clear objectives, and the Child Support Agency was never given a consistently clear set of targets.

The agency was established with the intention that all absent fathers should face up to their financial responsibilities for their children. That meant that, initially at least, the CSA aimed to get at least some maintenance from all fathers—the point about responsibility—whether or not they had ever paid before. Inevitably, however, as the Conservative Government grew to see the agency's revenue-raising role as so important, more money was collected from certain groups of fathers, such as those who were already paying a small amount of maintenance. That was because it was easier for the agency to collect more money from fathers who had at least paid some maintenance before, than from fathers who had never paid before and were avoiding payment. A sense of unfairness therefore grew. Those conflicting priorities—whether or not the agency was about responsibility or getting money in—meant the agency lacked focus. That contributed significantly to the scheme's poor performance in its early years.

The Tories would not listen to criticism. When we were in opposition, we pointed out the flaws in the scheme long before it was introduced. We pointed out the damage that could be caused by an inflexible system and the need to respect existing property and capital settlements. Time and again, we presented the then Government with constructive proposals for change, but they were dismissed out of hand. Although the need for change was subsequently accepted, it was too late, and disasters had begun to happen. For example, we pointed out that, by ignoring travel-to-work and contact costs, the system was creating real hardship for some. That, too, was ignored for too long.

The previous Government also underestimated the scale of their task.

The right hon. Lady complained that there was no clear objective for the agency. Does she intend in her speech to spell out the clear objective that she will set it?

We have been in office some five weeks. As I set out at the outset of my speech, my instinct is that the clear objective should be the responsibility of parents, but we need to discuss that again. The objectives were originally set out, but became confused under the previous Government. Today, we are trying to take stock of the problem and move forward.

I agree with a lot of what my right hon. Friend has said already, but for any law to be passed and to work properly, it must appear to be fair. I have racked my brains to try to find another solution. Over the five years that the agency has been in operation, I thought that, first, it might have got rid of the backlog, and, secondly, that more people would have been brought in to make payments. I get the impression that the biggest source of grievance for my constituents—I am sure that it applies across the country, whatever the constituency—is that the fathers who are paying think that they are paying to make up for the thousands whom the agency cannot find. That is why the law is in disrepute.

I do not suggest that there is an easy answer, but the Government should be looking at a new formula to start afresh, based on the ability to get everybody in the net, and not leave some people out. It is like another poll tax: some people getting away with it and others having to pay.

My hon. Friend makes a fair point. It is part of the deep sense of unfairness that people feel about how the agency has worked. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the biggest source of grievance is not the one which I readily acknowledge—that some fathers pay while others do not—but that too many children do not have a good enough standard of living, because some fathers are determined to avoid payment while others are prepared to pay, but want to do so as and when they feel like it and at an amount that they choose. The unfairness engendered by the CSA has undermined the public support that it needs to be able to proceed with the task on which we all agree.

The Secretary of State said that the CSA was never set targets. I refer her to the fifth report of the Select Committee on Social Security, which said that the Secretary of State set six operational targets for the year 1995–96, most of which were achieved. It would be more helpful if she explained what she is proposing for the CSA, rather than carrying on this rather childish attack on the outgoing Administration. She said that this should not be a party issue. Will she now make that clear by moving to an atmosphere of consensus, instead of carrying on in this Mandelson-like way, as she has been instructed to do by the Minister without Portfolio?

I stand by what I said—this is not a party political issue. I do not seek to make party political points, but I want to present the House with the Government's analysis of what went wrong. The hon. Gentleman should try to assist in the process of sorting out the CSA. If he is saying that there were no problems, he is out of touch. Targets were set, but they were unrealistic and were abandoned for other targets. He should not defend what everybody now agrees is indefensible, and he should address his mind to moving forward.

The previous Government underestimated the scale and the difficult nature of the work to be done. Relationship breakdown often creates intense bitterness and resentment. Past evidence showed that many fathers simply did not want to face up to their responsibilities for their children. It was not an easy task. To make matters worse, the previous Government failed to see that rushing through the child support legislation without thoroughly examining the details of how the CSA would work in practice would lead to serious problems.

The CSA was set up in a difficult context, without clear objectives and much too quickly, and faced numerous practical difficulties in its early years. It had a completely new team—some from outside the civil service, and some from within the civil service, but from unrelated organisations such as the Property Services Agency. They came together to do an immensely difficult job against a background of unclear objectives. They had no experience of the issues involved and had a much harder task than the Government realised. That led to misunderstandings and mistakes. The CSA had a new computer system, with all the teething troubles and operational problems that that always brings.

As a result, the CSA failed. It failed children, few of whom saw any improvement in their financial circumstances—which was what the CSA was supposed to be about. It failed lone mothers and absent fathers—lone mothers were still on the breadline, and absent fathers were angered and confused by unacceptably poor service. As my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) said earlier, they could not even get through on the telephone.

The Secretary of State referred to improving children's standard of living in low-income households. Can I tempt her by referring to a very good device alighted upon by the Labour party last October, for making some savings? Under the heading "Maintenance Disregard", the document "Children First" says:

"A maintenance disregard, once introduced, will provide an incentive for co-operation which will mean consequent savings on income support."

She will know that parents with care who are on income support have the benefits that they receive withdrawn pound for pound for any maintenance that they receive. That is such a good Labour scheme for saving money in the long run that I can see no reason why she is not announcing its introduction today.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. As the collection rate of the CSA increases, we shall keep under review the option of a maintenance disregard. However, where I differ from him is in the belief that there is no point in a father paying if the mother is on income support. I do not believe that, for two reasons. First, there is a point of principle—not an airy-fairy principle, but one about children's understanding of the situation. I do not want any child to understand that their father has abandoned responsibility for them and has decided that they should rely on the state.

Secondly, another more practical matter in the Policy Studies Institute report to which I referred is that, if a father is paying maintenance—and therefore the children are dependent on maintenance rather than benefit—the mother can get a part-time job once the children reach school age, and right away she will be better off. She will be better off depending on maintenance while going out to work and improving her income, because she is not in the benefit trap.

The Secretary of State perhaps makes my point for me. Will she confirm that under the system of family credit, there already is a £15 disregard? Why should there not be a £10 disregard in the maintenance situation that I have just described?

The hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point, and we shall continue to look at it. We shall put it on our agenda, and I thank him for raising it.

The CSA failed children, lone mothers and absent fathers, but it also failed its staff. They, too, bore the brunt of the failure because of the mishandled introduction of the scheme. Hon. Members are only too well aware of the many problems caused by the ineffectiveness of the CSA. The parliamentary ombudsman has criticised its performance, as has the Social Security Committee.

I know that many colleagues want to discuss examples of the ineffectiveness of the CSA in some detail during today's debate, and I and my ministerial team look forward to hearing their points. I am sure that we all agree that the previous Government's failure to set up an effective system of child support left an explosive cocktail which hit everyone.

The statistics about the experiences of people caught up with the CSA are well known, but no less shocking for that, and we need to take stock of what happened. People telephoning the CSA have to ring about eight times before the telephone is even answered. That is not good enough, and I have asked the CSA to ensure that it has extra services on the telephone lines. Out-of-hours telephone services are also needed, so that people do not have to try to talk to the CSA from their place of work.

When people do get through, it can take many months—if not years—to get an assessment. I have asked the CSA to make sure that by the end of this year, it completes an extra 500,000 assessments and continues to improve the accuracy rate. If people complain about the level of their assessment, their appeals can take as long again to be dealt with. In the first year, more than half of all assessments were wrong and had to be redone. Backlogs of work mounted up, so that by the end of the CSA's second year in existence, there were more than 400,000 cases. That is 400,000 absent fathers, lone mothers and children waiting for assessment, not knowing what is going on and unable to ring up to find out.

As some absent fathers suffered hardship as a result of that catalogue of problems, many others saw the opportunity to use the CSA's administrative failings as a justification for their determination not to pay. Indeed, further operational problems resulted from deliberate attempts at disruption. Some fathers without justification denied paternity to cause delay. What message is that sending to children? Some refused to answer letters. Some flooded the CSA with time-wasting inquiries, adding to the problems. Fathers refused to pay the maintenance for which they were liable, not because paying it would cause them genuine hardship, but because they were simply not willing to face their responsibilities as fathers. It is a paradox that maintenance payment rates are only about 50 per cent., while income tax payment rates are 90 per cent. Absent fathers are meeting their responsibilities to the community through the tax system, while refusing to face their responsibilities to their own children.

Last week, a colleague sent me a letter from a man complaining about the CSA. He was really complaining about the fact that his girlfriend had got pregnant and had the baby. In the letter, he asked, "Is there no law to protect me from that?" The answer is no—but there is a law to prevent him ignoring his responsibilities to that child. Some fathers think that everyone else is responsible for their babies arriving in this world. One absent parent wrote to the agency complaining about his treatment, explaining that it was not his fault that the baby was born. In this case, it was not even the fault of the baby's mother—it was her parents' fault. The father said that they encouraged him to stay overnight in their house three or four times. He complained:

"Not once did any one of them mention anything about taking precautions so I presumed she was on the pill … because obviously if her parents didn't want a baby they wouldn't have encouraged me to stay".

That man was only 26. We will not accept that sort of behaviour, and we will pursue absent fathers who evade and avoid their responsibilities as parents.

As I have said, I think that the previous Government let down the staff of the CSA. I pay tribute to those staff. They work in an emotionally charged situation when family relationships have broken down and in an agency that must perform an important task, but which was beset with problems from the start. I understand the difficulties that dealing with an agency as ineffective as the CSA in its early years has caused for many of its customers. I understand the frustration and the despair that they feel. When dealing with people and such emotionally charged issues, there must be an acknowledgement of the need for an effective, efficient, polite and fair service. I make it clear that we expect all CSA staff to deal politely, fairly and promptly with their clients at all times.

However, we cannot and will not accept, condone or ignore threats and violence against CSA staff. Like all employees, CSA staff—who are carrying out the work of a democratically elected Government—have the right to work without being threatened, abused or harassed. I was horrified to hear about the offensive and threatening material that has been sent to CSA staff through the post. However, I am pleased to acknowledge that, despite the difficulties facing staff, there are clear signs that the position is about to improve.

While the agency has yet to succeed in increasing the proportion of lone mothers receiving regular maintenance, there have been clear improvements since the early days. Where maintenance is paid, lone mothers receive more maintenance—that is an important point. The level of maintenance for a child whose mother is on income support has increased from an average of £15 to £30 a week.

The agency is speeding up responses—although its response time is still too slow. The average waiting time for an assessment has decreased from nine months to six months in the past year. I have asked the agency to ensure that, by the end of this year, the overwhelming number of cases are correctly assessed and out the door within six months of their receipt. That is still a long time for people to wait, but it could be a benchmark of further progress.

The accuracy of assessments is improving. In 1995, only half of maintenance assessments were correct. That figure is now 87 per cent. It is still not good enough for those who receive wrong assessments, and there is still progress to be made, but we must acknowledge there has been at least some improvement. I have asked CSA staff to work hard in the next year to tackle the totally unacceptable backlog of work within the system and reduce it to a more reasonable level. I have had a series of meetings with the CSA chief executive, Faith Boardman—in whom I have full confidence—and I have asked her to work particularly hard in the next year on getting more maintenance paid, reducing the backlog and improving customer service.

There is still a long way to go and we shall not be complacent about the state of the agency. It is our responsibility to examine the agency' s performance closely and constantly in order to ensure that it improves. I have impressed upon the agency's chief executive and my civil servants that substantial and sustained improvements must follow, and that I shall be answerable for them.

Does my right hon. Friend accept that, because of the delays that she has mentioned this morning, many responsible fathers who have entered second relationships have suffered so badly that those relationships have also broken down, causing another group of children to suffer?

I certainly do. When public policy that affects people's personal relationships is wrong, it causes a great deal of personal and emotional suffering. That is why it was so wrong for the previous Government to assume that the task would be easy and that, because everyone agreed about the principle, it would somehow be simple to sort out the arrangements on the ground. As my hon. Friend points out correctly, we are talking not just about the lone mother, the absent father and their children, but about a father's relationship with a second partner and subsequent children from that relationship. They are very important considerations.

Making child support work is crucial to improving the standard of living of children in Britain. We shall help lone mothers into work and we shall ensure that absent fathers pay. If the previous Government had listened at the outset to the concerns that we and others expressed, they could have avoided many of these problems. We understand the complexities of the current situation and, in the coming months, we shall examine closely all areas of the child support system to ensure that improvements are made. Today's debate presents an opportunity for all hon. Members to support the Government's determination to improve the performance of the Child Support Agency and to seek much greater improvement in future.

I welcome the opportunity to debate this subject for the first time with the Secretary of State for Social Security. Depending on what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition decides over the weekend, it may be the last time that I address this important policy area in which I have enjoyed being involved. I welcome also the chance to debate the Child Support Agency—so long as the debate is constructive rather than disruptive and so long as we search for practical ways of improving the system rather than proposing digging it up by the roots, thereby making further improvements impossible.

The Secretary of State claimed that this is not a party political issue—nor should it be. However, like most Government spokespersons, she continued to operate in Opposition rather than Government mode: we have an Opposition in charge of a propaganda machine rather than a Government in charge of governing, although doubtless the latter will come in due course.

The right hon. Lady began by referring to the general policy towards lone parents. I am sure that was a legitimate reference—otherwise you would have ruled it out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker—which is relevant to the Child Support Agency. I am sorry that the right hon. Lady did not enlighten the House as to whether she intends to continue the parent plus scheme which would help lone parents back into work and is based on an examination of all such schemes worldwide. It would improve upon those schemes and provide the best possible system for this country. Will that scheme go ahead? People have been invited to tender for the scheme. Does the Secretary of State intend to pursue that process or is she so inured in the Opposition process that she cannot tell us how she intends to govern, even when she agrees with the objectives of this important policy? Will she pursue the policy of equalising benefits for lone parents with those available to married couples—or is that matter in perpetual review like most other issues that the Labour party addressed in its 18 years in opposition?

It is worth considering briefly the history of the Child Support Agency. As the right hon. Lady said, it was introduced on the basis of all-party consent. The Child Support Act 1991 had the support of all parties and there was not one dissenting vote. The rationale behind it, which was widely accepted, was based on a moral principle and on practical considerations. The moral principle was that parents are responsible for their children. That applies to both parents, and that responsibility continues even if, sadly, the parents split up or never marry or form a commitment to bring up children together. Parents have an obligation to contribute to the upbringing and maintenance of their children according to their means. The taxpayer has an obligation to contribute only if the parents do not have sufficient means between them to support their children.

The 1991 Act was based also on a practical examination of the old system's failures and a recognition that the courts had increasingly put parents' responsibility for their children below other responsibilities rather than at the top of the list. The courts had increasingly acquiesced in the transfer of responsibilities to the taxpayer and away from the parents. Lawyers had thought up devices to achieve that. Fewer parents were receiving maintenance payments and more were relying on income support and other benefits. The amounts that the courts awarded were often low, even derisory. Payments were set as low as £10 a week, or certainly less than £20 a week, even when the parents had the means to pay more. There was inconsistency in setting payments. Parents in apparently similar situations with an income of £150 a week, for example, were required to pay in one instance £5 a week and in another £50. Payments were either not enforced or enforced with great difficulty and delay.

The conclusions reached—with the consent of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House—were threefold. First, it was accepted that parents, not taxpayers, should pay if they had the means to do so. Secondly, it was agreed that an agency rather than the courts should be responsible for tracing the responsible parents, assessing their liability and enforcing payment. Thirdly, it was accepted that the obligation to pay should be according to a formula and not a discretionary system. Those were the three bases of the Child Support Act, which had the overwhelming support of the House.

Once established, however, the system ran into immense problems. Administrative problems were compounded by the lack of co-operation of some parents. There was a perfectly understandable lack of co-operation when honest and honourable parents, as the majority are, were incensed by administrative delays. The problems were compounded also by deliberate non-compliance by some parents who were reluctant ever to accept responsibility for the children they had helped bring into the world. The two elements combined to make matters much worse.

The right hon. Lady suggests that all of that was foreseen. It was not. Her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (Mr. Dewar), now Secretary of State for Scotland, told the House:

"Everyone in the House has been taken aback by the system's unpopularity and I agree that none of us anticipated that at the beginning."— [Official Report, 20 March 1995; Vol. 257, c. 32.]

The right hon. Lady is indulging in historical revisionism if she suggests otherwise. I would go so far as to say that the only two Members—when the Act took its place on the statute book, I had the responsibility for implementing it—whom I heard voicing doubts about it were the present Minister for Welfare Reform, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), then Chairman of the Select Committee on Social Security, and myself. I took the precaution of inviting all Conservative Members to my office in groups of 10 to warn them of the problems that would arise. I made the mistake, however, of doing that before the agency had been set up, and the problems did not arise until seven or eight months later, by which time my hon. Friends had largely forgotten my warnings.

It seemed to me self-evident that there would be problems. It was clear that there would be inevitable problems because we were trying to enforce a responsibility that previously people had not had to bear. It is worth considering why problems were not foreseen. I offer my analysis because I had to think about these matters long and hard when I was the Secretary of State responsible for them. I offer it to the right hon. Lady in the hope that it may be of help to her in avoiding similar problems in future. If she wishes, this is my parting gift to her. It is a genuinely objective analysis.

Problems are most likely to occur in government when there is the greatest measure of cross-party agreement and the greatest degree of enthusiasm among both officials and Ministers for a policy. The common belief is that politicians in the position that the right hon. Lady now holds, and which I previously held, face the greatest difficulty from "Yes, Minister" type civil servants who try to frustrate what we do. The right hon. Lady will find that they never try to frustrate. She has a wonderful team of officials who will loyally support and try to implement whatever she decides to do. I suspect that the greatest problems will arise when her officials have the greatest enthusiasm for her policy rather than when they have the natural reservations that they are there to articulate about the difficulties and problems in the real world on which the grand ideas of politicians will bear.

I warn the right hon. Lady against any attempt to politicise the civil service. Officials will create problems for her the more the Mandelson scheme of making the entire civil service an extension of the Labour party succeeds.

The second reason why we failed collectively to foresee problems was that the opposition that was voiced was based on a false hypothesis. It was said that problems would arise from women and not men. I was amazed when I first took responsibility as Secretary of State when the agency was about to come into being: in all the media interviews, I was asked exclusively about the opposition that was expected to result from women who would not co-operate or who would be disadvantaged in some way by the system—there was not one question about the potential hostility and opposition from men who would be asked to pay. The simple perception that if we ask men to pay several hundred million pounds some of them will resist was recognised by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead. He stated in a report, when the agency was already established, that a

"system that is, after all, designed to impose a more realistic burden on absent parents will result in protests from that group. We have already stated our view that it is right to increase the amount of financial support paid by parents for their children and to reduce the costs to the social security budget that are caused by parents not meeting their responsibilities."

The right hon. Gentleman clearly recognised that people do not always willingly accept their responsibilities. It was perhaps naive of the House to assume that they would do so.

A third factor that can give rise to a failure on the part of Government to foresee problems is a failure properly to appreciate the experience of other countries. I certainly advise the right hon. Lady to encourage her officials, and herself, to examine experience elsewhere. Every other country that has introduced a similar agency faced similar problems. None found any easy ways to get over those starting problems. At least we should have realised the scale of the problems that would hit us.

We promised to keep the system under review and to respond rapidly to problems, which began to emerge in the autumn or early winter of 1993, when the right hon. Member for Birkenhead made his statement. In February 1994 I introduced the earliest changes to the system. There were improvements in five areas, giving more absent parents extra time to adjust to their new liabilities by extending the groups covered by phasing arrangements, offering added protection to those on low incomes by improving the protected income arrangements, reducing the large amount of maintenance that some better-off absent parents had to pay, recognising that as children grow older the amount of attention that they need from the parent who cares for them reduces, and relaxing the rules on collection of fees rather than maintenance itself.

I also promised to keep the system under review and published a White Paper called "Improving child support" a year later. The White Paper introduced major changes which were implemented in two stages. First, in April 1995, we set a cap on the level of maintenance, so that no absent parent now has to pay more than 30 per cent. of his or her net income in current child maintenance. We also introduced new allowances into the maintenance formula—a broad brush allowance for property transfers made before April 1993, an allowance for travel to work costs for those living more than 15 miles from their place of work, and allowing absent parents to deduct all reasonable costs of housing for their new partner or stepchildren.

Those changes dealt with two of the features of CSA assessments that had given rise to most concern: the treatment of past property settlements, and the inability to take account of special factors, which were not reflected in the formula.

Secondly, we introduced in primary legislation an element of discretion in the formula—the departure system. That seemed to be the only satisfactory way of allowing for individuals with exceptional expenses or past property settlements that were not correctly reflected in the broad brush formula changes. In short, we recognised that there would be a small minority of cases where the relevant circumstances could not be adequately reflected.

After being successfully piloted, the departure scheme was implemented in December last year. To qualify for a departure, parents must meet two conditions. They must show that, because of special circumstances, they face additional expenses not taken into account by the formula, and they must demonstrate that they would be unable to support themselves if they were to pay maintenance at the level required by the formula.

As a result of those changes, the protests and difficulties have considerably diminished. The administrative performance of the agency has undoubtedly improved, and I pay tribute to the efforts of staff and the past and newly appointed chief executive of the agency in securing those improvements.

The Minister in the Lords, Baroness Hollis of Heigham, recognised only last month that

"the CSA has made enormous progress in the last year. Around 80 per cent. of assessments for child maintenance are now correct to the last penny, and some 98 per cent. of maintenance is passed on to the parent with care within ten working days.

This improvement owes much to the expertise and diligence of CSA staff, and I am grateful to them for their continuing efforts in often difficult circumstances."

The Baroness continued:

"I have been impressed by the determination of CSA staff to build on recent successes, and am confident they will continue to provide an increasingly efficient, accurate service."

I agree with her, and believe that we should do nothing to prevent that continuing improvement, while recognising that there is a distinct need for that process of improvement to continue.

As a former member of the Select Committee on Social Security in the previous Parliament, may I assure my right hon. Friend that we were increasingly impressed and amazed at the prowess of the former chief executive, Ann Chant? Will he take this opportunity to pay tribute to her for all the work that she did for the agency? She brought it back on track at a time when it looked in danger of collapse, and she deserves a tribute from my right hon. Friend.

I endorse my hon. Friend's remarks. Indeed, my previous remarks when I mentioned the present and previous chief executive were intended to convey my personal great gratitude to Ann Chant for the effort that she put in, and for her willingness to stay longer than her original commitment when I asked her to take on that bed of nails, as it undoubtedly was. I am grateful also to her successor for taking on one of the most difficult tasks in the public sector in this or any other country with a similar agency. We are fortunate in the calibre of the people who work for us.

What have we learnt today about the Opposition—I am sorry—the Government's approach to—

I refer to the right hon. Gentleman's comment that during his stewardship, before the general election, a large proportion of the assessments were on target, to the last penny. I draw his attention to a letter that I received on 5 March 1997, just before the right hon. Gentleman lost his position. My constituent, a mother who was being chased for maintenance, received a letter stating that on 13 December 1993 her assessment was £118 a week. On 4 February it was changed to £115 a week, and on 11 April it was put back up to £117 a week. Is the agency now achieving targets by harassing claimants and advising them of three changes in five months? Is that how the right hon. Gentleman wanted assessments to be improved—by changing them every other week?

No, that is certainly not the case. We are all aware of problems relating to constituency cases that we must look into, and we know that when we do so, we find that the complexity often arises from the complex and changing circumstances of the individuals involved. I cannot possibly comment—least of all, from the Opposition Front Bench—on the individual case that the hon. Gentleman is rightly pursuing on behalf of his constituent.

In similar cases in my own experience, the changes have reflected changes in circumstances or changes in information made available by one or other parent. The agency is charged by Parliament to reflect the circumstances of the parents, and to bring about reviews and changes when parents seek them and are entitled to have the findings of such reviews implemented. That has nothing to do with some artificial way of meeting targets.

I should be reluctant for the right hon. Gentleman to leave this potted history without some mention of the punitive levels of settlement that have occurred in so many cases. I have a constituent who earns less than £14,000 a year, but he is being asked to pay £500 a month. In addition, he had left his ex-wife the house that was their residence. The levels have been punitive and unfair, and the accessibility of the agency remains gruesome. Will the right hon. Gentleman add that to his history?

The hon. Gentleman is now part of a governing party. There is little evidence that Labour has yet grasped the reins of government, but it has grasped the reins of the communications system in Whitehall. The hon. Gentleman should ask the Secretary of State for Social Security and Minister for Women, the right hon. Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), how she intends to change the formula to make it—in his view—equitable

The hon. Gentleman's remarks chime with what I was about to say. The Government published a policy document on the Child Support Agency and undertook to make it fairer. When the Government initiate a debate in the House, one would expect them to tell us in what ways the CSA was to be made fairer. Will they place a lesser burden on absent parents and thereby reduce the amount of money received by the parent with care? That seems to be what the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. McWalter) wants and how he defines fairness. Or will the Government give more help to the parent with care and relieve further the taxpayers' contribution when the absent parent has the means to pay?

The Government were elected with a clear pledge to make child support fairer, but they did not specify what that pledge meant. We shall demand of them specifications of what they mean. Do they propose to change the formula, or will they now say, "Actually, when we said fairer, we were not referring to the formula at all: we intend to leave it unchanged"? I have no doubt that we shall have great support from Labour Back-Bench Members, to the extent that they are not muzzled by the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), in demanding from the Government some clarification of the pledges on which they were elected and for which Labour Members are responsible to their constituents.

The Labour party pledged in its document that it would undertake fundamental reform of the CSA. There are three fundamentals of the CSA. The first is the principle of responsibility; that parents are responsible according to their means. I am sure that the Government do not intend to overthrow that principle; the Secretary of State for Social Security and Minister for Women rightly repeated it today. The second is that an agency rather than the courts should deal with child maintenance. Is that principle to be reassessed, reformed or changed? The third is that maintenance should be determined by a formula rather than the limited discretion that we allow in the departure system. Does the Secretary of State propose to cease to rely on a formula and to give much greater discretion? If there is a commitment to fundamental reform, which of the fundamentals do the Government intend to reform and in what ways?

It is an insult to the House to initiate a debate on a subject on which one has clear election pledges and not give us an inkling how the pledges will be implemented or even mention them. That is an extraordinary thing to do.

The only thing that the Government have announced is an improvement in the telephone service.

As my hon. Friend says, the only thing that the Government have said is that they will seek an improvement in the telephone service. Whether that improvement was already in the pipeline we shall undoubtedly elicit in due course.

The Labour party's most substantive pre-election commitment was to introduce a maintenance disregard so that people could keep some of the income support—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State says that it was not a commitment, but it was contained in a document entitled "Children First" published by her party which was pretty clear. It said:

"A disregard will be a powerful tool in our welfare-to-work strategy."

The document was published less than a year before the election. Are we now to understand that all that the Labour party told the electorate in the months ahead of the election was not a commitment, a promise, or anything on which we could trust it—that the "Trust me" Government cannot be trusted an inch?

What about the maintenance disregard? We heard nothing in the Secretary of State's speech about it except in response to a question from the Liberal Democract Benches. That is pretty extraordinary for a Government who have made a major potential spending pledge. The smallest disregard of which they have talked would cost £110 million a year. The Labour party made it clear that it hoped to finance the disregard by increasing the amount of maintenance paid into the Treasury by absent parents. We had no talk today of how the Government intended to increase the amount of maintenance paid into the Treasury.

I should like to hear a clear statement in the reply to the debate. Will the Government promise that if the revenues accruing to the CSA exceed those for which we budgeted in our spending plans, they will be used to finance a maintenance disregard? Will that disregard replace the maintenance credit that I introduced? We said that if people received maintenance while on income support, they would build up a credit which they could encash if they subsequently returned to work. That provided an enhanced incentive to return to work.

We believe that maintenance is often one of the best platforms from which to enable lone parents to return to work, and it was enhanced by maintenance credit. By contrast, a maintenance disregard increases the disincentive to work. It makes lone parents better off if they do not work. Like most policies that the Opposition—I am sorry, the Government, who still behave as an Opposition—have put before us and which they give the label welfare-to-work, their policy would make people move from work to welfare or stay on welfare longer.

We have heard little of anything concrete from the Government today. They said that there was no clear objective when they were asked what the clear objective was. They could not tell us. They said that we had failed to listen to warnings. They failed to point out any warnings that they made. We have shown that they were wrong about that.

The Government have announced a better telephone service, although we have not been told how it is to be achieved and whether extra resources will be made available for it. They have announced that 500,000 more assessments will be made by the end of the year. I can inform the House that the target that I set for the CSA was 500,000 more assessments by the end of the year. The Secretary of State is trying to take credit for something that I already announced in the business plan published and submitted to the House. I am flattered that she should think that what I have done is worthy of purloining, and that she is wearing my clothes.

The right hon. Gentleman simply wrote it down.

And the right hon. Lady simply reads it out.

We have therefore had little of substance today on the CSA. We know that it will always be a sensitive issue. In every country which has such an agency, even those which have had one for five or eight years longer than we have, it remains an issue which generates more correspondence for Members of Parliament than almost any other. That is because it deals with one of the most sensitive issues in people's lives at one of the most difficult and traumatic times in their lives. We have to ensure that we minimise the difficulties that the agency creates, keep it under review, reform it and improve it. I have no doubt that there will be a collective and constructive contribution from the whole House to achieving those objectives. It is only unfortunate that we have heard little that is constructive today from the Government.

The problems involving the Child Support Agency are serious. All that I can say to the Opposition spokesman on social security is that, in relation to the CSA, the Department that he left was a smoking gun. I support all that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said at the beginning of her speech. Parents should maintain their children. There should be love, affection and compassion for children from both parents. That is why it is my strong view that, where children are used by one parent and denied access to the other parent, we have an obligation to improve the situation.

This is a significant debate. It affects thousands of men, women and children. My work as a Member of Parliament is fraught with exchanges of letters, telephone calls and faxes with the CSA. I spend more time on cases involving the CSA than on any other issue, and the position is not improving but getting worse. The Opposition spokesman placed on record the work that he did to improve the service, but he and his party have let a lot of people down because, rather than improving under his stewardship, the work of the Child Support Agency deteriorated.

The hon. Gentleman may not have realised that the words that my right hon. Friend used were those of Baroness Hollis, who said:

"the CSA has made enormous progress in the last year."

She went on to congratulate the staff on their determination and their recent successes and said how confident she was that they were building an increasingly efficient and accurate service. Does the hon. Gentleman disagree with that?

I speak on the basis of my constituency experience and from what hon. Members tell me about the extra work load generated for them by exchanging letters and telephone calls with the CSA on behalf of constituents. I have not witnessed any increase in the CSA's efficiency; the opposite applies. The fact that service has deteriorated is supported by the report of the ombudsman, who cannot attend to all the referrals to him and by the fact that a new agency, the independent case examiner, had to be set up to deal with complaints of maladministration by the CSA. Surely the fact that the ombudsman has received so many justifiable complaints that he cannot deal with them confirms that the CSA's operations are not in people's best interests. That is the result of the work of Opposition Members and, in particular, of the former Secretary of State for Social Security.

The record of the CSA since it started in 1993 is abysmal. It is costing a great deal in compensation to victims. The report of the ombudsman notes the number of cases where compensation for maladministration is being approved. It costs taxpayers a lot of money: the computer system had to be replaced at a cost of some £750,000. Above all, there is the cost of a great deal of suffering and stress caused to many people who cannot understand how the CSA operates. The last Adjournment debate before the general election campaign was on the Child Support Agency. I said that, in view of its record, and the hardship and hurt that it was causing, it should be wound up and we should put in place a more honest system that will treat people fairly. The CSA is not doing that.

Letters have been lost. I have had to resubmit letters to the CSA because it had lost letters from Members of Parliament. One would have thought the identification on our envelopes and letterheads would inspire the CSA to ensure that such letters do not go astray. If letters from Members of Parliament are being lost, letters from applicants are being lost. When applicants draw attention to the loss of letters or applications, the CSA denies that its system allows letters to go astray. I have witnessed the loss of letters that I have sent to the CSA.

I have a constituent who is in dispute with the CSA over a lost application. The sin is that it is for the applicant to prove that the application was submitted. The CSA takes no responsibility for lost applications or correspondence. I have hard evidence that it is responsible for the lost correspondence. The benefit of the doubt in respect of lost letters should go to applicants.

I can recite a litany of events involving the CSA. I have witnessed grown men and women weeping at my advice sessions because they do not understand how the CSA works. I pointed out to the then Minister that one person had received a notice that within three months her maintenance assessment had been amended. How can people understand a system that operates in such a way?

A constituent of mine received a statement of arrears of maintenance payments, giving the date when payments were made. He checked it out and found from his receipts that the agency was demanding £400 more than he owed. That shows that some of his payments had not been recorded in its records. If he had not retained his receipts, he would have been charged £400 more than he owed. Such situations cannot be allowed to continue.

Another constituent was advised that the review of his assessment was due in November 1996. In a letter dated 19 August 1996, he was asked to submit wage slips and housing costs for June and July. He received an acknowledgment letter dated 28 August 1996 saying that his returns had been received. In February 1997, six months after submitting his earlier statement, he was asked for pay slips and housing costs for August and September 1996. The reassessment that should have taken place in November will not take place until the middle of 1997. His first evidence was accepted but the agency asked for further evidence. That can be interpreted only as a delaying tactic. How can that be allowed to happen? What credibility has the CSA when it takes such an approach?

A young mother was deserted by her husband, who left her with two young children. She applied to the CSA for help in February 1996. In July, it approached the absent parent for maintenance, a delay of six months. In the Adjournment debate, the Minister accepted that the CSA was guilty of maladministration. That case is before the independent case examiner. The young mother is still waiting for maintenance payments from the CSA.

A young couple parted and were divorced. The CSA became involved. The absent parent had £100 a week deducted from his earnings. Fortune brought the couple back together and they were remarried. The CSA was notified of the reconciliation. Nine months later, it is still deducting money from the husband's wages. A few weeks ago, it sent a cheque for £1,300 to the couple to cover what it had been retaining of the couple's money. It still owes them more than £1,000. When the couple asked for compensation for lost interest and the numerous telephone calls and approaches to the CSA to rectify the situation, it asked them to provide a statement of losses, telephone accounts and so on. In other words, it does not accept responsibility for the hardship and problems that it caused that young couple. That case was reported to me only last week. I could go on outlining the problems that I have witnessed and am witnessing because of the CSA, but many other hon. Members wish to speak.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred to absent parents being men. Some absent parents are women. I have a constituent who is being chased for maintenance by the CSA because of the fact that she cares for the son of the marriage and the father cares for the daughter of the marriage. The mother was harassed for payment to the father, but the father was given time to consider the position. The CSA did not approach him until six months after the application. He denied paternity and the case was delayed further. The mother cannot understand why, with two people in identical circumstances, the CSA is harassing her and appears to be taking a relaxed attitude to the other case. Again, how can people explain that kind of situation?

I have a constituent who retired. He was having deductions of maintenance paid through his bank. He notified the CSA of a change in his circumstances: that his income had reduced by 50 per cent., so a reassessment should take place. Six months later, that person is still asking the CSA to take note of his changed circumstances. It is still deducting from his bank account the full amount, as if he were receiving a full income.

Therefore, in my experience and, I am sure, in other people's experience, the CSA is failing a substantial number of people. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State assures us that there will be a review. The best review that we could have would be to scrap the CSA and to bring back a fairer and more just system that is honest and understandable.

The document "a guide to child support maintenance" contains a number of examples. Page 14 gives a schedule of net incomes and what the CSA takes into consideration, but nowhere in the list is it suggested that, when an absent parent remarries, the income of the new partner should be taken into consideration when calculating income into the household. However, that is what the CSA is doing. When it asks for details of income into the household, it demands also wage payment identification of what the new partner is contributing, but nowhere in the document does it say that that should happen.

Therefore, in addition to the CSA harassing people and being unfair to them, it is interpreting what Parliament wanted with regard to a fair system of maintenance assessment. The CSA is a law unto itself. It is asking for details of the income of an absent parent's new wife or husband. That is totally against the principle that was introduced when the CSA was brought about.

Therefore, from the experience that I have, I say to my good friend the Secretary of State: reconsider the position. The best way in which to do that is to scrap the CSA and to bring back a better and fairer system, which the courts can apply, which is nearer to the people—not in Belfast, Falkirk or some other remote area—and which people understand. That would be the best way forward.

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien), who has a reputation as a doughty fighter. As he said, his last Adjournment debate took place at the end of the previous Parliament. I have taken the opportunity to refresh my mind on the content of and exchanges in that debate, which was valuable, as was the hon. Gentleman's speech this morning. I agree with his analysis. For some time now, we Liberal Democrats have been in the vanguard of the argument. We were led to the conclusion that the CSA's lack of operational success was such that it should be wound up and started again.

I thank the Secretary of State for Social Security for staging this debate. It was absolutely right that she should come to the House. It is five years since the legislation was put on the statute book. I confess that I was one of the people who was taken in at the time. I remember making speeches about benefit penalties for non-co-operative mothers—that is still a problem—but otherwise I did not foresee the difficulties and the extent to which this would cause dislocation and disruption throughout the nation.

The Secretary of State is brave and right to come before the House not with any great plans after a week and a half in office, saying this is what she is going to do and this is what she is not going to do, but to say that there are problems. In my opinion, she has made her position absolutely clear. I strongly support the view that there is no question but that the principle of continuing duty of maintenance is sacrosanct. She is right to put that at the heart of her policy. If she keeps it there, she will certainly find strong support from the Liberal Democrats, irrespective of any differences we and the Government may have as the argument unfolds and as her reforms and review continue.

I acknowledge that it is not easy for the Secretary of State to open this subject in front of a new Parliament when she gets the kind of hard time that the hon. Member for Normanton, rightly, on behalf of his constituents, gave her. There is universal dissatisfaction with the operation of the system that the CSA was set up to achieve. It has not been working for five years; the House has a duty to attend to that. It is right that we should have this debate now. The Liberal Democrats will constructively and robustly argue for change where it is necessary.

There is a fundamental flaw at the heart of the legislation. It is not easy to know how to deal with it, but the concept of a formula is almost by definition unfair to the minority who do not fit the normal circumstances. There are always going to be people in life's rich tapestry who do not squeeze into the formula and there are always going to be casualties. What, more than anything else, encourages the disproportionately high level of non-compliance—we are a law-abiding nation at heart—is the fact that, in their heart of hearts, people do not believe that they have had justice; they think that no one has listened to their individual circumstances and they are incensed to the point of being driven into non-compliance. They are not naturally bad people or in any way untoward. They are perfectly ordinary citizens, but they do not believe that they have had a fair chance. They think that what has happened to them is contrary to natural justice so, for understandable reasons, they do not comply.

As the whole taxation system is a based on the principle of a formula and the whole social security system, including means-tested benefits, is based on the principle of a formula, why is it not just, in this case, to have the principle of a formula? Much of life elsewhere is based on such a principle.

The analogy does not hold. Taxation rarely, if ever, takes into account second marriages, second families and all the different circumstances that individuals face.

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that it is right to have a tax system that does not take into account the complexities of life, but that it is wrong to have a formula that does, that it is right to have a tax system that does not take into account the fact that people may have responsibilities — responsibility does not even enter the calculation of people's tax—but that it is wrong to have a formula that does take into account such responsibilities?

There is some rough justice under the tax system, but I do not want to get too far into that argument.

May I help the hon. Gentleman? The previous Government were unable to come up with a formula and, in the Adjournment debate on the CSA on the final day of the previous Parliament, the Minister proudly said that, since he had become a Minister—that was not a very long time in my recollection—he had made 140 changes to the way in which the CSA operated. Clearly the Conservatives have not been able to come up with a formula, so they should not be criticising the hon. Member.

Not only were there 140 amendments; there were 35 statutory instruments in three years. I simply cannot agree with the proposition that that gives anybody a sense of security and of a system working properly and fairly. In fact, all those changes in the last Parliament exacerbated the delays. The target time for clearing cases has improved, but not enough.

With permission, Madam Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the future of health services in London.

Under the previous Government, there was growing concern about the health service in the capital. Londoners were especially concerned about the programme of hospital closures, which had almost halved the number of acute beds, and also about the availability of accident, emergency and ambulance services and the lack of adequate primary care.

At the general election, we made it clear that we wanted to make sure that every Londoner had access to high-quality services ranging from primary care close to home, to major specialist services in teaching hospitals of world renown. We promised a moratorium on all hospital closures in London while the future of health care for Londoners was reassessed against what Londoners really need.

We are keeping that promise, and today I can announce details of our review of health care in London. Londoners are entitled to expect that the review is conducted by people of distinction, integrity and independence. I am therefore pleased to be able to announce that the review will be conducted by an independent advisory panel. The five members of the panel are Sir Leslie Turnberg, president of the Royal College of Physicians, who will chair the panel; Francine Bates, assistant director, Carers National Association; Professor Ian Cameron, provost and vice-chancellor of the University of Wales college of medicine; Professor Brian Jarman, professor of general practice at Imperial college; and Denise Platt, head of social services at the Local Government Association. I am most grateful to them all for taking on this task.

The panel will review health services in London based on available information and any further work that it decides to commission. It will review health authority plans, to ensure that people living in every part of London have ready access to top-quality primary care provided by general practitioner practices or in new centres offering a wide range of services; top-quality continuing care—including rehabilitation services—for elderly and infirm people, provided at home, in community care centres and in nursing and residential homes; top-quality mental health services, including care at home, in the community, in residential accommodation, in acute psychiatric wards or in a secure environment; services that benefit from improved co-ordination between the national health service and local social services; accident, emergency and ambulance services capable of meeting foreseeable needs; local hospitals, whether providing a full range of out-patient and in-patient services or mainly day care, minor injuries and diagnostic/out-patient services; and major specialist hospitals providing excellence in treatment and care and in teaching and clinical and scientific research.

All that is in line with the Government's vision of a range of top-quality services for all Londoners. The panel will ensure the coherence of plans by health authorities and trusts, including plans for capital investment. The panel will advise, in particular, on the future of Bart's hospital, Queen Mary's' Roehampton and Harold Wood and Oldchurch hospitals. The review will also take account of the new impetus that the Government are giving to improving public health through better health promotion and prevention.

The panel will report to the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn). It has been asked to report by the end of October this year. Its advice will be published, and the material that it considers while carrying out its review will be made available to people who want to see it. Individuals or groups who wish to submit written evidence to the panel are invited to do so. Any meetings or presentations will be at the invitation of the panel. In parallel with that, my hon. Friend will be visiting London health service organisations and meeting various stakeholders.

In line with our election promise, no hospital in London will be closed during the period of the review. Agreed service changes that do not involve hospital closures will continue, as will planning and consultation procedures, but any future changes at present being considered will be reviewed by the independent advisory panel.

In law, the panel cannot make binding decisions on the future of individual hospitals, but all such decisions in future will have to be taken in the light of the published recommendations of the independent advisory panel.

The arrangements that I have outlined meet our manifesto commitment to the people of London. I am confident that they will result in a real review, by an independent panel of great experience and integrity. I hope that the panel's recommendations will command the respect of all concerned.

I commend the proposal to the House.

I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman is now making the position clear on the election pledge to a health review in London. Why has he chosen to announce the review on a Friday, when most hon. Members are in their constituencies? Is not it completely absurd for a statement of such significance to be made on a day when the great majority of hon. Members have planned to be away from the House, looking after the affairs of their constituents? Is it because the right hon. Gentleman recognises that it is yet another review of London's health care which, frankly, is the very last thing that the national health service in London needs?

The truth is that the right hon. Gentleman recognises that this is a cheap election gimmick that is best put out of its misery as quickly as possible. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman is likely to be put out of his misery pretty quickly. How is it possible to take seriously a review that will follow the Tomlinson process, which took four years, carried out a detailed examination, by specialty, of the health care provision in each hospital across London and conducted a detailed review of the implications of service provision for research, medical education and the development of primary health care? How is it possible for all of that now to be dispatched in four months, including holidays? It simply is not credible. It is the thinnest veneer that the House has been presented with in a very long time.

How can we take seriously a review that the right hon. Gentleman said only last month, from the Dispatch Box, would be charged with looking at the same evidence that Tomlinson looked at, applying the same disciplines that Tomlinson applied, yet would be debarred from reaching the same conclusion as that independent review? How independent is a review that is told that it cannot reach a specific conclusion which was the considered conclusion of the previous review?

Is not the true purpose of the review revealed in the list of hospitals that the right hon. Gentleman announced in his statement? He promised that there would be a particular review of Bart's, Queen Mary's' Roehampton and Harold Wood and Oldchurch hospitals. The House may wonder what those hospitals have in common—it is the fact that they have been the subject of public excitement by Labour Members. The House will notice that absent from the list is Edgware hospital, yet during the general election campaign, the Labour shadow Secretary of State for Health gave a specific commitment to a review of the service changes planned for that hospital. Why are the Government now reneging on that specific commitment?

Why are the major changes for Guy's and St. Thomas's—which will be of concern to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), the Liberal Democrat health spokesman—not the specific subject of review by the panel? What will be the major changes? What will be the panel's specific role in the current reorganisation of London's medical schools? Does the Secretary of State envisage proposals being made to alter the current process of change in those schools?

If the panel is to focus on issues of particular public concern, will it focus on the reorganisation of accident and emergency provision in London, which has been under way for several years? The right hon. Gentleman will be aware of the Audit Commission report that recommended that accident and emergency provision should be concentrated in departments with more than 50,000 attendances a year. Do Ministers agree with that recommendation, or do they have a different view? Will the panel examine that recommendation, and will it make recommendations on future accident and emergency provision in London?

What assumptions will the panel be told to make about resources for London's NHS? Is the Secretary of State aware of long-standing evidence of the imbalance in available resources between inner London's health service and the health service on the London ring? Are Ministers committed to continue correcting that imbalance, or will they explain to communities on the London ring that resources available for their health care will continue to be less generous than those available in inner London?

What assumptions will the panel make about charges for NHS services in London? What assumptions will it make about charges for general practitioner services, and what assumptions will it make about charges for hospital services? Does the Secretary of State think that charges within the NHS will be a means of squaring the circle of all the commitments that he has made?

The truth is that the review fools absolutely no one, and it will merely delay until the autumn the day on which the Secretary of State will have to make real decisions about the future shape of London's health service. He will then not be able to prevaricate any longer. He will have to earn his salary and start making the decisions that are his and his alone to make.

That was a regular rigamarole of insults against a very distinguished group of people—who, at my request, have undertaken to conduct an independent review of health services in London. They believe that the task can be accomplished under the tight timetable that we have established. We have discussed with panel members their terms of reference, their method of working and the timetable under which they will operate. They will do their best, and I do not think that the former Secretary of State's string of insults will accomplish anything.

The former Secretary of State said that we have made the announcement today because all hon. Members are in their far-flung constituencies. The announcement is about London, however, and there are very few far-flung constituencies in London. Moreover, a substantial number of my hon. Friends representing London constituencies are in the Chamber. He may call the announcement a "cheap election gimmick", but we call it keeping our promises. We will keep all our election promises.

What about Edgware?

The former Secretary of State referred to the Tomlinson report. All I can say is that I want a report that commands if not the approval, at least the respect of everyone concerned. That certainly cannot be said of the Tomlinson report, which was ripped to shreds by Professor Jarman, who is a member of our independent panel.

The reason why I listed specifically four hospitals is that they are currently directly threatened with closure because of the activities of the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessors. It is therefore necessary to review specifically those hospitals, although all other hospital closures and proposals for change will be covered in the review.

What about Edgware?

The former Secretary of State asked me to give a specific commitment about medical schools. I can tell him—

What about Edgware?

Order.

Apparently someone wants to get somewhere on the Northern line. The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) would be able to get there quicker if the previous Conservative Government had not prevented ABB getting the new rolling stock rolling.

The former Secretary of State asked me about the review of medical schools. Under the panel's terms of reference, it will advise on how best to maintain the pre-eminent role of medical education and research in the capital. He also asked about A and E departments. It may be that all types of official bodies have said that they are satisfied with provision of accident, emergency and ambulance services in London. From the experiences that I and my hon. Friends have had over the years in talking to people, however, we know that there is a great deal of concern among Londoners about the adequacy of accident, emergency and ambulance services. We therefore want our independent panel to review the proposals.

I have dealt with all the sensible points made by the former Secretary of State—so far as he made any sensible points. We have established a highly reputable, widely respected and independent advisory panel that will review the future of health care in London, from the point of view of Londoners who need those services. If he is not satisfied with that, I am sorry for him.

The House will recall the notice in a maternity hospital ward that said, "The first three minutes of your life can be the most dangerous," under which someone had written, "And the last three can be pretty dodgy, too." In that context, four months in the history of a hospital that is nearly 900 years old are but a hiccup in history. I welcome what the Secretary of State has just said.

Given that, in the past 20 years, the resource allocation working party formula—which was introduced under the Labour party and sustained by the Conservative party—has been responsible for the movement of considerable NHS resources out of London, will the Secretary of State tell us—at a time when anything is thinkable in the NHS—that he will not rule out extra resources, should the panel determine that they are necessary?

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his characteristically generous welcome for what I said. As we have made clear, we are conducting a comprehensive spending review of every aspect of the activities of the NHS. I can make no promises before the outcome of that review, although I realise that, over the years, there have been significant pressures on London. As the right hon. Gentleman said, those pressures are the result, over a long period, of the policies of successive Governments.

I warmly congratulate the Secretary of State on today's statement and applaud the fact that he has assembled a first-class review panel, which will command the confidence not only of the House but of Londoners and of people in the rest of the country. Will he arrange for a copy of his statement to be sent to Colonel Boorman, the chairman of the Royal Hospitals NHS trust—because that man, white with rage, has pledged himself to close Bart's, regardless of what civil servants, Ministers and perhaps even the review panel may wish to do?

I thank my hon. Friend who, like the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke), has campaigned long and hard to save Bart's. I undertake to carry out his request to send my statement to all those concerned.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement—unlike his predecessor but one, who made hers in writing. I also congratulate him on his choice of panel members. I share the views expressed that they are an entirely suitable group. The timetable envisaged is properly balanced between a need for deliberation and a need for speed.

I have three specific questions. First, does the Secretary of State's statement mean that all the undertakings given by his predecessor as Labour health spokesman, on what will be reviewable, will be honoured? Secondly, in places such as Edgware and Barnet, will he undertake that, between now and consideration of the review by Ministers later in the year, there will be no further reductions in beds or services? Thirdly— inevitably, this point has a constituency dimension, but it is also of much wider interest—will he confirm that the panel will have the authority to review the transfer of services from Guy's hospital, which would mean a reduction in the number of beds from about 1,000 to about 100 and the closure of the A and E department? Will all transfers not yet acted on but which are part of a plan be capable of review and a different decision?

I should make it clear that our promise at the election was that there would be no further hospital closures in London, and no hospital closures will take place during the period of the review. We did not promise to stop all change in London, some of which is having to be carried out on the advice of the professions, which say that, in certain circumstances, the services being provided in some hospitals are not safe for patients. Everyone will understand that I would not wish to overrule the professional judgment of doctors who believe that a particular unit is no longer capable of delivering the service to which people are entitled. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have already set in train a special review of provision in Edgware, and we can deal with that at greater length at some other time.

I cannot give the undertaking that there will not be continuing transfers of functions between one hospital and another. Everyone knows that there is no proposal to close either Guy's or St Thomas's. The intention is to make sure that each particular specialty is concentrated in one hospital or the other, which is only right. There is a swap mechanism in operation—St Thomas's is getting some of the stuff from Guy's and Guy's is getting some of the stuff from St. Thomas's. Again, I am not prepared to say that I shall interfere with that process if it is generally judged that it will bring about the larger specialist units on which top-quality specialist treatment and research depend.

I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and welcome the review, especially its concentration on Queen Mary's university hospital, Roehampton. That hospital had many of its services cruelly taken away by the previous Government on 1 April and has suffered review after review over many years. The people of Putney and Roehampton and the long-suffering nurses and doctors of the hospital need to have some certainty about their future. Last month, a quite separate review was announced by the region of the services between Kingston hospital and Queen Mary's university hospital. May I have an assurance that the review announced today will supersede that review, so that the doctors, nurses and patients of the hospital and residents of the area do not face yet more uncertainty?

The object of having the advisory panel is to try to sort out many contentious issues and get advice from professional people of great integrity. There is a vast amount of uncertainty about the future of Queen Mary's, Roehampton and other hospitals round about. We want the panel to clarify the situation, but I cannot predict what it will say, because one cannot tell people of this eminence what their conclusions will be. The whole point of having such people is that they are entitled to make their own professional judgment.

Some statutory procedures for consultation in the area covered by Queen Mary's university hospital, Roehampton and associated hospitals will continue during the review, but the consultation process itself will be reviewed by the advisory panel. We cannot simply announce a stop on everything, because that would mean delays in some changes that are vital to improve the quality of health care in London.

Will the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that neither he nor any of his Government colleagues made any effort to give better notice of his statement to Labour Members than to London Conservative Members?

Yes, I can give that undertaking. We warned as many Members from all parties as it was humanly possible to do. That is not a task for civil servants, so it was carried out by my political adviser and one of my parliamentary colleagues. We did not get through to quite all Labour colleagues nor to all Conservative Members, but we certainly got through to some.

I welcome the Secretary of State's announcement, especially in respect of the team of people who are to undertake the review. Will the review include issues such as poverty in London and the way in which calculations of expenditure for each district health authority are made? It is my impression that such calculations often do not take account of the number of transient and homeless people or, indeed, the travel-to-work people in particular districts, which means that expenditure on health is underestimated in those areas. Will the team be able to make recommendations on the future government of London and the role that it would have in health planning and its relationship with local government?

Finally, will my right hon. Friend confirm that the examination of the future of Bart's hospital will include consideration of new A and E provision? At the moment, there are intolerable waits at all neighbouring A and E departments because of the closure of the A and E department at Bart's last year.

As usual, my hon. Friend makes a number of informed and valid points. The panel will certainly be considering provision in London in the light of the Government's commitment to improve public health, not just through the health service but through a wide variety of measures, including the building of decent homes.

As for the role or otherwise of a Greater London authority, that is something that is still being discussed. As my hon. Friend knows, I have some sympathy with the proposition, although it may not eventually be Government policy—I am talking about all sorts of things, which may not ultimately be Government policy.

My hon. Friend asked about the restoration of previous A and E services at Bart's. Nothing is outside the terms of reference of the panel, but I should not like to raise any false hopes or, for that matter, any false despair about the changes proposed at Bart's.

I hope that the review will include consideration of co-ordination between social services and health services. The present lack of co-ordination means that many people are left vulnerable and unable to get decent services. As a first step, will the Secretary of State tell the House that he will honour a commitment made by the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) that social services committee members will be appointed to the boards of NHS trusts and health authorities in London, so that co-ordination can be improved now?

I mentioned the improved co-ordination between national health service and social services departments, and where it is good in various parts of London, it is very, very good, and where it is bad it is horrid. We have to bring the rest up to the standard of the best. As to how we bring that about, regardless of the membership of trusts or health authorities and cross-membership, the crucial thing is to get the officials working together. People at member level may have a role, but they are not the ones who can turn good intentions into good organisation—that needs top-quality management, both in the national health service and in local authorities.

I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. His comments about Oldchurch will be received with great delight by many east London residents, particularly my constituents in Ilford, who would suffer grievously from the closure of the accident and emergency department at Oldchurch and the consequences that that would have for King George hospital, which is already at bursting point and suffering an intolerable crisis.

I also welcome the review of mental health services. Will the review give urgent consideration to the future reprovisioning of Goodmayes mental hospital and the financial consequences of its planned closure? I had a meeting yesterday with my local health authority. I am alarmed about the long-term prospects. If the issue is not dealt with adequately, there will be disastrous consequences for the provision of many services, with budgetary repercussions, in Redbridge and Waltham Forest.

I thank my hon. Friend for his welcome for my announcement. The review panel will consider Oldchurch and the future of mental health services in London. We must await the outcome of those deliberations.

I have three points for the Secretary of State. First, I thank him for at least managing to come to the House to make a statement. Is he not a little concerned that the fact that he has done so on a Friday, when not many hon. Members are here, will inevitably give rise to the suggestion that he has tried to make the statement at a time when he will not be subjected to questions? In view of what he has said about his courteous efforts to inform hon. Members of the statement, will he undertake to discover whether my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir S. Chapman) was informed, because he has been concerned for a long time about Barnet and Edgware hospitals?

Secondly, will the Secretary of State ensure that the distinguished members of the inquiry are given access to the evidence and conclusions of the Tomlinson report, the King's Fund report and the many other reports that have been conducted by similarly distinguished people over many years?

Finally, will the right hon. Gentleman tell the people of Edgware and Barnet why Edgware general hospital is not included in the review? Did he make any effort to tell the people of Edgware about that before the general election? He will be aware of the strength of feeling on the subject in Edgware and the way in which his party has handled the issues. Why is Edgware not part of the review?

I do not know whom my staff and my colleague managed to get through to in their efforts to ring all London Members last night, but they certainly made that effort. Before I apologise further for any shortcomings, it is worth reminding the hon. Gentleman that when the last but one Secretary of State for Health made major announcements, including her endorsement of the closure of Bart's hospital, which had been providing a service to Londoners for 821 years, she did not manage to come to the House on any day, but slipped the information out in answer to a written question from one of her mates.

I spelled out in my statement that the panel will have access to all the available information. The Tomlinson report will certainly be familiar to Professor Jarman, because he tore it to shreds when it was published—and quite right, too.

The hon. Gentleman ought to know—perhaps he does not—that a special review of provision in Edgware and Barnet has already been set in train. There is no proposal to close Edgware general hospital—not even the previous Government made that proposal. We are not accepting any criticism about the future of Edgware hospital from those who were running it down, closing the accident and emergency department as secretly as they could in the middle of the night. None of my colleagues was involved in that.

I warmly welcome the appointment of the eminent review panel and the fact that it will focus on Bart's hospital, which provides a high standard of cardiac treatment, benefiting a number of my constituents. Will the review panel also consider the debt problem, which is crippling health authorities across London, affecting hospitals such as mine at Whipps Cross? Those huge debts have built up because of the cuts imposed by 18 years of the Conservative Government and their internal market. Will the review examine the weighted capitation, which does not take proper account of deprivation and hurts hospitals in east London?

The panel will certainly consider those points. Debt is not exclusive to London health authorities and trusts. Of the 100 health authorities in England, 59 were in debt at the end of the year, as were 128 of the 425 trusts across the country. That was part of the wondrous legacy that we inherited from the Conservatives.

I, too, welcome the statement. I should like to make the House aware of the meeting that I had with representatives of Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth. They revealed that they are £14 million in the red and are cutting back on elective surgery, with waiting lists going up from 12 months to 18 months. I do not want to pre-empt the panel's findings, but I think that it will inevitably find that the authority cannot ensure top-quality care. What will the Government do to ensure that the accident and emergency unit at St. Helier hospital does not have to close its doors to patients and ambulances this winter, as has happened in the past two or three years under the previous Government?

I shall try to confine my answer to the newest point raised by the hon. Gentleman. We have already made arrangements for contingency planning, for the pressures that are bound to fall on the health service this winter. I was glad to be able to announce that we have found £5 million from the money saved on bureaucracy to help improve children's intensive care provision, which should help during the winter.

Order. I know that hon. Members are tempted, but some are going wide of the narrow statement, which concerns only the named hospitals. I remind hon. Members that we are concerned with only the hospitals named.

In welcoming the review into the longer term, may I ask the Secretary of State to give some assurances about the short-term situation this winter? In Mayday University hospital in Croydon and throughout London, too many patients waited for hospital beds last winter, lying in pain and distress on trolleys for hours and hours, sometimes throughout the night. The longer term is important, but what reassurances can the Secretary of State give to Londoners that his Department is doing its utmost to ensure bed provision this winter?

I assure my hon. Friend that we are doing what we can. As I have just said, we have put in place contingency planning to identify places where problems may arise and to ensure targeted management action by the national health service, social services and, in some cases, voluntary organisations, to try to clear bottlenecks that result from older people who would be better off at home having to stay in hospital and therefore preventing other people from getting treatment. We are doing our best. It will be difficult, and success will depend largely on the management skills and commitment of the vast number of medical and nursing staff in hospitals.

I welcome the review and reiterate the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes). The review will be welcomed across Hornchurch, Havering and east London, where the potential closure of Oldchurch hospital is a source of great concern. The private finance initiative contracts for the Havering Hospitals NHS trust, which covers Harold Wood and Oldchurch, are already with the trust. A decision is due at the end of July. Could we have a moratorium on the PFI contracts as well, so that we can put the issue to one side while the review continues?

I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that whatever the state of the PFI, it will be reviewed by the panel.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making his statement to the House this morning. The clarification that he has given will be welcomed throughout London. More than that, the commitment to health care needs in London will be welcomed. I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend for the interest and concern that he has shown in discussions with me about the hospitals serving my constituency. I take this opportunity to ask whether he can clarify the relationship between the Londonwide review and the separate review of Edgware hospital, which his Department announced on 15 May this year.

The review that is at present being carried out by Barnet health authority will report to the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington. Its report will be made available to the review panel and will, therefore, be part of the panel's general look at health services in London.

Further to the Secretary of State's answer to the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), will he extend the terms of reference of the review to include the future strategic management of health across London? In Kingston, we felt the knock-on effects on our hospital services of decisions taken elsewhere in London, and they have made the management of services in our local area very difficult. There was no strategic direction. We should be grateful if the Secretary of State extended the terms of reference of the review.

Having got this distinguished panel to look at the terms of reference and having agreed the terms with the panel members, I cannot unilaterally change them now. I would imagine, however, that if the panel members believe that the strategic aspects need further attention, based on their professional knowledge and concern, they will draw our attention to what they think should be done.

I join my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) and for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer) in very much welcoming the review. My constituents in Dagenham are desperately concerned about the future of Oldchurch hospital. The Secretary of State will know that currently, the emergency services unit at Harold Wood is closed and that Oldchurch is dealing with the whole population. I hope that the Secretary of State will join me in congratulating the staff there on the job that they are doing in a quite desperate situation. From visits I have paid in the past few months, I know that the situation is a nightmare for patients and for staff, who have kept the service going as well as they can.

Will my right hon. Friend ensure that when the eminent panel—I congratulate him on getting its services so quickly and on enabling the report to be done so soon—reviews the services at Oldchurch and Harold Wood, it considers the needs of the population and the density of the population, with hospital provision being near the areas where the largest number of sick people are? The proposals in the pipeline mean that the largest number of sick people would have to travel the greatest distances to get emergency services.

I can confirm to my hon. Friend that the intention is that the panel should start from the point of considering what people need in every part of London and that it should take it from there, rather than starting from the institutions and working back.

Will the Secretary of State clarify one point that has come up this morning in questions from several hon. Members—that is, the extent to which the panel will be able to review the weighted capitation formula and the flow of funds both within London's health service and between London and the surrounding districts? Will it be within the terms of reference of the review to make recommendations for changes to the weighted capitation formula? If it is, can the Secretary of State assure the House that any recommendation would take account of interests outside London, which would clearly be affected if the weighted capitation formula were to be changed?

The panel will look at every aspect that has an impact on health provision in London; that is what we want it to do. If the panel concludes that changes are necessary, it will no doubt recommend them. On the point about the impact of the financing of provision in London on other areas, it is worth remembering that London also provides considerable services to people from other areas. There is a matter of striking a balance.

At the end of all this process, when the independent panel has given its views on all those matters, Ministers will have to take decisions, and we shall not shirk from taking them. As I said in my statement, all those decisions will have to be taken in the light of the public recommendations of this distinguished, independent panel. That will be a change and a step forward for the national health service.

On a point of order, Madam Speaker. It has been a welcome departure that the Secretary of State attempted to inform as many hon. Members as possible that today's statement was coming up. Can you confirm that under the previous Administration, Opposition Members were never informed in advance of statements?

I am not aware of how hon. Members are informed about statements. I am just concerned that they are informed and that I am told in good time myself.

I had just made the point that I was deeply sceptical about the rightness of a formula-based approach to assessments by the CSA. I believe that Ministers have to be careful because they are initiating a review that may lead to changes. I believe that they are initiating that review in good faith, and I support their intention, but they must learn the lessons of the previous Parliament.

Some welcome changes were made. The previous hon. Member for Gedling and particularly the former hon. Member for Bury, North listened to hon. Members and introduced some welcome changes on departures, travel to work and pre-1993 property settlements. They made the changes in good faith, but the result was that the procedures became more cumbersome and complex and the delays increased. Delays are now a real part of the problem.

Can the Minister confirm that it is still the CSA's intention to try to clear the backlog between now and 1999, which was the previous target? That is a long time away. I understand the Secretary of State's impatience to try to get the assessment times down to six months. Six months is an inordinate period for people who are in distressed family and domestic circumstances. The target time for clearing cases must be made shorter.

I come from an area where there are many self-employed people. Self-employed assessments are fiendishly complicated and time-consuming, and something must be done about that. People become incensed when they do not know what is happening, when they do not get the payments and when enforcement procedures are not complied with.

If the Government introduce changes, they may increase the complexity, and they will have to introduce those changes against the background of the existing programme for change. As is the case with other financial constraints, this Government have inherited that programme. There was a 15 per cent. reduction in resources for the CSA last year, there is a 15 per cent. reduction this year and there will be a 15 per cent. reduction in staff resources next year.

I agreed with the Secretary of State when she said that the staff who work for the CSA deserve Orders of the British Empire. I hope that they all get them in the post tomorrow because they do their best in impossible circumstances. I do not see how Ministers will square the circle of increasing complexity and the reductions required by the existing programme. Any changes will have to take those factors into account. We must go for simplicity and Ministers will have to be very careful about the conflicting interests involved.

Will the Minister undertake a piece of research? Previous and present Ministers have said—this is not new—that the old family court system had been discredited. A very good research study by Jonathan Bradshaw and Jane Millar was published at the back of the 1990 White Paper, "Children Come First". Bradshaw and Millar examined the levels of assessment being allotted by family courts and sheriff courts throughout the United Kingdom.

I should like the Secretary of State to look at that research and, perhaps, to carry out some more. Never mind the interim assessment, never mind the arrears—some of the arrears are horrendous—let us look at the weekly maintenance awards that are being made for the average case. If the value of the maintenance awards that were being made by the courts in 1988 is uprated to where we are today, there is not an awful lot of difference. If the Secretary of State can persuade me that I am wrong about that, I shall pay attention.

I was a solicitor before I was elected to the House. I did family law, and it was very difficult. What really failed was the enforcement mechanism. The Secretary of State can stay true to her clear principle, which she set out clearly this morning—that a continuing duty of maintenance is crucial—while the enforcement procedures are followed through more rigorously. If the Child Support Agency was focused on enforcement and there was some other mechanism for determining awards, we would have a fairer and better operated system.

I was reassured by the Secretary of State's undertaking that she will consider carefully a small maintenance disregard. She is right; the Labour party document was not wrong when it said that the increased income support that that might generate could pay for it. We should look at that as quickly and as urgently as we can.

I am also very worried about the benefit penalty, which was doubled in the previous Parliament. The benefit penalty for women on benefit who do not co-operate, particularly those on income support, is now nearly £20 a week, which is deducted from basic benefit for three years. Why are women on benefit refusing to co-operate? More important, what on earth is happening to the families—and the children in those families—who are suffering that deduction?

The Secretary of State is right to say that getting help to the poorest children is one of her objectives, but she must look at the penalty again as a matter of urgency, because it is unconscionable. We are all concerned about fraud, but somehow the two things became entwined, and people thought that a bit of fraud was going on and that there was collusion. Perhaps there is fraud, but bona fide mothers on income support are paying a very high price—a £20 per week deduction year on year. The Government must look at that.

The standard margin element of basic protected income was set at £30 in 1994. It should be uprated. That would not cost a lot of money. If it remains at £30 for ever, injustice will be put into the system. I would like it to be considered for annual uprating, or at least occasional uprating.

I was astonished at the complacency of the last Social Security Committee report, which said that the CSA's service had improved. The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) and the Minister for Welfare Reform are not present. I agree with the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien), who said that it has not improved much at all. Some of the performance figures suggest that there are improvements, but I would like the customer satisfaction service to be increased. I would also like the customer satisfaction service to be extended to deal with second family disruption, because that is one of the major problems.

I welcome the creation of an independent case review officer. I hope that she is not expecting to do much in her spare time. She will be very busy. I hope that some of her work and her conclusions might be made available to hon. Members, through either the Library or some other means of publication. The previous Government ran away from some of the worst excesses and difficulties. The message that I get strongly from the Secretary of State—I welcome it—is that she will not run away from the problems. If she is prepared to take them on the chin and share them with us, we will have a better chance collectively of resolving them.

I end where I started. The CSA is not fair enough. It is not efficient. It is not effective. Until those three points are put right, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches will cleave to the view that it should be abolished in the meantime.

I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make the first maiden speech by a Member of Parliament for Wellingborough for 28 years and the first by a Labour Member since 24 November 1964, when I was just two years old.

In view of the time that has passed since hon. Members were treated to a tour of Wellingborough, and in conformity with convention, I will describe it to the House. The constituency of Wellingborough lies in the county of Northamptonshire and is a constituency of many parts. It is part urban and part rural. It is also proudly multicultural. It is proud of its strong Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities. The principal towns are Wellingborough, Rushden and the historic Higham Ferrers, which featured in the Domesday book. Smaller surrounding villages include Earls Barton, with a church tower more than 1,000 years old, and Wollaston which has more than 80 small businesses within its village confines, including a thriving example of a caring business—Scott Bader—employing 300 people, but run as a commonwealth. They also include the village of Irchester, with its Roman origins.

The local economy is diverse, based on farming and industry, the major industry being boots and shoes. The constituency still boasts 60 businesses involved in footwear manufacturing and employing more than 3,000 workers, which is more than 8 per cent. of the working population in the constituency. I can tell this honourable House that it was in great comfort that I walked the many miles of my campaign.

Although the seat of Wellingborough had been Conservative since the by-election which followed Harry Howarth's sad death in 1969, it was historically what it is today—a Labour constituency. We first won the seat through W. R. Smith in 1918—barely a decade after the party was founded. We won again in 1924, with Mr. Cove. In 1929, we won with George Dallas. In 1945, 1950, 1951 and 1955, we won with George Lindgren, who was privileged to make his maiden speech from the Front Bench, winding up the very first parliamentary debate in which he had engaged. In 1964 and 1966, we won with Harry Howarth, a man still fondly remembered both by many of my constituents and by hon. Members whose political longevity stretches that far.

The by-election that followed Harry's early death in 1969 was won by my immediate predecessor, Sir Peter Fry, who went on to hold the seat for 28 years. Throughout his time in the House, Sir Peter served the constituency of Wellingborough as a hard-working and courageous Back Bencher, earning a reputation as a good constituency Member of Parliament, a reputation that I encountered during the campaign, and again last week, when I was invited to visit a wonderful woman in my constituency who was 106 years old and had particularly asked to meet her Member of Parliament. When I arrived, the look of disappointment was manifest and she said, "You are not that nice Sir Peter Fry; I always voted for him." I wish Sir Peter well in his retirement. I hope that he now has time to enjoy his family and his many outside interests.

Having been in Tory hands for 28 years, on May day 1997 the Labour party reclaimed the seat of Wellingborough in a political tidal wave of support which swept away five out of six Tory Members in Northamptonshire alone. We did not win on 1 May because the electorate wanted change; we won not because of scepticism or despair but because of hope and vision. People were inspired by the values that the Labour party put before them—that although as individuals we are different, we are in a deep sense equal. We have equal rights to both justice and social justice—to security, a home, health care, education and opportunity. Those are the rights which make us free. But they are matched by responsibilities to others so that they, too, may be free— because we are indeed our brother's keeper, because we shall not pass by on the other side and because working together, rather than as individuals alone, we can all achieve more.

Those are the values that have always inspired the Labour party, even if today they find their modern expression in policies fit to meet the problems of the new age in which we live. They are values that burn in my soul as fiercely as they burned in the souls of those previous Labour Members for Wellingborough—men whose minds were not fixed on self and place, men who did not cringe before the rich man's frown, men who fought in this House and the constituency for human rights and human gain, men who joined the Labour party, as did I, not to put a ceiling on the aspirations of those without hope but to remove it.

Our values recognise that both liberty and equality are essential preconditions to civilised society. Although those preconditions are sometimes in tension, both must inform the policies of a Government who govern for the many and not for the few, and who recognise that enterprise, talent and efficiency are not the enemies of compassion but its friends. In that way, everyone has an opportunity to succeed and this nation can call on the talent and enterprise of all our people, not just the privileged few. Using the talents and enterprise of all our people, we can build an economy based on sustainable growth and not on unsustainable greed. Through that sustainable growth, our compassion may be more bountifully delivered to those in need. We can then apply the efficiency of business to the delivery of that compassion.

These are Labour's historic values. We must bring them to bear on the Child Support Agency now that we are in government, because in many important ways and for very many people the way in which the CSA operates is inseparable from the objectives that we pursue, as enshrined in the values that I have described. Our values must find a practical expression in measures which make a difference. We cannot govern by values alone. While the Government have a large scope for making this country more like it should be, that scope is limited in many important respects.

Ultimately, strong nations, economies and communities are not built by new legislation or Parliaments alone; they are built by the people, even if Parliament sets the framework to achieve those ends. If we are to rebuild this nation, we must do so not just in Parliament but in our homes and families, which is where prime responsibility for our national destiny lies. Our children are our future: they depend on their families and homes first and the Government second. How our children are brought up, supported, encouraged and inculcated with values so that they care for their fellow men and women rather than just for themselves is crucial to our shared future and prosperity.

The Government must recognise that we have less power to strengthen families than to mandate change in other areas. However, we must also recognise the power that we have—first, because by virtue of its limited nature it is important to identify what we can do, and secondly because the field of human endeavour in which that power can be brought to bear is so sensitive and important that we must exercise our power wisely.

We can and must act to take some of the stresses out of modern family life. We can play a small part in keeping families together by tackling unemployment, poverty pay, excessive working hours and bad housing. We can and must act fairly and responsibly—never judgmentally—if and when families break up or do not come together in the traditional model. After all, single-parent families are families none the less and they need special support and care if children and parents are to be given the equal opportunity to succeed that they deserve.

That is why the Labour Government now seek to address the dependency culture and the poverty traps inherent in the existing tax and benefits system, giving single mothers a better chance to return to work. It is also why we must reform the operation of the CSA so that it performs as it should and not as it has. Few, if any, hon. Members would question the essential premise on which the CSA was founded—that a parent is for life, even if the family breaks up. With rights come responsibilities, and the greatest of those are the responsibilities of parents to their children.

Given that the founding principle behind the CSA commands wide support— while acknowledging the bitterness and sensitivities that family break-ups can cause—something must be going badly wrong if the CSA none the less generates such hostility. To be honest, I had not expected to make my maiden speech in this debate; the fact that I am doing so is due to my constituency. The overwhelming bulk of complaints in my postbag and surgeries have concerned the CSA, and it is clear from what my constituents have told me that the CSA has failed comprehensively to command public confidence.

I would speculate that there are two reasons for that which stand above all others. First, the CSA has taken the path of expediency in pursuing soft targets first, rather than focusing its attention on cases of real need. That means that many who are already making payments according to agreements are being pursued for larger payments while others in my constituency and elsewhere have yet to receive a penny and do not believe that the CSA is working for them. Those people are often in cash-flow crises. We cannot get young mums back to work if they are not receiving the maintenance money to which they are entitled and which would enable them to pay for child care.

Secondly, the CSA has turned into a bureaucratic nightmare from which it has not escaped. It is the fault not of the workers, but of the system. Delays are legion and mistakes common. One example from very many that I could give from my constituency concerns a happily married couple with a daughter. They awoke one day to find a letter from the CSA asserting that the husband had fathered a child by another woman some years ago. The husband denied it, but the wife was understandably traumatised—after all, such letters bear the imprint of authority—and left the marital home with her daughter.

Two weeks later, a further letter arrived from the CSA, saying that it had made a mistake. The man was not the father. The real father had a different name, address and date of birth. The rigorous system designed to prevent such errors had not been followed. The letter went on to make apologies and to moot the prospect of compensation, but incalculable damage, great unhappiness, hurt and trauma had already been caused. Trust had broken down in that marriage and in what had been a happy family, and it will take a long time to recover that trust—if, indeed, it is ever recovered.

The process of healing was not helped by a third letter from the CSA enclosing an insulting cheque for £100 in the hope that that would help with the hurt. It was not even sufficient to pay for a decent break so that the couple could try to talk through their problems. The letter went on in the same sentence to deny any liability on the part of the CSA.

That is just one sad tale. Taken alone, it would be cause for concern. Taken together with the many other examples of which I have heard in my surgeries and in the Chamber today, we can rightly see that there are profound problems which need to be addressed.

There are five reforms which I believe must be our first targets. First, we must work to make the CSA more efficient so that delays are cut and mistakes are fewer. Secondly, we must give parents an incentive to co-operate so that children are better protected from parental disputes. Thirdly, we must improve the independent appeals machinery so that the system is perceived to be fairer. Fourthly, we must tackle as priorities fraud in the system and evasion of the system, so that those in greatest need are helped properly and helped first. Fifthly, we must ensure that there is a proper enforcement mechanism which works expeditiously.

That is a clear path forward which is true to the ethos of the CSA but is designed to ensure that it regains the confidence of the public. Those in my constituency and the country who have been gravely affected by the CSA during its short lifetime will not settle for much less—nor should they have to. We were elected to make things better. Let us hope we can do just that.

I am grateful for the chance to make my maiden speech on an issue which, in my short time as a Member of Parliament, has proved to be one of considerable concern to my constituents. It is a privilege to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe), which was passionate, committed and well informed. Given the industries in his constituency, I was surprised that he did not regard his result as a shoe-in. I noted that one of his predecessors made a maiden speech from the Front Bench and, given the quality of the hon. Gentleman's speech, I am sure that it will not be long before he, too, is speaking from the Front Bench.

When I explain that I am the hon. Member for Northavon, the usual response is, "Where is that?" On the off-chance that any hon. Member present may be thinking the same thing, I will explain that my constituency occupies the north part of the South Gloucestershire unitary authority. It runs from the Severn bridge in the west to Badminton in the east, taking in on its way towns such as Thornbury, Bradley Stoke, Yate and Chipping Sodbury. My constituency also includes more than 50 villages, each with its own attractive character and identity. I hope that, during my time as Member for Northavon, I can play my part in protecting those towns and villages from the threat of over-development which is constantly hanging over them.

My predecessor, Sir John Cope, served the people of Northavon faithfully for 23 years. He rose to hold the office of Paymaster General between 1992 and 1994 and spent several years as Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office and the Department of Employment. He always conducted himself with dignity, and was gracious in defeat. I wish him well in his retirement.

As for me, I had rashly begun to feel quite pleased with myself, having been elected to Parliament at the tender age of 31. However, since 1 May, two events have shaken my self-confidence. First, I was approached in the Central Lobby by a journalist who asked whether I was one of the new Members of Parliament. "Yes," I replied eagerly, expecting fame and fortune to beckon. "How old are you?" he asked. I said, "I'm 31," to which he replied, "Too old, I'm afraid—we are looking for someone in their 20s." Clearly, I am already over the hill. The second event occurred yesterday, shortly after 5 pm. Discovering that the new Leader of the Opposition is just five years my senior makes me feel decidedly like an under-achiever who needs to buck up his ideas.

Turning to more serious matters, I am, as I have said, grateful for the chance to contribute to the discussion about the future of the Child Support Agency, and I welcome the Government's decision to hold this debate. The fact that there are problems with the agency is clear to me from my constituency surgeries, as I am sure it is clear to every hon. Member in the Chamber. Such is the predominance of the issue in my constituency postbag that I have begun to wonder what hon. Members did with their time before the Child Support Agency was invented.

I make it clear that, like my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), my preferred solution would be the outright abolition of the agency and its replacement—as replaced it must be—by a more flexible system of family courts which would seek to ensure that due maintenance is paid, but with more efficiency and humanity than the CSA has shown to date.

A family court system would have several advantages. First, the complexity of individual circumstances could be reflected in the amounts of maintenance finally awarded. While there is clearly a need for consistency, it is apparent that the current formula-based system is creating a great deal of rough justice and resentment by not taking into account the relevant details of each case. A family court system, operating within a clearly defined framework, would be able to remedy some of those injustices.

A second important advantage of a family court system is that it would be locally based. One of the great frustrations with the Child Support Agency clearly stems from having to deal with an anonymous agency located many miles away. A court-based system would at least allow people to express their grievances face to face rather than through endless and lengthy correspondence.

Of course, a family court system would not be without its problems. Given the cuts in legal aid introduced by the previous Government, it would be necessary to ensure that people had equal opportunities to make their cases to the court. None the less, in view of the fundamental problems associated with the CSA, this approach must be considered seriously—particularly if further attempts at reform fail to produce a significant improvement.

I recognise that the Government may be unwilling to take such a drastic step so early in the new Parliament, however, so in the spirit of constructive opposition I will offer a few brief suggestions as to how the CSA could be reformed in order to lessen its negative impact on the lives of my constituents. The first change would involve reversing the planned cut in the agency's operating budget—which I understand is planned to fall from £212 million this year to £191 million in 1998–99. It is hard to see how the promise made earlier by the Secretary of State to improve the speed with which telephones are answered is compatible with a significant cut in running costs. Given the agency's notoriety for slow service, the cut seems a recipe for disaster—the fruits of which we shall see in our surgeries in future unless action is taken now.

The second change, which was discussed earlier, would be to introduce a modest disregard of maintenance into the income support system. That would give parents with care and absent parents an incentive to co-operate with the agency and would ensure that the children involved benefited—which was, after all, the alleged purpose of the Conservative Government's "Children Come First" proposals.

I suggest that the state should act as guarantor of the lone parent in employment when maintenance payments are interrupted or unilaterally terminated by the absent parent. If we are to encourage lone parents to take paid employment, we must give them the security that allows them to do so. Faced with the possibility—perhaps probability—that maintenance can be withdrawn at any moment by an unreliable absent parent, many lone parents may opt to rely on income support. If the state steps in to guarantee all or part of the payment during the period of interruption, lone parents will benefit as well as children and ultimately the Exchequer.

My wish is that all those involved in the tragedy of family breakdown should encounter a system which is fair and efficient and does not make an already difficult situation worse. I hope that some of the reforms that I have suggested will contribute towards that goal.

It is a great privilege to intervene at this stage in the debate, not least because we have just heard two very fine maiden speeches. I know my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) reasonably well because I made a campaign visit to his constituency to talk about the welfare state, a subject not a million miles away from that of the Child Support Agency. My hon. Friend spoke with great eloquence and compassion. It was a strong speech and I congratulate him warmly on it.

I was struck by the fact that, as my hon. Friend said, when there was last a Labour Member for Wellingborough, he was only two years old. I thought to myself that, if he were a Conservative and given a couple more years, he would now be Leader of the Opposition.

We also heard a fine speech from the hon. Member for Northavon (Professor Webb). I must confess that the hon. Gentleman and I have an academic past. The hon. Gentleman was a specialist adviser to the Select Committee on Social Security before he became a Member of this place. He had also the rare distinction of teaching my daughter Caroline social policy at Bath university. The hon. Gentleman brought a great deal of expertise to his speech and made a good case for the family court solution—a solution that I reject, while I accept that it is an important part of the debate that we need to have.

My starting point on child support is poverty. Parliaments have considered the causes of poverty and the consequences for many decades. Indeed, I suppose that they have done so over many centuries. One of the real difficulties for our democracy is that, alongside the causes of poverty that have been well known to us for many years—economic recession, unemployment and low pay, for example—we are having to grapple with the poverty that is associated directly with family insecurities. There are high levels of divorce and many children are now born to single unmarried mothers. We, as a Parliament, are finding it difficult to tackle issues that are even more controversial and difficult to handle than the poverty that is associated only with economic insecurity.

I acknowledge, of course, that there is an overlap between economic and social insecurity. The latest data that I have seen are the low income data for 1992, which tell us that, of all children in poverty dependent on income support, 865,000 were in that position because their parents were unemployed. A more significant group of 1.7 million were in one-parent families.

Governments rightly stress the need to build up a strong economy, but we should stress also with equal passion the need to build up strong families. It is right that the Government are pursuing a twofold strategy. The welfare-to-work strategy has to be right as the first prong. We shall never be able to afford the benefit levels on income support that would bring people out of poverty. Income support is, of course, expensive to the taxpayer and socially it is expensive to the women and children, and some men, who are dependent on it. Work is the best pathway out of poverty in the longer term.

If we talk only about welfare to work, we risk being unfair to mothers. I would say that rule No. 1 for policy makers is that, when we talk about lone mothers, we should quickly talk too of complementary fathers. Unless we can ensure that we change the culture in Britain so that in future more fathers accept their financial responsibility for their children, we shall be in deep trouble socially. I welcome the debate initiated by the Government today. Over the centuries, women have been left holding the babies and the burdens. It is time to start redressing that balance.

We have heard much about the performance of the Child Support Agency. I want to ask Ministers a question, although I do not think that they can answer it—the previous Administration could not. I know about the performance indicators and the CSA but, at the more important end, what proportion of parents with care—that is the jargon, which usually means mothers on income support—are receiving maintenance? I emphasise the word "receiving". No one in the previous Parliament could tell me. My guess is that the proportion is less than one third. We need to know that. If we cannot supply the data, we need research on the matter, otherwise the performance indicators are misleading.

I have another question. How many maintenance assessments made lead to maintenance being paid? When I look at the performance indicators, I see encouraging statistics about assessments, but I see very discouraging statistics about money being paid, in full or at all. We need more data if we are to have a proper debate.

I disagree with those who argue—it is very much a men-dominated lobby—that we should scrap the CSA. I do not believe that to be the case. I say to our Liberal Democrat friends that if the court-based solution is the answer now, why was it not the answer when we had a court-based solution? Why did only one third of mothers get maintenance, and some of it in small amounts of money and irregularly?

Similarly, I am concerned about the complacency—to put it politely—that was creeping into the previous Administration. It was thought that, because performance indicators were moving in the right direction—although some of those were misleading because maintenance was not actually being paid—somehow we were getting matters right and the alarm bells could stop ringing. That complacency was not justified.

The Government must consider a radical reform of the CSA. That may necessitate a change in the name of the agency, to signal the radical nature of the reform. The first stage in the radical reform strategy is to focus not on cash, but on care. Hon. Members have touched on that during the debate.

The hon. Gentleman proposes changing the name—very much a new Labour policy. Would he like to change the logo?

I am almost floored by that one. No doubt, we shall soon hear about the new Conservative party, so hon. Members should not knock changes of name. I am arguing a serious point, if the former Minister can cope with a serious point. If we introduce a radical reform programme and try to win a new public consensus behind what we are trying to achieve, we may have to signal that by changing the name of the agency. The term "CSA" may for ever be associated with the chaos that has been described.

I have seven recommendations in my strategy for reform. First, we should start with care, not cash. When the former Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, launched the expedition back in January 1990, she said that no father should be able to escape his responsibilities. Her great mistake was immediately to speak about maintenance and cash. She should have asked a more challenging question: in turbulent family times, when possibly as many as half of our children will not spend all of their childhood living with both natural parents, how can we ensure that as many of those children as possible are brought up by both of their natural parents, and that fathers play a full role? That is the aspect of family diversity with which the debate should have begun. We should not dodge it. Only afterwards should we get on to the issue of child maintenance.

That has implications for the Family Law Act 1996, which I welcome—for example, the move towards mediation when a couple are contemplating divorce. How can a divorcing couple ensure that, in difficult times, they are thinking first about children, and not about themselves, so that contact is maintained? It also has implications for the Government's thinking on access orders. Many male constituents come to me and say, "The court said that I should have access to my child every weekend, but the mother will not let me see the child." They are then told by lawyers that they can go back to court, but that it will cost hundreds of pounds. That is not right. If a judge makes an access order, it must be implemented and there should not be a price on implementation. So there is an agenda of family policy that we need to relate to the debate about the CSA. If the Government could break some of the departmental boundaries and start discussions going, I would welcome that. That would be the start of my reform strategy.

Secondly, we need a fairer deal between mothers and children and the taxpayer. I support enthusiastically the call for a maintenance disregard. The Labour party document stated that it would be introduced when more resources were generated by the reform programme. That has to be the right approach. People are justly cynical that the Act is an Exchequer support Act rather than a child support Act. How can it be a child support Act when the vast majority of children and 70 per cent. of one-parent families on income support do not get a penny extra as a result of it? That is a misuse of English language. There should be a maintenance disregard. It is socially important and it would generate more money by winning more public confidence. Treasury officials, who can think about social policy only in the short term, will argue against it. They have to be confronted because, in the longer term, it makes financial and social sense.

Thirdly, the Government should revisit the formula. I am not certain about this, but I think that I would put my money on a far simpler formula in which clear percentages of net income are deducted. We should look at the Australian example and consider whether we should implement it. I know that a simpler formula is rougher justice. I am not a populist who calls for simplicity for the sake of it. People may say that they want a simpler formula because they do not understand it, but when they are affected by it, they want the system to cope with their peculiar family circumstances. I understand the issue, but I urge the Government at least to examine critically the case for a simpler formula.

Fourthly, we need a CSA with a human face. If parents telephone the CSA, they must have the right to talk to one named official—Mr. Brown or Mrs. Brown—who deals with their case and acts in a sense as their general practitioner, tells them where things are and has a duty to report back to them. There should be speedier access to the appeals system. We should establish an independent child support advisory council, chaired perhaps by a family judge and including some critics of the system, to report to Parliament and the Secretary of State on how things are.

We should examine the interface between the Child Support Act and the Family Law Act 1996. It is naive not to have child maintenance issues at least on the table in the mediation process. People should be told when they contemplate divorce what the child maintenance settlement might look like.

I argue, as I have argued before, that in specific and difficult circumstances with which no formula or system of departures can cope, people should have a day in court and a judge should decide whether there should be a departure from the formula. That is the only matter on which I come close to Liberal Democrat colleagues. In a small proportion of cases—for example, where a child has special needs—there should be an opportunity to have a day in court.

Fifthly, my colleagues are right in saying that we should not pursue only the soft targets. We should devote special energy to pursuing the tough targets. It makes a mockery of the system when men can openly brag that they have never paid a penny for several children. I am sometimes in despair, as are mothers, when they tell me, "The agency said that it did not know where the father was. I found out where he was. I did detective work which the agency could never have done. I told it his address and where he worked. Two or three years later, the father has still not paid a penny." Why are we not getting the people who pose as victims but who are actually villains of irresponsibility? We shall never win public confidence until we tackle those dads.

Sixthly, the Government should consider the issue of collection. Australia preceded us in creating such an agency, and the Australia tax office was made the collection agency. It did not want to do it, just as our Inland Revenue said that it did not want to. In Australia, they said, "You are going to do it." We were not tough enough to say that to the Inland Revenue. How can it be that we got former employees of the Property Services Agency into the business of collection when the Inland Revenue had the records and the expertise? Even now, I urge the Government at least to look at this question.

Seventhly on my strategy for reform, we must relate the agency to the welfare-to-work strategy, and consider the issues that relate to guaranteed maintenance. It is difficult for mothers to make the jump from income support into work if maintenance is not paid regularly. It is a difficult question, and it may have financial implications. As part of the welfare-to-work strategy, the Government must examine the interface between child maintenance and irregular payments.

I have two general concluding points. First, we would fool ourselves if we believed that this will ever be anything other than a controversial policy area. Even if the CSA, or whatever it was called at the time, won prizes for bureaucratic competence and became a watchword for human sensitivity, it would still be controversial. This is an attempt by the state to intervene in the most personal and bloody matters, where emotions are raw and there is jealousy, and old battles are fought over. It will always be difficult and controversial for the Government—as they must, on behalf of the community—to try to get some fairness and balance into the system between the needs of men, women and children, and of first and second families. That is a reason to pursue the matter, not to avoid it.

My second point relates to my opening remarks on poverty. If we do not tackle the financial implications of family insecurity in a society where one in four of our children will have parents who are divorced, where every year 160,000 children under 16 have mums and dads who divorce, and with all the insecurities of single parenthood, we shall maintain new forces for poverty and social inequality that will destroy families and communities. Those are difficult issues for Parliament, but that is a reason to grasp nettles and pursue a radical reform programme for the sake of many of our children.

I agree whole-heartedly with the two concluding remarks of the hon. Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks). This is an inevitably controversial area of policy, and it will always remain so. Our priority must be relief of poverty and family insecurity, which are a legacy of a period in which individualism and laissez-faire moral liberalism combined to create a new irresponsibility throughout society. The first step in restoring a sense of responsibility in society is for the welfare state to cease to insulate those who have from those who have not. The responsibility of taxpayers for the poor does not end with the posting of a giro cheque from the Department of Social Security. Our sense of responsibility for the less fortunate may begin with that relationship, but it certainly does not end there.

I had some difficulty comparing the wish list of the hon. Member for Croydon, North with what the Secretary of State said. Many of the things that he wants used to be demanded by the Secretary of State when she was in opposition. Now that she is sitting on the Government Front Bench, she is finding things much more difficult. The reality of office is much more difficult than producing the weekly soundbite, so she has retreated from many of the comments that she used to make.

It is good to say, "Care, not just cash," but I note that the hon. Member for Croydon, North immediately went on to the issue of the disregard which is, if anything, a cash question. He premised his party's commitment to the disregard upon the success that the agency will have collecting the cash. Then, he went back to the old canard of the simpler formula. The truth of the simpler formula is not just that it leads to rough justice, but that we then need to introduce into the system the discretion to deal with the rough justice. That is why he advocates a simpler formula, combined with an appeal to some judicial process. Again, that does not solve any of the problems that the agency has. Indeed, it will probably make them more complicated.

I heard many echoes of our joint visit, with the Select Committee on Social Security, to Australia when we studied the Australian system. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said, it is important to examine other systems, which show that there are no panaceas for the awkwardness and pain of the state intervening in this sector.

I do not apologise for the fact that this is about collecting money to relieve the burden on the taxpayer because that is the taxpayer's legitimate interest in this. The taxpayer should not underwrite the proliferation of people in a system, where the benefit system can be used to insulate individuals from the consequences of parenthood. We must keep that unashamedly at the forefront of our minds.

I join the hon. Member for Croydon, North in congratulating the hon. Members for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) and for Northavon (Professor Webb) on their maiden speeches. They both paid handsome tribute to their predecessors, whom Conservative Members miss for their personal qualities, not just for their political loyalty to the Conservative party. I thank both hon. Gentlemen for those tributes. I also congratulate them on breaking with what has become a rather tiresome tradition. When we came into the House five years ago, many of us were told to make uncontroversial speeches: that is the tradition of a maiden speech. Both hon. Gentleman demonstrated that it is a rather silly tradition. They both made real points of substance, which illuminated the debate and set the seal on their opening speeches.

The Secretary of State set out a broad philosophy of the Child Support Agency. In that philosophy, her renewed emphasis on the responsibility of parents and on the intentions of the agency to help children in poverty is identical to the philosophy that launched the agency under the last Conservative Government. I whole-heartedly agree with her invocation that this should not become a party issue. In the previous Parliament, we succeeded in maintaining, underneath the inevitable sparring across the Chamber, a solid consensus that the agency was going in the right direction. However, I am going to press her on some of her retreats, particularly that on the disregard. When we were in office, we said that it was a damaging policy because not only would it cost money, but it would act as a disincentive to single parents to return to work as they would lose the disregard the minute they started earning enough to disqualify them from benefit. That can only increase the poverty trap.

It is important to have a seamless web between dependency on welfare, work and maintenance payments from the CSA. Maintenance payments can provide a platform. While benefits are removed from the single parent pound for pound in benefit withdrawal, maintenance is not removed when the single parent returns to work. If half the income comes from benefit and half from maintenance payments, that is a considerably lower barrier to entry into the sort of part-time work that might be suitable for a single parent.

I want to make some general points about the Secretary of State's speech. She said—she can check this with the record—that no targets had ever been set for the CSA. As I said in my intervention, the Social Security Select Committee commented on the CSA's targets.

During the debate, I have been flicking through the CSA's excellent business plan for the current year, 1997–98. It is worth the right hon. Lady having a look at it as it shows that the targets that she thinks should be set have, in fact, already been set. In that plan, Ann Chant, the chief executive, said that it was part of

"our major objective to bring all maintenance assessments up to date by April 1999".

If that is a good target, the Government will accept it; if it is a bad target, they will change it—yet we heard nothing on that from the right hon. Lady.

The chief executive also said that she wanted

"greater reductions in our unit costs";

that the CSA planned

"to further improve the quality of service provided to all our clients";

that the agency had extended its accuracy target and

"introduced an Independent Case Examiner to provide clients with an impartial investigation service into matters of administration";

that the CSA had made

"a commitment to achieve the Investors in People … standard"—

that is an important role for an employer—and that the agency would make a

"quantum improvement in performance".

That is all part of the bipartisan consensus and it ill behoves the right hon. Lady to harry the Opposition as though none of that was happening while my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden was in office, and she had inherited nothing but a blank sheet of paper.

In the business plan, the chief executive talks about

"Providing the service our clients expect"

and the implementation of the programme of change. Under the heading, "What we will deliver", she refers to:

"A step change in performance and efficiency."

All the necessary figures are given.

The business plan also states:

"We will collect or arrange for direct payment from the absent parent … to the parent with care … child maintenance of some £500 million in 1997/98."

Is the Secretary of State planning to increase that target, is the target sufficient, or is it over-ambitious? That is the sort of qualitative analysis on which we expect to hold the Minister to account. She should not simply come out with inaccurate generalities about the previous Government.

I appreciate that the Minister without Portfolio has given instructions to Ministers to spend time slagging off the previous Conservative Administration and to keep up pressure on them to try to hide the inadequacies of the Government's policies. That will work for a while, but sooner or later the Government will have to take responsibility for what is happening. The right hon. Lady will have to say whether she thinks the Child Support Agency is working under her direction or, if it is not working, what she intends to do about it.

I shall conclude with a little hindsight. Indeed, the right hon. Lady indulged in a little hindsight. I shall make reflective points that are not designed to cause anybody any embarrassment. We should reflect, with hindsight, on two main points. The first is that the Child Support Agency was very much a big bang reform. The equivalent agencies introduced in Australia and elsewhere started by taking new cases and not by assuming old case loads. This Government, or future Governments, may well wish to consider other reforms. In dealing with such a sensitive issue, it is worth remembering that changing current arrangements is far more difficult and challenging than applying new rules to new arrangements. The departure formula and changes to the general formula were introduced not because of new cases in the system but to deal with the changed circumstances that have been imposed on people. Nevertheless, we understand why it was necessary and desirable to challenge current arrangements—because they were ill serving both children in single-parent families and taxpayers.

The second point is that the architects of the Child Support Agency—in some ways reflecting the main objections to the Child Support Act 1991 during its passage—took the perspective of the parent with care, who might not want to give information and receive the money. We thought that we were establishing a payment agency and that money collection was incidental to making payments—because, after all, the Department of Social Security is predominantly an organisation that makes payments.

The CSA, however, operates primarily as a collection agency, and one can therefore understand why the Australians used their equivalent of the Inland Revenue. It would be impossible, however, for our Inland Revenue to manage a formula that is as sensitive and sensible as the one that we are considering. In considering the future, we should bear it in mind that the CSA is increasingly perceived as a collecting agency.

Let us maintain a reasonable atmosphere of consensus on the issue and a wall of unity against the few people who are trying to break down the consensus, who resist making payments and who think that they should be able to escape their obligations. Recently, in my advice bureau, I learnt of a man who had deliberately taken much more expensive accommodation than he required so that the maintenance that he paid would be reduced. We should sympathetically, diplomatically but firmly challenge that type of attitude and close such loopholes to stop abuse of the system. Let us ensure that we maintain a wall of solidarity on the issue, so that the reform will lead to the type of responsible society that all hon. Members want to build.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech in this debate. I speak with some apprehension, because I follow the speeches of many experienced hon. Members who have spoken with great expertise. I have been buoyed, however, by the speeches of my fellow maiden speakers, whom I congratulate. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) spoke eloquently and inspirationally, and the hon. Member for Northavon (Professor Webb) spoke with confidence and was extremely thought-provoking. As a Scot, it is also a pleasure for me to follow the speech of the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), although I am somewhat surprised to find another Scot in the Chamber on a Friday morning.

As a lawyer with about 20 years' experience who, in part, specialised in child law, the principles and practice of the Child Support Act 1991, as amended, are of practical interest to me. As a Member of Parliament for some seven weeks, whose growing case load already features many apparently intractable and frustrating Child Support Agency cases, the review and reform of the operation of the CSA is of immediate practical interest to me and to many of my constituents. Accordingly, I welcome the debate as a timely opportunity to make a modest but, I hope, helpful contribution to the planned review. The fact that the issue is being addressed so early in the life of the new Labour Government is confirmation that, consistent with our manifesto commitment, we shall put the welfare of children at the heart of social security policy.

As this is my maiden speech, I crave the indulgence of the House while I pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, Willie McKelvey, give hon. Members a flavour of my constituency and share with the House some of its aspirations. I shall try in a few short paragraphs to capture something of the personality of Willie McKelvey. However, before so doing, I am sure that the House will join me in sharing his regret that, having represented Kilmarnock and Loudoun for 18 years, all of them in opposition, his greatest wish—to support in this House a Labour Government—was cruelly snatched from his grasp by sudden illness a few weeks before the general election. Thankfully, he bounced back to health and activity very quickly, and it is the mark of the man that, despite his disappointment, he has expressed no trace of bitterness. Throughout the election campaign, and since, he has been a source of advice, support and common sense to me. For that, I wish to record a personal note of thanks.

Willie was elected as successor to Willie Ross, who retired in 1979, having held the seat for 33 years. My election, if it achieves nothing else, has broken more than half a century of tradition in terms of the constituency's Members' first name. I consider that a small but significant blow for individuality.

Willie McKelvey was a hard-working, reliable and empathetic constituency Member of Parliament. He was a tireless fighter and eloquent advocate, not only for the constituency and its interests but for Scotland. He was a true parliamentarian. Above all, however, he was a true democrat. I know that he will wish to be remembered for his successful campaign to democratise the procedures of the parliamentary Labour party, a campaign that he conducted with my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross). It was a difficult time for both of them as rookie Members of Parliament, but their eventual success is to their great credit.

In the previous Parliament, Willie McKelvey's skills and experience were recognised by his peers when he was selected to chair the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs, a task that he dispatched with ability and no small measure of political courage. The Committee's report "Drug Abuse in Scotland" will live on as a testament to both qualities. He is a man of wide-ranging interests—from foreign affairs to greyhound racing, from Scotch whisky to occupational pensions—but, above all, he is interested in people. Throughout his term of office, he enjoyed an almost unique rapport with all who worked here in the Palace of Westminster. Neither title nor grand office was any bar to Willie's winning way and humour. He enjoyed an unparalleled level of friendship with the staff of the Palace—a friendship of equality with all. Throughout my election campaign, I was struck by the level of genuine affection for Willie shown by nearly all my constituents; I have had a similar experience here in the Palace. In my view, there is no better legacy than that. I am sure that the whole House will join me in wishing Willie McKelvey a long and happy retirement with his wife Edith.

My constituency of Kilmarnock and Loudoun, which is part of Ayrshire, was my home for 20 years prior to my election. I have lived and worked with the people, and now I am both honoured and privileged to be their parliamentary representative. Kilmarnock, the principal town of the constituency, is an industrial and market town in an agricultural setting. The constituency is famed for the Scotch whisky industry—the major bottling plant for Johnnie Walker is there—but it also has lace, footwear, hosiery, engineering, carpet and high-quality fashion industries. It is at present home to the Scottish cup holders, Kilmarnock football club, and also to the Scottish amateur cup holders, Knockentiber Amateurs.

Since the war, in common with many other areas, my constituency has suffered the decline of its indigenous industries. It now enjoys the unenviable reputation as one of the areas of highest unemployment in Scotland.

Thankfully, the area still has a varied, if somewhat contracted, industrial base and is enjoying a period of consolidation and adaptation, which has meant that developments are constantly occurring. That is thanks in no small measure to the ingenuity, skill, talent and hard work of the people of Kilmarnock and Loudoun. That is hardly surprising, as my constituency is the birthplace of people with such diverse talents and backgrounds as Alexander Fleming, who identified penicillin, and John Lloyd Dunlop, the inventor of the pneumatic tyre.

There is also much to be proud of in the literary field. In 1786, the first edition of Robert Burns' works was published in Kilmarnock. More recently, the town has given us the respected Scottish author, William Mclllvanney, and his brother Hugh, universally regarded as one of the best sports writers in the country.

Many of the successful developments are testimony to the co-operation between East Ayrshire council, Enterprise Ayrshire and local industry. Those seeds of progress depend on the improvement of the area's infrastructure. The most important aspect of that is the completion of the major road link from the south of Glasgow to Kilmarnock. The constituency trusts that that project will survive the road building review announced yesterday.

I have three points to make about the subject of the debate. First, in reviewing the Child Support Agency, it is essential to restore the interests of children to the centre of the system of child support. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) reminded us that three of the four key problems that the CSA attempted to tackle were child-centred: the low level of support that the court systems required after parents paid; the disparities between different courts in fixing the amounts of child support; and the poor enforcement mechanisms to ensure that the court orders were met by absent parents.

However, there was another agenda, where the roots of the system's failure are to be found. Reducing the social security budget was a clear ideological objective of the previous Government. Their haste to achieve that objective resulted in the implementation of an ill thought out system. Within two years of the Act coming into force, major alteration was required, in the primary legislation and in the almost unintelligible regulations that set out its framework of operation. From that labyrinth, a bureaucratic nightmare has emerged. The system has lost sight of the child's needs. Its Inflexibility and incomprehensibility have become a reason—although not an excuse—for non-payment by absent fathers, who have taken great advantage of the incompetence of the system.

I refer briefly to the case of one constituent. I have not trawled through my files of CSA cases for it. I have extracted one letter from the correspondence given to me by a constituent who consulted me about a CSA problem at my surgery last Friday. After a period of manifest incompetence by the CSA, the agency wrote to him on 22 April saying:

"If you continue to pay child maintenance from 1 May 1997, the CSA will not ask you to pay arrears owing from the period May 1994 to April 1997. Please make your first payment of £371 maintenance by 1 May 1997 and then further payments of £425 per month by 1 June 1997. This payment of £425 is made up as follows: £371 maintenance plus"—

yes, you've guessed it—

"£54 of arrears."

No doubt there is some convoluted explanation for the letter and it is not the contradiction that it appears to be, but what better excuse for a non-payer could one imagine than a system that, after protracted negotiations, can produce such an incomprehensible conclusion? No wonder that, despite the improvements of performance recorded by the Social Security Committee in its fifth report of March 1997, the figures released by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in a written answer to the hon. Member for Perth (Ms Cunningham) showed clearly that absent fathers continue to ignore CSA payment orders on an unacceptably large scale.

Secondly, while in no way wishing to disparage or demean the valuable work that lone parents do in nurturing, educating and caring for their children, I welcome the Government's objective of reforming the system of child support, so that all mothers who want to work may be freed from the poverty trap of benefits and can take up work outside the home. To achieve that objective, we require a system of child support that dovetails appropriately with further benefits.

A key to that objective is the maintenance disregard, a point on which I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks), and the hon. Members for Roxburgh and Berwickshire and for Northavon. It is a valid criticism of the child support system that unlike those receiving family credit or the disability working allowance, who are allowed to keep up to £15 with no loss of benefit, lone mothers on income support gain no advantage from the payments made by absent fathers. The Benefits Agency takes the lot and sets it against the benefits being paid out. That policy is short-sighted.

The introduction of a maintenance disregard into the income support system would mean an improvement for the lot of children and would assist the Government's objective of helping more carer parents to move from welfare to work rather than in the opposite direction. A further benefit is that a maintenance disregard would undermine another lame excuse by non-payers, in that they would no longer be able to claim that their payments did not help the children. A maintenance disregard would also provide an incentive for increased co-operation with the system by carer parents. The resultant increase in absent fathers paying would increase the amount of benefit saved. For all those reasons, it is arguable that such a modest reform could be self-financing, a proposal that should be susceptible to assessment by research.

Thirdly, I draw attention to one aspect of the CSA that has received little attention other than from academics. The controversy surrounding the CSA has spawned many interest groups, but little attention has been paid to the issue of whether its operation is always consistent with the terms of the European convention on human rights. A Government who are committed to the incorporation of the principal terms of the convention into domestic law must be alert to the question whether the child support system can co-exist with the terms of the convention's articles.

I refer in particular to the terms of article 8, which enshrines the right to the enjoyment of family life. Like almost everything to do with the CSA, the arguments on that point are complex and it would be inappropriate for me in this speech to go into them in any detail. Principally, they centre on the view that following a previous agreement, such as a clean-break settlement, an absent parent who is required to make substantially increased support payments to children from a prior relationship may suffer a significant reduction in his opportunity to provide for his new family. In the European context, it may be no defence to say that the CSA is merely following UK domestic law. The argument that there has been a breach of the convention will be more accessible to an aggrieved party once we have incorporated the principal terms of the convention into domestic law.

I have limited myself to three points. I share many of the other concerns about the operation of the CSA. I trust that my observations will be of some assistance to the proposed review.

I am pleased to follow the excellent maiden speech by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne). He spoke with great eloquence and humour, and gave fulsome praise to his predecessor, for whom he obviously has great respect and affection. It may surprise the hon. Gentleman to know that there is yet another Scot in the Chamber this morning, albeit that I do not represent a Scottish constituency.

I hope that the public do not view the lack of attendance by hon. Members in this debate as a sign of lack of interest in the topic. The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said that the protests and difficulties associated with the CSA had diminished. The protests on the streets may have diminished, but the difficulties have, if anything, increased, as other hon. Members have said when talking about their advice surgeries. Every week, we all have a steady stream of people who have had problems with the CSA.

To those people, the Child Support Agency seems to be an agency that was set up primarily to reduce the benefits bill or to pursue absent parents who had already made voluntary agreements for maintenance. It is not seen by most people as primarily an agency set up to support children, which is what it ought to be.

I hope that the Secretary of State will consider, as my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) has said, the benefit penalty for non-co-operation with the CSA. I hope that it will be removed or reduced, because all it does is put more children further into poverty. Under the guise of punishing single parents, children suffer. Many women are frightened to pursue absent fathers, not just because of a fear, perhaps, of physical danger, but because of a fear that their relationship with the children or the absent parent will grow worse, and that their children will suffer indirectly as a result.

I use the terms "absent parent" and "parent with care" because they are in the legislation, but they are offensive to many absent parents who continue to care for their children. I hope that we can find better terminology.

The next area that I wish to touch on is that of the absent parent who is self-employed. I do not think that other hon. Members have mentioned that so far. There is a desperate need for effective assessment and enforcement in regard to the self-employed. It should be a high priority. Although I, too, would like to return to a system of family courts, I know that pursuing self-employed fathers for maintenance was no more successful under the previous system than it is now.

I know of one instance in which a self-employed sole proprietor was able in court to claim allowances for purchasing new computers and a new company car, and was finally assessed as having to pay maintenance of £1 a year for a teenage child. Even if that assessment had been reasonable—I should not think that anyone in the land would think that it was—the enforcement was not there. The enforcement system for children of self-employed fathers is still failing those children.

If the CSA is really an agency for child support, we need to look again at the formula for assessing maintenance, to acknowledge the needs of children of first and second families. Some hon. Members may think it irresponsible to go on to have a second family if the first family is not properly supported, but in neither family is it the fault of the children. They should not be punished.

I should like the Secretary of State to give an answer on this point—I should like him to consider when the CSA will start to deal with voluntary applications from people who are not on benefit. Again, their children also deserve a reasonable standard of living.

Each hon. Member who has spoken today mentioned three or four—perhaps even seven—things that they would like changed about the Child Support Agency and its operations. If all those changes took place, the CSA would not be recognisable as the agency that it is today. I believe that it is fundamentally flawed. The public perception of it is so bad—many parents with care are not receiving the maintenance to which they are entitled, and many absent parents are driven to despair or even to suicide by faulty or unfair assessments.

I do not believe that the CSA can be improved by tinkering. I believe that it needs root-and-branch reform. The House should admit that perhaps it did get it wrong when the CSA was set up, and perhaps the only alternative is to scrap it completely.

I congratulate hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today. It must be a great relief to them to have got them over with and to have acquitted themselves so well.

I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on her decision, which she announced yesterday, I think, not to implement the housing benefit regulations which would have meant that single people up to the age of 60 would have qualified for benefit only if they were in shared accommodation. That is one inheritance from the previous Tory Government, and the new Secretary of State has dealt with it promptly and effectively. I congratulate her on that. I do not underestimate the problems that will be caused in her Department, not least on the budgetary front.

Sadly, the poisoned chalice that my right hon. Friend has inherited in the form of the Child Support Agency will not be dealt with quite so quickly. I am pleased that today's debate will allow hon. Members to put their point of view, which I am sure my right hon. Friend will take on board.

The Child Support Act 1991 is probably the best argument for fundamentally reforming the procedures of this House. As the former Secretary of State pointed out, it was passed without opposition, which the Labour party should live to regret. I happen to know that, at the time, the Opposition spokesperson wanted to vote against the Bill, realising how fundamentally flawed it was, but was barred from doing so by collective responsibility. There was consensus that absent parents should have to contribute to the maintenance of their children, and we were reluctant to be portrayed as wishing to disagree with that concept by opposing the Bill. That made for poor legislation. Had we used the Special Standing Committee procedure, we could have taken evidence from expert witnesses and ended up with much more effective legislation.

I generally support what the hon. Lady says. I was there at the time and, by way of an alibi, may I suggest that we all pointed out that it was an enabling Act? The vast majority of the real damage was done by statutory instrument. There was all-party support for the principal legislation. I hope that the hon. Lady will discourage her Government from getting into the habit of passing brief, enabling legislation because all the damage is then done by secondary legislation.

The hon. Gentleman makes a telling point. He will be aware that the Government are reviewing procedures of the House and I am sure that they will learn lessons from some of the past failures.

Despite the fact that the Act came into operation just over four years ago, it has been amended by primary legislation on no fewer than two occasions since. So many changes have been made to the regulations that what began as a simple way to get parents to take on board their responsibilities is now extremely complex. In an Adjournment debate at the end of the last Session, the former Minister almost proudly talked about the 140 changes that had been made to the operation of the Child Support Agency. That just shows the chaos that has reigned.

When those changes were implemented, all hon. Members hoped that they would lead to improvements—that the backlog would be dealt with and that we would begin to get to grips with the problem. My experience, however, is that things are getting worse again. I do not know why, but lately the number of people coming to me with problems has started to rise again. More than half the cases are not in payment. In the Dudley office, which covers my area, on 23 May this year, there were 52,221 incidences of outstanding payments— probably 52,000 incidences of misery, let alone cases in which an assessment has not yet been made.

Most of the cases presented to me are of working women who are struggling to bring up their children but getting no help from the children's fathers who have, at every opportunity, tried to ensure that they do not contribute. The Secretary of State is well aware of that from the cases that she has cited.

My latest referral to the ombudsman is a case where the maintenance inquiry form was issued on 16 March 1994 and not a penny has yet been paid. Another case dates back to October 1993; it is another example of an absent parent denying paternity. Although paternity was established last October, no money has yet been paid because the man in question is wriggling out of his obligations in other ways. I could cite other cases but time is short.

From the perspective of parents with care and absent parents who pay their way and wish to contribute to the well-being of their children, the Act and the CSA do not work. It is not the fault of the staff, who face an impossible task. Given present circumstances, I have little confidence— notwithstanding the skill of the new Secretary of State and the new Government-that the targets will be met without fundamental change. The problem is that every time we change the way things operate and introduce new regulations, the more complexity and delay we create.

We have, in effect, the worst of all worlds. We do not have a simple formula, but we have a complex one that nobody understands. We have the ability to refer the matter to a tribunal—in effect, a court-based system for departures. It is time to look at proposals to go back to a court-based system, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will study the proposals by the Solicitors Family Law Association for a unified family court.

I listened with care to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks), who I felt was making an argument for a return to a court-based system. He was advocating the opportunity for appeals. We could save money and simplify the procedures if we returned to a court-based system. Under the divorce reforms, mediation schemes are being set up. It seems to me that when a couple are breaking up and their marriage or relationship is ending, the mediation procedure is the time to look at the financial arrangements. In the long run, it would save money and I appeal to my right hon. Friend to consider it.

Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the biggest problems the agency has to cope with is absent parents who refuse to co-operate with the CSA or give the proper information, and who then refuse to comply with the payment demands? Will she take this opportunity to say that while the system continues to exist—she vainly hopes that it will be abolished—she will encourage her constituents and others to comply with the CSA and to pay the money asked for, as that is in the best interests of the absent parent?

That goes without saying, and I wonder at the purpose of that intervention. These are the very cases about which I am so concerned. Families are not getting the money from irresponsible fathers—invariably it is the fathers.

To return to my point about a court-based system, the change could not be implemented overnight; the CSA could continue with its current case load, but perhaps should not take on any new cases, which should be taken on by a court-based system. It will take time to implement such a procedure. The failure of the system was not necessarily in the decisions—although we could have had national guidelines to ensure consistency—but in enforcement.

The CSA is bogged down in assessments and has a horrendous job with the fathers to whom the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) was referring, who are avoiding responsibility. I have one constituency case where the absent parent denies receiving any correspondence. That has been going on for months. That work is unnecessary, but it would not be the case if the matter was dealt with by the courts. The father would have to appear for a day in court where all the details of the case could be taken on board and the father questioned on his circumstances. That is something that the CSA is unable to do.

The CSA—or, preferably, some renamed body, possibly under the wing of the Inland Revenue—could concentrate on enforcement of the court decisions or, in the transitional period, the CSA decisions, to ensure that, once an assessment is made, absent parents have to pay up.

Before concluding, I shall return to the issue of the disregard. I also hope that, in time, it will be possible to implement the disregard. Although it is not a specific commitment in our manifesto, it is clearly implied that that would be the correct move. Politicians are not the only group to call for the introduction of the disregard. A report released in 1994 by five children's charities pointed out that many families on income support were worse off as a result of the CSA's demands for maintenance. In the past, many absent parents who did not pay maintenance often bought presents for their children, took them out and so on. Those arrangements are not taken into account when calculating maintenance payments.

I do not advocate a return to that informal system: I believe that mothers should receive payments as of right. However, many children are worse off as a result of the CSA's activities. It is a question not simply of creating disincentives to work, but of children's well-being. The disregard will help the very poorest children, and I hope that it will be implemented.

Sole parents often want to work, but I do not think that we should force mothers who do not wish to work—particularly when their children are very young—into employment. I returned to work when my children were only a few weeks old, but many mothers have good reasons for not doing so. I think that they should benefit from the maintenance that is paid.

I began my speech by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on the important change that she has made already. I am sure that she will take on board the points that have been raised this morning and will do her best to ensure that we have a system of child maintenance of which we can be proud.

I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) and the hon. Member for Northavon (Professor Webb) on their excellent maiden speeches. I did not know that William and Hugh Mclllvanney were brothers— one learns something every day.

I am glad to participate in this debate as I asked a question several weeks ago about the workings of the Child Support Agency. In his answer, the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley), commented that the CSA seemed to be getting slightly more efficient. According to most hon. Members to whom I have spoken, the situation appears to be worsening again. I am not quite sure why: it is probably due to the previous Government's successive cuts in social spending, year on year.

Virtually every hon. Member to whom I have spoken has confirmed that he or she has many constituency cases involving the Child Support Agency. I am a new Member of Parliament—I have been here for only seven weeks—and I have eight or 10 such cases, or about two new cases every week. One hon. Member to whom I have spoken has 97 cases and another has 140. One of those cases—none of which is trivial—involves a constituent who received two letters from the Child Support Agency on the same day giving wildly differing figures for maintenance payments. Such mistakes are causing enormous anguish and worry to thousands of our constituents. They are not just on the periphery: they are fundamental problems that point to major deficiencies in the workings of the CSA. I am glad, therefore, that there is to be a fundamental review of the CSA's activities.

Many demands are wrong, inaccurate and inconsistent. One of my constituents is told, almost weekly, of differing maintenance demands, ranging from nil to about £10 per week. My constituent is on benefit, so he should pay nothing. The Child Support Agency acknowledges that fact every few weeks but, in the meantime, continues to demand maintenance payments of £4, £6 or £8. My constituent is out of work but trying desperately to get back into work. He is finding that extremely difficult psychologically because he is being prevented from concentrating on finding a job. The worry remains at the back of his mind, "What will they come up with next? Will they force me to pay the wildly inaccurate assessments that they keep foisting on me?"

The main problem is not posed by those who provide accurate details. One of the greatest problems that the public perceive with the CSA is that if honest and straightforward people provide accurate details and are open with the agency, they will be hammered. The common perception is that those who do not provide proper details get away with it. Those who are under the agency's screw are those who are the more honest and straightforward.

The problems with the CSA were predicted by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Welfare Reform when he said:

"We shall be overwhelmed by fathers coming in to our surgeries. It will not be those who have never paid, because they will be too ashamed to turn up. It will be those who are paying and feel that they are getting a rough deal."— [Official Report, 10 February 1994; Vol. 237, c. 500.]

My right hon. Friend was right and his remarks were prescient.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland said, at about the same time:

"Despite the changes that the House will approve tonight, I trust, we should not ignore the continuing and dangerous unhappiness that underlies and reinforces our duty to get the balance right."— [Official Report, 2 February 1994; Vol. 236, c. 95.]

It is clear that the balance is still not right.

The Child Support Act 1991 enjoyed all-party support because no one in this place disagreed that parents who have become absent have a responsibility to support their children. That is generally accepted. Unfortunately, things went badly wrong between enactment and the creation of the agency. It is relevant to concentrate on the context in which the agency was introduced.

In 1979, only one in 10 children were living in poverty. Three or four years ago, the number had increased to one in three or one in four. A report was produced about three or four years ago by Action for Children, a long-standing charity that was set up more than 150 years ago. It claimed that 1.5 million families were unable to provide their children with the diet of a pauper living in an east-end workhouse 120 years ago. That is an indictment of the previous Government's policy if ever I heard one.

The Conservative Government spotted a golden opportunity to subsidise their social spending by taking money from absent parents, paying it to mothers looking after children—it usually is mothers—and then reducing income support. It was a golden opportunity that the Conservatives could not resist, and that is exactly what happened. They thought that they could cut social spending by taking money from absent fathers.

The scheme presented the Conservative Government with enormous problems. They set up the CSA in great haste and the result was a shambles. It was also set up on the cheap. It was not properly resourced, staffed or organised. I am pleased that in various documents issued by the Labour party there are commitments radically to reform the agency. "Children First: Reform of the Child Support Agency", which was issued about a year ago, states:

"Our proposals will rescue the decent principle of parental responsibility from the thoroughly bad practice of the Child Support Agency."

In another document, my right hon. Friends then on the Opposition Front Bench stated:

"The CSA should be made to adopt a policy that would be consistent, fair and efficient."

I suspect, however, that unfortunately the only way to reach that stage will be by getting rid of the agency and starting again. The mess left by the previous Government will not be tidied up by a few reforms here and there. We must be more radical. Perhaps it would be a good idea to examine the Australian model. The Australian version of the agency is rooted in the Australian version of the Inland Revenue, and there is a role for family courts which play an important part in dealing with absent parents.

I agree with earlier comments that whatever we do about child support, it will never be an easy matter and will always attract controversy. Nevertheless, we can do a great deal better than the shambles that we inherited from the previous Administration, who adopted their policy only to subsidise their social spending.

If we are radically to improve and reform the Child Support Agency, as we must, it is important to consider what went wrong after its implementation.

In my previous life—before I was elected as the Member for Romford—I was the constituency caseworker for the Under-Secretary of State for National Heritage, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks). I was working for him when the previous Government introduced the CSA. The impact in our office and on the people involved was immediate and devastating, so I feel that I am speaking from experience.

Parents who had previously had amicable arrangements with ex-partners and who had felt settled were immediately thrown into turmoil. The legislation should not have been retrospective. The result was a shambles. When the agency was set up, it was incompetent and unable to cope with the volume of work. The staff were overwhelmed. Those whose forms they did not lose were pursued relentlessly. Fathers were caused untold misery and in some cases were driven to suicide.

The agency became notorious for its incompetence. Like much that the previous Government did, the agency was set up in haste and repented, not by the then Government, but by its victims. In my office we dealt with cases where parents—usually the dad—could no longer visit their children, give them treats or buy them clothes because of the crippling burden placed on them by the CSA.

It soon became evident that the CSA was mopping up easy targets—parents who had been openly and honestly supporting their children—yet was unable to call to account the irresponsible, couldn't-care-less parents. That was a reversal of the supposed aims of the Act, and who benefited? Certainly not the parents caring for the children, who gained little or nothing—indeed, many were worse off, because of the strain caused by the bitterness. That affected the children, as it did the children of any second family, who found it impossible to manage on the income that was left. That put strain on the second family, sometimes to breaking point.

No one is arguing that parents should not be responsible for their children. A child is a lifelong commitment. Both parents must share that responsibility, but the system must be fair and take into account the position of the absent parent. What is the good of starting off with one family in poverty and ending up with two? It makes no sense from the children's point of view or from society's.

I am glad that the Government are intent on a thorough reform of the CSA to make it fair and competent. The minor reforms introduced by the previous Government were too little, too late. Parental responsibility is one thing; parental misery is another. I hope that all interested groups will be involved in the reform process, and that those groups will be happy with the outcome, as I am sure they will be.

I thought earlier that I heard an apology from the Opposition Benches—an apology for the suffering caused when the CSA was established. I thought that it was an apology, but looking back, I think it might have been a case of new leader, new conscience.

I start by congratulating hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today and Opposition Members on what can be described only as outrageous impudence. The former Secretary of State—I think that that is who he is, although he seemed to be having an identity crisis earlier—presided over the first five years of the Child Support Agency. In his own words, it came to the point of virtual collapse. Yet he expects the Labour Government, in their seventh week of office, to have arrived at a recipe for sorting out the mess. That is impudence of a high order. I was amused to hear another Opposition Member try to make the Government accept responsibility for the mess. I seem to remember that for the past 18 years everything that went wrong was blamed on the previous Labour Government. So let us get that sort of nonsense out of the way.

It is clear to me as a new Member of Parliament and to all my colleagues that the CSA is failing to deliver. Our most common topic of conversation is the CSA and the problems that it brings us in our case work. It is certainly clear that the agency is failing to deliver justice. It is delivering primarily a great deal of hardship and heartache to its victims. I shall not spend any more time giving detailed examples. We have heard many harrowing cases already. I have more, but time is running short.

The question is what to do for the future. Unlike the former Secretary of State, I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has not come into the debate with a fixed programme. It is brave to hold this debate so that we can have an open-ended discussion on this complex and difficult issue before any statement is made about action for the future. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on that.

The hon. Gentleman, like the Secretary of State, was not elected on a blank sheet of paper. The Labour party issued and stood for election on a policy document which promised, among other things, a maintenance disregard. Does the hon. Gentleman remain committed to that promise even if the Secretary of State has already reneged on it?

It is unfair to say that my right hon. Friend has reneged on that promise. She has not had time to start.

She said no.

The system is under review. I intended to mention the maintenance disregard later. I support the principle. So the right hon. Gentleman's question is simply dealt with.

What do we do about the future? I am agnostic. I have a great deal of sympathy with hon. Members who advocate tearing up the CSA and starting all over again. However, we have enabling legislation which we can use to build a new framework without going through the time-consuming process of further legislation when we already have a packed legislative programme. We have an urgent problem to deal with and we should look for the fastest and most effective way of tackling it. If that means abolishing the CSA and if we can find a quick and effective way of doing so, that is fine. However, if it means a root-and-branch reform of the CSA, that is also fine and that is the way in which we should proceed.

I do not have a great deal of sympathy with those who want to return the responsibility to the family courts, but if a working mechanism can be found along that route, fine. There are arguments in favour of using the court system because it brings people together instead of placing them at either end of a paperchase. It allows them to discuss and resolve an issue and agree on the spot. Then we are simply left with an enforcement problem. The more this debate continues, the more obvious it is that the answer is not simple but needs careful discussion. It will need all the input that we can get before we can agree a solution. I have every confidence that the Secretary of State will undertake that process and make a statement to the House as soon as possible on her proposals to deal with the problem. I am glad that she opened this debate so early in the life of the Government and responded to the evident concerns of hon. Members. I tabled an early-day motion, which is attracting signatures at a considerable rate. That shows the strength of feeling in the House on the matter.

There are issues that are almost independent of structure, such as the maintenance disregard. I have much sympathy with guaranteed payments. I know that that may have budgetary implications, but it would be a great incentive for whatever collection agency was involved to get the money in if it had to pay money out. That would give stability to parents with care that they do not have at the moment. Having to switch around by moving from income support one week to getting paid next week can get people into an awful mess. I have the deepest sympathy for them. We should consider maintenance disregard, guaranteed payments and abolishing the penalty for parents who do not co-operate with the agency for whatever reason. That does not penalise the parents but penalises the children. An agency primarily concerned with the interests of children should not penalise them.

We must reconsider the proposed budget changes. The operational budget of the CSA has been reduced year on year. It is hardly surprising that it is not becoming any more efficient if it is suffering from staff cuts. Whatever its future form, it cannot tolerate further staff cuts and expect to deliver a service. We must have an open mind, but we must also deal with the problem with the greatest urgency.

I am glad that we are having this important debate today. The Child Support Agency is the most frequent problem that I encounter in my constituency surgeries. Several of my constituents had their fingers crossed on 1 May, hoping for a Labour Government to bring some sense to the madness of the Tories' Child Support Agency and to give them hope where the Tories had left them in despair. There is no doubt that the Tories' CSA has ruined many people's lives.

The hon. Lady calls it the Tories' Child Support Agency. Does she not realise that it had all-party support at all stages?

I fully realise that, but the CSA was set up by the Tories and run by them for many years. They did not review it when many people said that it needed to be changed and changed again until it met the needs of families.

I agree with the Secretary of State that a review of the Child Support Agency is desperately needed, and I am glad that we are starting it today. My constituents ask for three things—that we make the agency foster co-operation between the agency and parents and between parents and children; that it should provide support to families rather than pulling them further apart, and be fair to both partners; and that it should give proper incentives for people to go to work and to co-operate with the agency. That means providing flexibility in the agency's rules. When I talk about incentives for lone mothers to go to work, that is shorthand for incentives to go into paid work outside the home—because if bringing up children alone at home is not work, I do not know what is.

It is shameful that the CSA has been ineffective in increasing the proportion of fathers who pay regular maintenance for their children. It confirms what constituents say to me: the agency seems to have been set up to penalise people who co-operate and to ignore those who do not. That is why we need to create the incentives for families to co-operate. All the fathers who have talked and written to me want to co-operate with their former partners and to contribute to the maintenance of their children. Rather than being helped by the CSA, however, they have been hindered and the result has often been a complete breakdown in communication between the former partners, to the great hurt of the children involved.

I am confident that we can improve the situation. We can make it a people-friendly service. We can make rules that are understandable and we can give people time so that their situation can be explained. We can also provide sensible links with the good money advice centres throughout the country, as I know constituents who have become stuck in problems with the CSA and have had debt problems. We can make an obvious link to put them in contact with people who can help them.

To give a couple of examples, a mother in my constituency knows that the father is contributing to the CSA and to maintenance payments. She telephones the agency regularly every week, giving them all the details of her situation and that of the father. That has gone on for months, but not one payment has been made to her. In another case, the father wants to co-operate and to understand the assessment that has been made of his situation. He even offered to go to the agency so that he could have the assessment explained to him in person, line by line. He was told that there was no point. Can hon. Members imagine the desperation that that father feels, not knowing how to make his pay cheque last until the end of the month and with the CSA saying that he has to keep paying at that rate?

My constituents' first priority is therefore the creation of a co-operative agency which allows partners to remain supportive, looking after their children, and which makes support a reality rather than just a word in its title. They also want fairness to both partners. Fathers rightly feel bitter that if they find a new partner, all of that partner's incomings and outgoings will be taken into account, but if the mother with care of the child finds a new partner, none of his incomings or outgoings will be taken into account.

Lastly, but most importantly, we need to create incentives which will work for fathers as well as for mothers. That means introducing flexibility into the system because no two families are the same. It is difficult to find boxes which fit all our different circumstances and many people suffer because they do not fit into the current rules.

Lots of expenses are not allowed, which common sense dictates should be allowed, in the CSA's equations. One of my constituents secured access to his children via a court order, which gave pleasure to him and to his children. After six months, however, the contact was stopped and he again had to go to the courts and spend a lot of money regaining access to his children. He spent £ 4,000 which he could barely afford, but the CSA will not recognise that, so he is in debt. That seems wrong. He wants to contribute to his children's maintenance, but he also wants to see them. He pointed out to me that if he were unemployed, he would at least qualify for legal aid in trying to get access to his children. It is surely wrong that he should be thinking about giving up his job in order to get legal aid to continue to see his children. The CSA's rules must allow the flexibility to give such parents incentives to stay in work.

Another of my constituents agreed with his partner that he would pay towards their child's education. Over the years, he paid out about £12,000. However, the CSA has decided that he has paid nothing. He and his wife made an agreement, but the CSA will not recognise it. Because of that, he and his wife no longer get along, to the great disadvantage of the child. The CSA simply says that my constituent has paid nothing and that he owes £12,000. That cannot be right. There needs to be some flexibility in the system to allow for parents to make such arrangements.

The third example is of a difficult break-up between a husband and wife. While together, they had financial difficulties and had to take out loans. They decided that it would be best to take a loan from the husband's parents. However, the CSA says that it was not an official loan and cannot be taken into account. That man's pay cheque simply will not cover his expenses and the maintenance for his child. Similarly, the CSA makes no allowance for the fact that the wife emptied their joint bank account when they split up, again costing my constituent thousands of pounds. When things like that can be proven, the CSA needs to have the flexibility to take them into account so that it can make a fair and just analysis of each parent's position. Without that, more and more fathers will want to give up altogether. Because there is no flexibility in the system to allow for those sorts of expenses, fathers think that there is no point in working. We need to create incentives for the fathers to stay in work as well as to encourage mothers to find work outside the home.

There is also a problem with tax relief. Some of the fathers who bring their cases to me have not been married, but they want to pay maintenance for their children. They rightly ask why their maintenance payments are not allowed for tax purposes when they are allowed for married fathers. Surely it should be the same for all fathers who are supporting their children.

My constituents want my right hon. Friend to ensure that the agency allows fathers and mothers to co-operate with each other. They want the agency to create the sort of atmosphere that enables it truly to be seen as a support agency. I am sure that they will welcome my right hon. Friend's announcement today of a telephone system with somebody on the end of the line when people telephone the agency. As she rightly said, people should also be able to telephone the agency outside normal working hours. Many of those who have spoken to me have expressed annoyance at having to conduct their personal life while at work.

We want an agency that is fair to both partners and provides incentives for both partners to work. That means creating flexibility in the rules.

We have had a good debate. The Secretary of State's objective of holding a debate in which all points of view can be expressed has been justified because a whole range of points has been made. Perhaps the right hon. Lady has adopted the slogan, "It's good to talk." British Telecom will be pleased with the adoption of the slogan as well as with the improvement of the telephone system at the Child Support Agency.

We have heard some excellent maiden speeches. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) paid a generous tribute to his predecessor, Sir Peter Fry—although it was somewhat marred by a snide aside. Other than that, it was a model of its kind. The hon. Member for Northavon (Professor Webb) was quite a contrast with the hon. Member for Wellingborough, who spent a good deal of time convincing us that Wellingborough was an old Labour seat. We have not yet seen whether he is old Labour, but he is certainly young Labour— whereas the hon. Member for Northavon spent a great deal of time explaining to us that he is really very old. Both hon. Members made extremely good maiden speeches.

In his maiden speech, the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) rightly paid tribute to William McKelvey, who was very popular in the House and widely respected. I am sure that all hon. Members will agree with that tribute.

Added to the tributes paid to Sir Peter Fry and William McKelvey was the very generous tribute paid by the hon. Member for Northavon to Sir John Cope, who well served the United Kingdom over many years. Sir John was highly respected in the House, and I am sure that all hon. Members were pleased to hear that tribute to him.

In his speech, the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) continued his campaign on the subject in his customary fashion.

We heard a thoughtful speech from the hon. Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks), who engaged in debate with me and other Opposition Members on the subject of social security. I always enjoyed debates with him when I was a Minister and he was an Opposition spokesman, and perhaps it will not be too long before he goes to the Treasury Bench.

I pay tribute also to Andrew Mitchell—the former hon. Member for Gedling—who has been mentioned in the debate. In the past two years, he was the Minister who presided over the changes and substantial improvements to the Child Support Agency. As Ministers will discover, it is rather easier to criticise an agency that is effecting a massive change in culture than it is successfully to manage that change. The changes implemented by Andrew Mitchell—with the full support of the CSA's chief executives and members of staff, who worked tremendously hard—have begun to change the agency, thereby making it much more efficient and effective.

We should not forget the situation before those changes were begun. In Britain, we had developed a culture in which knowledge that the state would provide led many parents to forget society's obvious expectation that parents could not simply leave a relationship and relinquish all responsibility for their children.

Responsibilities of parenthood were not sufficiently respected both by some mothers and by some fathers. Mothers often would not allow access to the children when they should have, and fathers often would not pay for the children's upkeep. The two issues were interlinked. Mothers often said, "We're not prepared to let you see the children because you're not paying," and fathers said, "I'm not paying because I'm not seeing my children." I remember many a court door at which, as the family finances were discussed, the Department of Social Security was the silent third party that was wrongly required to shoulder some or all of the responsibility for the children.

Under the old system, maintenance orders for children were very erratic and often pitifully low. Moreover, enforcement of the orders was not good. Many fathers failed to abide by court orders and were never sufficiently taken to task.

Most hon. Members realise that, even with two actively involved parents, it is tough to raise children, especially in their teenage years. When things go wrong and one parent leaves and is not at home to share the daily care of a child, it is vital that that parent should maintain contact and share some of the financial burden for the child's upkeep. I am sure that all hon. Members know how expensive it is to raise a child. Also, if the mother is wholly dependent on benefits, it is much harder for her to get off welfare and into work. Those two considerations drove the House to set up the Child Support Agency in 1991. If there is a raft of child maintenance at a reasonable level, the mother has a very real incentive to work.

The agency was set up with all-party support and the legislation was passed without a single opposing vote. The principle was that parents should pay for the maintenance of their children if they could and that the taxpayer should help if parents did not have the necessary resources. The scheme was designed to be fair and consistent.

The House was genuinely shocked at the reaction to the implementation of the scheme. It is easy to trade party political points, but I remember the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (Mr. Dewar), who was then Labour's leading spokesman on the matter, expressing that sense of shock from the Dispatch Box and accepting that changes would have to be made, just as the Government accepted it. Changes were made: payment levels were made fairer, greater weight was given to prior court settlements and further flexibility was added to the system.

I see that the Minister for Welfare Reform is now in his place. He was one of the two people—the other was my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) —who realised in advance that there would be implementation problems. I remember my right hon. Friend talking to Conservative Members—he alluded to this earlier—about the difficulties that there would be with fathers, but we were all surprised at the reaction to implementation.

The proper responses were made to the legitimate concerns raised after the initial implementation problems became clear. Too many people refused to pay and there was a co-ordinated campaign to disrupt the administration of the agency, but significant progress has been made. For example, 186,000 non-paying parents have been traced using the CSA's new specialist tracing service; new DNA tests have increasingly been used, and 2,000 cases of paternity were established in the first 10 months of the financial year 1996–97; and there has been a large increase in deductions from earnings orders—almost 50,000 in the first 10 months of the financial year 1996–97. In addition, interest is now payable on debts, and debts can be lodged in the county court register, affecting credit ratings. The departure system allows the agency for the first time to take account of life style and other evidence that contradicts a parent's claim, enabling proper settlements to be made. Those measures are working.

The agency is more efficient and improving. Recently, the agency collected four times as much as in 1994—a 55 per cent. increase on the previous year; 80 per cent. of assessments were accurate to the nearest penny; and 98 per cent. of payments were passed on within 10 days. We should recognise the progress that has been made. Some hon. Members were saying that the agency is worse than it was, but it is not. When Baroness Hollis visited the agency in Dudley, she rightly expressed her pleasure at the progress that has been made. She said:

"the CSA has made enormous progress in the last year. Around 80 per cent. of assessments … are now correct to the last penny",

and repeated the statistics that I have just given. She went on to say:

"This improvement owes much to the expertise and diligence of CSA staff, and I am grateful to them for their continuing efforts in often difficult circumstances.

I have been impressed by the determination of CSA staff to build on recent successes, and am confident they will continue to provide an increasingly efficient, accurate service."

There is a great contrast between those comments—with which I agree, as would any objective person—and what the Labour party says in its policy document "Children First" and some of the comments that we have heard today. The document calls the agency "unsuccessful" and says that fundamental reform is required to

"create a system that is fair, efficient and puts children first."

What are those fundamental reforms? We have heard many different points of view in the debate. Some people have called for the establishment of a family court. I practised in family courts when they dealt with child maintenance and I do not think that we had a good track record.

We must support the structure that is in place—the Child Support Agency—and make it work better year on year, as has happened over the past two years. When the Government talk of fundamental reform, do they mean fundamental reform or do they mean making the present system work better? When answering that, the Minister might like to bear in mind the fact that the hon. Members for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer), for Northavon, for Croydon, North, for Normanton, for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), and for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Turner) have all called for fundamental reform. I should like to know whether that is what the Minister wants.

In all the debates that we have had on the Child Support Agency during my time in Parliament, since 1992, the Labour position has been that there must be an income support disregard. Today, the Secretary of State made what might be a pledge—a possibility? a probability? —that perhaps, in due course, when circumstances allow, there might be a disregard. However, we have heard strong pleas from the hon. Members for Croydon, North, for Roxburgh and Berwickshire, for Northavon and for Kemptown, among others, for the maintenance disregard. Is that Labour policy? Is there a guarantee, or is it a pious hope for the future?

All those who have spoken have said that we must improve the efficiency of the Child Support Agency. Its targets for 1997–98, established by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, are set out on page 19 of the business plan published in March this year. Are any of those targets to be changed? The Secretary of State said that more than 500,000 assessments would be carried out in 1997–98. The target in the business plan is 525,000. That is not a change. What changes are there? Is it just the new telephone system, or is there more to the issue than meets the eye?

Those in the Labour party are serial reviewers. The Commission on Social Justice reviewed all aspects of social security. When its report was published, the new Prime Minister described it as the best piece of work since Beveridge, then dropped it. He then asked the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), who was the shadow Secretary of State for Social Security, to review the whole area and to think the unthinkable. He went away and thought. Perhaps it was unthinkable, but it was all dropped.

The Secretary of State has now come forward with review on review. I do not think that there is anything that she is not reviewing. About a week ago, I noticed one Labour Member below the Gangway whistling the tune of "I'm reviewing the situation". The interesting thing about Ron Moody's song in the musical "Oliver!"—

Oliver Heald.

Oliver is a good name. If the hon. Gentleman would like to join Oliver's army, he will find it on the Opposition Benches.

Sing the whole song.

I could sing some more, but I am not going to. The final line is:

"I think we'll have to think it out again."

I hope that the Labour party does not review and review and review—and then review some more. It is good to talk, but we want to know what Labour Members are talking about.

I have listened with great care and interest to this extremely serious debate. I thank all hon. Members for their excellent contributions, which were extremely helpful and well thought out. They fully justify the fact that we have called this debate so early in our period of administration. The contributions we have heard today will clearly form part of our thinking on reform of the Child Support Agency. The quality of the contributions has been a tribute to Parliament.

It is important that I reiterate what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said at the beginning of the debate. We are firmly committed to the principle that lies behind the child support scheme—that children are entitled to the emotional and financial support of both parents. By emotional support, we mean that fathers should provide much more than just their money. They should provide their time, their attention and their care. By financial support, we mean that absent fathers must also fulfil their responsibility to contribute to their children's upbringing to the extent that they can afford.

The child support scheme was introduced because the old court system was failing lone mothers and their children in that it failed to get absent fathers to pay proper and regular maintenance for their children. As a result of that failure, there was all-party support for the previous Government's aim for the child support scheme, which was to get maintenance flowing through to the children. That is still our objective.

The difficulties encountered by the agency in its early days are well documented. During today's debate, many hon. Members have told us about their constituents' problems in dealing with the Child Support Agency. It was interesting that the previous Secretary of State had realised that there would be problems. It was a pity that he spoke only to his Conservative colleagues about them and that he did not bring his concerns to the House at that early stage so that we could be aware of his anxieties right at the start.

The hon. Gentleman may recall that the then shadow Secretary of State, after discussions with me, was urged to invite the head of the agency to address Back-Bench Labour Members. I do not have the details, but I believe that he did so that those hon. Members would be aware of what was involved.

I hear clearly what the former Secretary of State says. My point, however, was that he should have shared those concerns with the House so that we could have had a proper debate, after which some of the problems could have been dealt with.

There have been many excellent contributions to the debate; it would be quite impossible in the time available to address all the issues raised. However, I assure all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate that their views, which will be properly recorded in the Official Report, will be addressed. I give an assurance that where substantive cases have been raised, they will be looked at carefully. Hon. Members will get a response on each case so that they know that their contributions today have been taken seriously and will be part of our fundamental look at the workings of the agency.

I congratulate the three hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today and I welcome the comments made by the shadow Minister on them. First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) for his excellent contribution, and for his wonderful articulation of Labour values and the way in which they relate to child support and the needs of children generally. His explanation of social justice, rights and responsibilities was truly magnificent, and I welcome the five points on reform of the Child Support Agency. Clearly, they will be taken into account. The errors in dealing with cases that he described were not excusable and we shall look carefully at them so that we can restore public confidence in the Child Support Agency.

The hon. Member for Northavon (Professor Webb) made a welcome and thoughtful speech. I agree with the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) that it brings great value to our debates if hon. Members making their maiden speeches contribute to the debate.

I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way and for his kind comments. 1 am particularly interested to hear of his offer to investigate the constituency cases that were raised, but that raises a question in my mind as to whether that sets a precedent. Rather than my endless correspondence with the head of the Child Support Agency, perhaps I should correspond with the Minister. Perhaps he will advise me.

I was stating that we will look carefully at issues raised by hon. Members who have taken the trouble today to contribute to the debate and bring their issues to the House, as they are good examples that will form the framework of our thinking in the future.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) on his excellent contribution and on his wonderful tribute to his predecessor, Willie McKelvey. It is very good to hear of his recovery to health, as we were all very worried about his illness. Again, I send him the good wishes of the whole House for a happy and healthy retirement. My hon. Friend made some excellent points, which will be noted. We shall respond to particular cases accordingly.

Speeches made by other Back Benchers have been equally valuable. In these debates, the experiences of hon. Members of what is going on outside the House are important. Hon. Members brought into our debate the reality of what is going on outside. It is a tribute to the way in which today's debate has been conducted and gives a real flavour of what is happening in our advice bureaux and constituencies. It is very easy for a new Administration quickly to become remote from the real world. We want to ensure that all our policy thinking and development is based on reality so that we address the real issues that Members of Parliament confront.

There was no finer example of that than my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien), who has a good and long history of dealing with constituency problems about child support. He has diligently presented those problems to Parliament in the past. I pay tribute to him. He has brought a litany of problems to the House. Delays and lost correspondence are not acceptable. We have to ensure that we introduce a fast, efficient and effective administration to the Child Support Agency in the light of the problems that he identified.

Similarly, the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), in his welcoming remarks, raised several issues, particularly about backlog, which has to be addressed urgently, and about research, because quality research guides thinking in this area. I am well aware of the Bradshaw and Millar research. We will look at it again in the light of the points that the hon. Gentleman raised. It should be a valuable contribution to our thinking in future.

I always welcome the contributions to these debates that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Wicks) makes. He made a thoughtful speech. His expertise and knowledge of broader family support policies have always been a guiding principle in his thinking about child support matters, and they are welcome. It is a tribute to him that many of the Labour party's policies have been led in a direction of wider social policy and family policy matters. I note with great care the seven-point strategy that he developed in his speech. I shall pick out just two of his points. The first is how the agency has targeted soft targets, and how people have apparently been getting away with it. That situation has been reinforced by the way in which the agency has looked at those who have made an attempt to comply with it. Clearly, we must look at that problem and broaden the approach. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman spoke about developing a proper case work model so that, when people contact the Child Support Agency, they have regular and coherent contact with a particular officer. That is a valuable suggestion and we must take it seriously.

The hon. Member for North Essex made his usual Friday morning contribution to our debate. It is a great tribute, given the sparsity of attendance on the Opposition Benches. I noted the points that he made about the cases on which he based his experience and we shall take those into account.

We shall also take into account the contribution of the hon. Member for Taunton (Mrs. Ballard), who came up with a four-point plan. I think that the plans suggested this morning ranged from one to seven-point plans, but they all contained welcome suggestions and many made reinforcing points about a range of issues. As we set out on our review of the Child Support Agency's work, it is important that those points have been made before the House so that we can form our thinking in the future.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's kind comments. Will he acknowledge that, in the business plan published before he was appointed to his present post, targets were set? Does he think that those are the right targets? If not, what targets will he now set? Given that a whole day's debate has been devoted to this subject, that is what we expected to discuss.

Now that we are responsible for the Child Support Agency, it is essential to ensure that the targets are met and that the agency is effective and efficient in the future. We are determined to carry out that task to the best of our ability.

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman's reply to my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), but it is in flat contradiction to the central point made by the Secretary of State, which was that proper targets had not been set. [Interruption.] I shall give the hon. Gentleman time to receive his briefing from the Secretary of State. He appeared to say that the right targets had been set and that the Government must meet them.

The point that I was trying to make was that the targets that are set must be achieved. We must give the public confidence that the Child Support Agency is improving. That is our intent.

I shall comment—briefly, because time is fast running out—on the other contributions from Back Benchers, because they are all worthy of comment in winding up the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Dr. Jones) made an excellent contribution. She said that it is not acceptable for maintenance not to be paid and that delays in assessment and collection of maintenance cannot be tolerated. We must ensure that there is a secure base for mothers to receive that maintenance so that they are absolutely clear about their circumstances.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer) said that we need to ensure fairness within the system. He said that the agency was not performing as well as it had in the past. It is our responsibility to ensure that that does not happen. We must improve the agency and make it more efficient and effective.

The Under-Secretary has welcomed the comments made in the debate, but many were calling for fundamental reforms or the scrapping of the agency. Is he prepared to contemplate that?

As we said clearly, we are setting out on the review of what needs to be done. Today's debate is the start of the process of listening to the wide range of views in the House. We shall make an assessment of those views and, in due course, make our proposals. It would be quite wrong to initiate this debate, allow hon. Members to contribute and then prejudge its conclusion by announcing the outcome. I do not intend to do that.

Others who spoke included my hon. Friends the Members for Romford (Mrs. Gordon), for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Turner) and for South Swindon (Ms Drown), who all made excellent speeches which I welcome. I particularly welcome my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon's point about bringing in the work of other agencies, and she mentioned money advice agencies. Clearly, we can use the interaction with agencies dealing with family debt and other problems to ensure that there is a consistent approach and that the CSA, as a consequence, can work more effectively. We shall consider her proposal.

I welcome the response of my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon to the extra telephone line proposals. It is essential that clients of the CSA have the opportunity to make effective contact with the agency but, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, at an appropriate time which leads to an effective outcome of the call. That is why we are looking at increasing the number of telephone lines and adding out-of-hours services, which will start to address the issue. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon brought to the attention of the House a particular case. We shall look at it, because if the circumstances she described are correct, it is not acceptable.

One other general point concerns complaints. There is a new impartial complaints investigation system, and it has been said that the outcomes of investigations should be reported to the House. We need to consider that extremely seriously. However, the fact that the system has had to be set up is a mark not of success but of the failure of the system. The fact that so many cases have had to go to the ombudsman, and the chaos that that has caused, should not be seen as a great triumph. It is an admission of the failure of the previous system, but I hope that it will lead to more effective scrutiny of those complaints.

There is no doubt that the introduction of the child support system was beset by difficulties, not least the disappointing performance of the agency, but I can assure the House that work is already in hand to improve the agency's services further. Since she took up her post in April 1997, Mrs. Boardman, the new chief executive, has announced a number of initiatives to examine the agency's activities, including continuing action on the way in which the CSA establishes contacts with its customers.

I have alluded to the CSA making earlier telephone contact to help absent parents fill in forms, answer queries and arrange maintenance payments earlier to try to reduce arrears. The agency is also looking at the way in which it handles inquiries and complaints. The chief executive is examining the organisation and structure of the CSA's operations to see whether they represent the best way of meeting the needs of customers.

I recognise that the CSA has a long way to go and that improvements must continue. We must ensure that the agency provides as efficient and effective a service as possible. We must ensure also that absent fathers are not given any excuse not to comply with the agency's demands and pay proper maintenance for their children.

While some absent fathers have encountered genuine hardship as a result of the CSA's activities, many others have simply tried to wriggle out of their liabilities. My right hon. Friend gave an extraordinary example of that earlier, and that behaviour is not acceptable. In short, this nonsense must stop. Under this Government, fulfilling parental responsibilities will be, not an option, but a fact of life for absent fathers. Lone mothers need regular maintenance, and have a right to it, as a means of helping them off benefit and back into work.

Child support is about ensuring that children receive their income. As I have stressed this morning, in the coming months we shall look closely at all aspects of child support and all aspects of the workings of the agency.

I am grateful for this opportunity to raise again on the Adjournment of the House the subject of telecommunications masts and planning guidance. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) — whom I welcome to his new position—may not be familiar with the previous debate, although I drew his officers' attention to it. I last raised the matter on 7 February this year, and I shall not rehearse that speech now. However, I shall summarise the difficulties that we face in my constituency and in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo), who wishes to associate himself with my remarks. He apologises to the House for not being present as he is attending to constituency matters.

The nub of the issue is as follows. It has been the Government's long-standing policy to promote a coherent network of mobile telecommunications across the country. Initially, that network was concentrated in areas of high population where planning issues regarding conservation of the countryside were not pressing. However, as the networks of telecommunications providers, such as Orange and BT Mobile, have been extended into more sensitive areas, the needs of the telecommunications systems have started to conflict with the Government's priorities regarding conservation of the countryside.

I extend this explanation to the Minister in a bipartisan spirit. I am sure that he agrees with expanding telecommunications for many reasons, including safety, assisting economic development and improving bad communications in rural areas during times of bad weather and so on. However, he will agree also that the Government have a responsibility to preserve the countryside.

My constituency comprises the Essex side of Dedham vale, which was made famous by Constable's great paintings. The skies above our heads that he painted are virtually unchanged today. However, we are confronted with the possibility that those views will be marred by stark vertical structures that will be erected in prominent places in order to achieve good coverage. Effective communications require line of sight between the aerial and the mobile telephone. There has been much discussion with the telecommunications companies, with the local planning authority—Colchester borough council—and Babergh district council. I thank the telecommunications companies, because they have taken great trouble to see me to explain their difficulties.

The nub of the issue is that there has been a planning inquiry involving an especially sensitive site. The area is designated as one of outstanding natural beauty and the site chosen is just outside the boundary.

On 7 February, I sought to secure an assurance from the then Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, a south London Member—who is now my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir P. Beresford)—on what would be the priority in the sort of case to which I am referring. The then Minister was, of course, restricted from making any specific comments about a case still coming through the system. My hon. Friend, however, gave me one extremely useful assurance. He referred to planning policy guidance note 8, issued by the Department of the Environment, which specifically advises

"that those should be formulated"—

that is a reference to plans—

"having regard to the need to protect the best and most sensitive environments. While such established planning policies that have been the subject of public consultation form the basis for decision-making, other material considerations will come into play on a case-by-case basis. Visual amenity is one such consideration and the visibility of a mast from a designated area, such as an area of outstanding natural beauty, can be a material consideration in relation to both prior approval determinations and full planning applications."— [Official Report, 7 February 1997; Vol. 289, c. 1322–23.]

That is clear. That seemed to be the then Minister placing his interpretation on PPG8. In any event, the note is only guidance and does not provide a binding, decisive factor to be taken into account in the mind of an inspector. That was before the public inquiry.

During the public inquiry hearings, I put a question to the Minister of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions on 3 June. I asked about PPG8 and asked him specifically to reiterate the assurance that I have read to the House. The Minister kindly said:

"I shall ensure that my Department corresponds with him"—

that is me—

"on the findings."

The Minister was referring to the findings of the inquiry. He declined, of course, to comment on the particular inquiry. He added:

"I shall consider seriously any results that I receive."— [Official Report, 3 June 1997; Vol. 295, c. 177.]

The first purpose of the debate, obviously, is to try to extract the original assurance that I was given before the general election. The second is to ensure—I am seeking an assurance from the Minister—that the Minister is prepared to call in. The planning process is confusing because I understand that the planning inspector has the power, already delegated to him by the Secretary of State, to determine the application. I ask the Minister to provide clarification. If he can do so, that will be helpful. At some stage, however, the Secretary of State must have the power to intervene on the findings.

I want to be reassured that if the findings are against the borough council, against the objectors and in favour of development in a very sensitive area, the Secretary of State will do all within his legal power to ensure that the application does not proceed any further.

I accept that perhaps we are talking about the best of a bad job in the circumstances. The structure will be visible from certain areas and it will be prominent. The danger is that a precedent will be set, and the Minister might be able to address himself to the general point rather than the particular points of the application.

A precedent will be set. The Council for the Protection of Rural England, for example, is watching the outcome of the inquiry carefully. The question is which takes precedence: the urgency of extending mobile telecommunications coverage, or our priceless natural heritage?

There is an obligation for the operators to remove the masts if they are no longer needed, but once the masts are installed, they will be too convenient to take down. They will be there for the duration, and it will be impossible for us to go back.

I ask the Minister to reflect on the fact that the relevant technology is developing rapidly. The ability to cover areas discreetly rather than with prominent telecommunications masts is improving. I doubt whether satellite communication will take over; that is not the way in which the current technology seems to be heading, but who knows what the future holds? Twenty years ago, who would have thought that so many people would have mobile telephones?

It is most probable that the use of smaller aerials covering smaller areas will become the accepted practice in sensitive areas. One of the companies whose representatives came to see me subsequently sent me a picture of a rather unlikely-looking tree, which was an aerial in disguise. I am not sure whether that is the answer. It looks like a tree that has had its top blown off. That is the general shape— I am forbidden to use visual aids in the Chamber— and one can imagine a mast being concealed in that structure. Other options include concealment in a flagpole or even in roadside signs. That would seem the appropriate development in a sensitive area such as Dedham vale and other special areas, national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty.

If it means waiting, and that we do not have exactly the coverage that we would like for all the networks in that area for a period, that would be a reasonable price to pay for maintaining an important part of the countryside.

I am told—this came out in discussions during the inquiry—that the test for positive coverage is not whether one can receive a reasonable signal from a hands-free mobile telephone installed in a car, but whether one can receive a reasonable signal on a hand-held telephone in a vehicle. Most of the companies have a disrupted signal over most of the Dedham vale, but it is not a complete black spot in the networks.

It seems a reasonable request that the Secretary of State should carefully examine this case for the precedent that it will set. One company has already told me that it will examine other spots in the valley where it could establish further masts to improve coverage, for which the present case will provide a precedent. That must apply to many other sensitive areas in many other parts of the country.

I hope that the Minister will reiterate the assurance that was given before the general election. I seek an assurance that, within the powers of the Secretary of State, all means will be used to ensure that that precedent is not set. That is what I ask on behalf of my constituents. I cannot emphasise enough how many and how strong the representations on the matter have been. Representations have been made to me not just by local people, but by national organisations. I hope that at the end of the process I shall be a smiling and happy Member of Parliament, along with my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) on his success in securing a second Adjournment debate on this subject within a few months, and thank him for his kind words of welcome to me in my post. I hope that I shall be able to let him leave the Chamber, if not with a radiant smile on his face, at least with the look of a man who has made progress and feels that the debate has been worth while and positive.

I listened with interest to what the hon. Member had to say about planning for telecommunications masts. I appreciate his concern for the landscape in his constituency, especially in the Stour valley and Dedham vale. As he rightly said, the vale provided a great deal of John Constable's inspiration. It is an area that I know well, have frequently visited and enjoy enormously. I fully support his comments about its considerable quality as part of the English landscape. Part of it is now designated an area of outstanding natural beauty.

Under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, we have an established system for taking decisions on planning applications and appeals that come to the Secretary of State. These are based on locally prepared development plans, whether they be structure plans, local plans or unitary development plans. The public are involved in plan preparation. The local planning authority consults on draft plan proposals before it finally adopts them. Planning decisions are then taken on the basis of the plan unless, to use the words of the 1990 Act,

"material considerations indicate otherwise".

The hon. Gentleman mentioned a particular planning inquiry associated with potential mast development in his constituency. As he will expect, at this point I should make it clear that it is not appropriate for me to comment on the merits or otherwise of that or, indeed, any particular case. To do so might prejudice any future consideration of cases, including this case, that may come to the Secretary of State for decision. So the comments that I make will inevitably be of a general nature. Nevertheless, I hope that they will be helpful.

Planning policy guidance notes set out national policies on different aspects of planning. They provide the context for the local plan making that I have described. Local planning authorities must take their content into account in preparing their development plans. The guidance that they contain may also be material to decisions on individual planning applications and appeals. The hon. Gentleman made the point that it was only guidance, but I should stress that local authorities have to have regard to the guidance and that if they disregard it they can be challenged. Planning policy guidance note 8, which was last revised in December 1992, fulfils that function in relation to telecommunications. The general planning policy set out there is exactly as the hon. Gentleman stated in his speech. He accepts, and I endorse this, that this is an area of bipartisan agreement.

The policy is to facilitate the growth of new and existing telecommunications systems while meeting environmental objectives. These include well-established national policies for the protection of the countryside and urban areas. We want to facilitate the growth of telecommunications systems. Accessible and cost-effective communications systems have a significant role to play in the development of the economy nationally, and indeed in regional and local regeneration. This must not be done, however, at the expense of the environment.

PPG8 spells out a commitment to the environment in the context of telecommunications development. It confirms the need when considering proposals for telecommunications development to take account of national policies for the protection of designated areas, both urban and rural. I refer here to the sort of environments found in conservation areas, national parks and, crucially in relation to the hon. Gentleman's concern about his constituency, areas of outstanding natural beauty. The national policy considerations that should be taken into account in relation to such areas are set out in full in other PPGs. The PPGs form a composite series of planning guidance. With regard to areas of outstanding natural beauty, PPG7 on the countryside states:

"In general, policies and development control decisions affecting AONBs should favour conservation of the natural beauty of the landscape. In all cases the environmental effects of new proposals will be a major consideration".

I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman the first assurance that he sought, that the undertaking given by the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir P. Beresford)—I, too, had to check the constituency—is valid. Visibility from an area of outstanding natural beauty can be a material consideration in relation both to prior approval and to full planning applications. I will outline the distinction between those in a moment. The assurance that the hon. Gentleman sought is there. I confirm that the visibility of a mast from within an area of outstanding natural beauty is a factor that can and should be taken into account.

In planning for the roll-out of telecommunications networks, which manifest themselves particularly through the installation of masts and antennas, we are seeking to balance the different interests involved.

The hon. Gentleman will already know this, but it is important that I should put it in context. Installations by licensed telecommunications companies—or code system operators—are governed by the Telecommunications Act 1984, as well as by planning legislation. The need to protect designated areas when telecommunications development is proposed is recognised under both licensing and planning legislation. Licences granted to code system operators under the Telecommunications Act may impose their own conditions designed to help protect these areas. The control of development under the Town and Country Planning Act is managed in a similar way. The installation of any mast in an area of outstanding natural beauty or other designated area as specified in article 1(5) of the General Permitted Development Order 1995 requires a full planning application to be made to the local planning authority concerned.

There is a different approach outside areas of outstanding natural beauty and other designated areas. For these, the order allows code system operators to carry out various types of telecommunications development, including the erection of masts up to 15 m in height, without the need to apply for planning permission. Masts over 15 m require a full planning application. That does not mean that local planning authorities cannot stop masts under 15 m in unsuitable locations. An operator wishing to erect a mast up to 15 m high must apply to the local planning authority for its determination as to whether it wishes to approve within 28 days details of the mast's siting and appearance. The authority can refuse approval to one or both of those aspects, if it considers that that is justified. There is a right of appeal to the Secretary of State if approval is refused. It is important that local planning authorities—I am not talking of the hon. Gentleman's authority but making a general point—make arrangements to enable them to process such applications effectively within the 28-day period.

PPG8 encourages local planning authorities to include in their development plans policies for the siting of telecommunications equipment such as masts. The plans should take account of the limitations imposed by the nature of the telecommunications network and technology, and of the need to protect the best and most sensitive environments. The number of plans that include such policies is increasing. Local authority plans generally apply national landscape conservation policies on a site-specific basis and often include policies for locally defined areas of landscape importance. That could include an area adjacent to an area of outstanding natural beauty as well as the AONB itself. Once they have been adopted, those policies provide the starting point for decisions on planning applications for masts and related telecommunications development by the local planning authority concerned, or on occasion, by the Secretary of State determining an appeal.

Other material factors to be considered alongside the plan include, as PPG8 points out, the significance of the proposed development as part of a national network. Material considerations can also include visual amenity and the potential for screening the proposed development. The visibility of a proposed mast from within and without a designated area such as an AONB can be a material consideration. The planning arrangements that are in place are intended to offer the basis for rational and balanced decision making on the siting of developments such as masts.

Overall, it is desirable to keep the number of telecommunications masts to a minimum, whether operative or redundant. In the latter case, both the telecommunications code and the operator's licence obligations require that apparatus must be removed when redundant. Provisions under the planning Act reinforce that approach. It is a condition of the General Permitted Development Order that redundant apparatus is removed. Local authorities may attach similar conditions to any planning permissions that they grant.

With proposals for new apparatus, licences that are issued to operators under the Telecommunications Act already include conditions requiring them to take all reasonable steps to investigate the possibility of mast sharing. PPG8 sets out the established policy on mast sharing. It attaches considerable importance

"to keeping to a minimum the numbers of radio and telecommunications masts, and of the sites for such installations. The sharing of masts will help achieve this, where practicable, as will the use of existing buildings to site new antennas."

That is a policy that we particularly subscribe to and wish to develop. We already have what amounts to a "sequential test", which applies predominantly to out-of-town shopping, but a similar approach exists in relation to telecommunications masts.

Paragraph 27 of the PPG advises that

"local planning authorities may reasonably expect applicants for large masts to show evidence that they have explored the possibility of erecting antennas on an existing building. mast or other structure".

We are considering how we can take that further. On the practice front, I understand that the operators are piloting new approaches in the use of existing structures. In future, we may see more antennae attached to electricity pylons, for example. I appreciate that there are technical constraints that mean that mast sharing is not always a practical option. There are questions, too, of visual impact to be considered. Sometimes the installation of a further smaller mast may be preferable to additional antennae enlarging the silhouette of an existing mast. Those are just the sort of considerations about mast siting that can benefit from early discussions between operators and local planning authorities.

I hope that we can continue the progress that has already been made in matters of mast sharing and design. That must be in the interests of accommodating necessary telecommunications development, while at the same time minimising the impact of that form of development on the environment.

I am hoping that the Minister will reach this point before he sits down. In these cases, what is the mechanism for the Secretary of State using his powers to overturn an inspector's decision? Is that a decision that the Secretary of State can make entirely at his discretion, or is it bound by the planning guidance that has already been issued? Without wishing to invite the Minister to comment on this case specifically, there would be deep disappointment if the Secretary of State were not able to take that action. It would suggest that the planning guidance is defective, and I have always been assured that it would give enough discretion to turn down the case in any event.

As the hon. Gentleman must understand, I cannot comment on that particular case. I hear what he is saying, but I hope that I can give him the assurance that he seeks. Where a matter is subject to an inquiry or appeal, the Secretary of State has the ultimate decision as to whether to agree the application or matter subject to appeal. It will, therefore, be a matter for the Secretary of State to decide on, which is why I cannot comment at all on that case; it might prejudice the Secretary of State's discretion.

What I can say—and I think that it is important to say—is that we are extremely conscious of the concerns expressed by the Council for the Protection of Rural England, which the hon. Gentleman referred to. It has published a report on telecommunications development expressing concerns, which we have read and considered closely. We are particularly concerned to develop policies that provide the sort of safeguard that I know he seeks, while at the same time not damaging the economic imperative for allowing a continuing development of the telecommunications network.

I accept entirely the hon. Gentleman's points about possible future technological developments. It seems unlikely that satellite technology will enable the replacement of antennae, but it is equally possible that there could be a move towards more and smaller antennae and that that, in turn, would give certain benefits. Difficult issues need to be addressed to achieve the right balance between the two, but we are considering the matter in a spirit of seeking to protect the countryside in a way that achieves the objectives that he has set out for his constituency. We are concerned to do that not just in respect of his constituency, but throughout the country, and I assure him that that is a high priority on the part of Her Majesty's Government.