The Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill will increase child support troubles, predicts David Burrows
The Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill hit the bookstands earlier this month—the “other payments” are in respect of mesothelioma, which bears no immediate relationship to child support. The Bill proposes the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (C-MEC) to do the job which the Child Support Agency (CSA) failed to do, and sets out extensive intended amendments to Child Support Act 1991 (CSA 1991). The already derided CSA 1991, with the separate proposed legislation as well, will be doubled in length. And doubtless the excessively cumbersome regulations will be proportionately extended to cover the new provisions in the Bill. Previous efforts at this legislation have gone through Parliament more or less unopposed; and so too, I suspect, will this. Not at all a propitious start…
A SEMANTIC EXERCISE
The reforming proposals, apart from enforcement, are light. First comes a semantic change with administrative undertones: out goes the CSA—it never had a statutory existence: everything in CSA 1991 was done in the name of the Secretary of State
