I arrived in my office just after 8.30 after a restless night’s sleep. The past few months, especially the past few weeks, have been very unsettling and like many of my colleagues, members and constituents, anxiety has had a knock-on impact on our equilibriums.
I set to work on emails which included issues surrounding the closure of Rye swimming pool, my Private Members Bill (which is being debated on 28th October) and our Ukrainian guests. Whilst most MPs travel up to London from their constituencies on a Monday morning, I tend to come up on the Sunday evening so that I have the Monday morning, free from meetings, to catch up on work from the past week which I had not yet managed to get done. I also prepared for the Scottish Affairs Select Committee evidence session – an inquiry into firearms licensing regulations in Scotland.
Afterwards, I had a virtual meeting with Department of Work and Pensions officials and the minister Baroness Stedman-Scott regarding the ins and outs of my Private Members Bill, the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Bill. The CMS manages cases through one of two service types: direct pay and collect and pay. In direct pay cases, the CMS calculates how much maintenance should be paid, and the paying parent pays the maintenance to the receiving parent directly. For collect and pay, the CMS calculates how much maintenance should be paid, collects the money from the paying parent and pays it to the receiving parent. There are collection charges for the use of the collect and pay service: 20% on top of the liability for the paying parent, and 4% of the maintenance received for the receiving parent.
Under current legislation, direct pay is the default option, unless both parents request collect and pay, or if the receiving parent requests collect and pay and the paying parent is deemed ‘unlikely to pay’ by demonstrating an unwillingness to pay their liability. This is so paying parents have the option to not incur additional charges should they pay in full and on time, and it applies to all cases irrespective of any other personal circumstances between parents, including domestic abuse.
Requiring receiving parents who feel they are victims of domestic abuse to use the direct pay service means they are at risk from ongoing abuse or control. My Bill will allow the DWP Secretary of State to place a CMS case onto the collect and pay service when the Secretary of State is satisfied on the basis of evidence that a party is a victim of domestic abuse.
One of the issues I raised with the DWP is that because the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) aims to encourage parental co-operation through family-based arrangements, if parents need the CMS to ‘collect and pay’, the paying parent must pay a fee and the receiving parent must also pays a fee as the CMS must administer the payments paid and received. I feel it is unfair for a victim of domestic abuse (usually a woman) to have to pay a fee when they are being abused.
I had agreed to give an interview to BBC South East at 14.10 – just, as it happened, after the announcement was made that Penny Mordaunt did not reach the required 100 nominations by MPs. As Boris Johnson had decided the day before that he would not be going forward as a candidate, this meant that Rishi Sunak, with over 200 nominations, would become Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. I confess to feeling relieved. I know many members will feel put out that they did not get a chance to vote, but we now have a Prime Minister who has the support of the significant majority of MPs.
The Scottish Affairs Select Committee evidence session was really interesting, but I was sad to hear first-hand accounts of the shootings on the Isle of Skye. We are looking at whether changes need to be made to gun licensing regulation and a report will be published in due course.
My final meeting of the day was of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Wetlands where experts explained how wetlands can help us combat the climate emergency by storing millions of tons of carbon at a rate far faster than forests. The speakers also discussed how private and public finance can work together to kick-start massive carbon storage in saltmarsh wetlands. All in all a very interesting discussion and very relevant to the work I am engaged with for Hastings and Rye.