Sorry, you were beaten to it.
Sorry guys, someone started thinking a bit earlier that you. From uk.legal :
I noticed the proposals for dealing with absent parents who won't pay
maintenance include :
1) Imposing a curfew on parents who refuse to pay for their children
2) Removing the passports of parents who refuse to pay maintenance
3) Allowing C-MEC to take money out of people's bank accounts if they
fail to co-operate
4) Using latest available tax-year information and fixing the award
for a year
5) Using gross weekly income, rather than net - to limit opportunities
for manipulating income levels
6) Charging absent parents for the costs of tracking them down
7) Information sharing with credit reference agencies - potentially
affecting future loan or mortgage applications
8) Naming and shaming absent parents who refuse to pay maintenance
Let's look at those a bit closer shall we ?
1) Imposing a curfew on parents who refuse to pay for their children
How's this going to work ? Who will police it ? What happens if a
curfewed person loses their job as a result of complying (imagine a
sales rep who must stay at home between 6pm and 7am - how can they
travel the country).
In short WALOB. And that's *before* we look at the HRA implications
2) Removing the passports of parents who refuse to pay maintenance
Again, how's that going to work. Similar points as for (1) except here
we have the facinating prospect that when ordered to hand over their
passport, the defaulting parent finds they've "lost" it. Obviously you
can't produce what you can't find. Let's say a "lost" passport gets
"found" (I never thought to look in the biscuit barrel). Since I have
never had my passport cross-checked (that's when it gets checked at all) at
an airport, how will the authorities know I've used it ? What if I
don't hold a passport, or only hold a non-UK passport ? I presume
foreign powers will be quite happy to see the UK government taking
possession of *their* property like some dodgy third world loan
shark ?
3) Allowing C-MEC to take money out of people's bank accounts if they
fail to co-operate
Possibly a sensible measure. Although given the governments track
record of tax credits et al, I can't see it working effectively.
Especially when they get the wrong people.
4) Using latest available tax-year information and fixing the award
for a year
Again possibly sensible. But see (3).
5) Using gross weekly income, rather than net - to limit opportunities
for manipulating income levels
Again possibly sensible. But see (3).
6) Charging absent parents for the costs of tracking them down
Again possibly sensible. But see (3). Although this will sound less
impressive when you offset it against the payouts and legal fees they
will incur from people who are wrongly identified.
7) Information sharing with credit reference agencies - potentially
affecting future loan or mortgage applications
Hard to see how this will fly in light of the DP issues.
8) Naming and shaming absent parents who refuse to pay maintenance
I'll be curious to know how this can be suggested, when people who
have absconded from control orders (suspected terrorists !) weren't
able to be named in case it infringed their rights.
So there we have it. What I spent 10[1] minutes this morning thinking
about. I now place this post in the wonderful internet memory bank
that is Google, and defy a government spokesperson to try an tell us
that "there were unforeseen complications" when one by one these
"proposals" evaporate like election manifesto promises.
[1] Actually it was 30seconds thinking, and 9 1/2 minutes typing.