I beg to move, That this House
agrees with Lords amendment 50.

With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments 81 to 89.

Lords amendment 50 will help to ensure that Parliament can properly review the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission's power to disqualify a non-resident parent from holding a travel authorisation without application to the court, where that non-resident parent has wilfully failed to pay child maintenance and other forms of enforcement have failed. Parliament's ability to make that review before the legislation comes into permanent effect will be the same as that already provided for in relation to the driving licence provisions.

Lords amendment 50 will ensure that reports on the operation of the driving licence and travel authorisation powers must be put before Parliament within six months of the end of a two-year review period. Based on the outcomes in that report, the Secretary of State will have the option of making the administrative system permanent or reverting to the existing court-based powers for either or both of those administrative powers. Any decision to maintain an administrative system must be made by an order subject to the affirmative procedure. Hon. Members will thereby have an opportunity to debate the success of each measure before a permanent administrative system is introduced.

The Government appreciate the movement that the Opposition have made on the issue and the support given to the amendment in the other place. I agree with my noble Friend Lord McKenzie of Luton that the amendment represents a significant workable compromise. I hope that hon. Members agree that the commission needs robust enforcement mechanisms at its disposal, so that the small minority of non-resident parents who refuse to support their children financially are made to comply. The amendment gives the commission the means to help it to achieve that.

Let me turn to the amendments concerning the joint birth registration provisions. Lords amendments 82 to 86 are technical amendments that are necessary to bring into effect new sections 2B, 2C and 2D of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953. These sections cover the processes to be followed in cases in which unmarried parents are acting separately, because they cannot or will not register jointly. The amendments seek to ensure that the processes to be followed by parents under our new proposals are as streamlined as possible.

Under the joint birth registration provisions, most parents will register together as they do now. However, in the exceptional cases in which parents cannot or will not register the birth together, they may be required to provide information separately to the registrar. In some of those cases, the mother will give the registrar her required information in advance of the father providing his details. At that time, she will also give details of the father to the registrar, so that the registrar can contact him and require him to co-operate with the registration process.

As the Bill is currently drafted, once the father has been contacted and confirmed his details, the mother would be required to return to the register office to sign the birth certificate. These amendments will ensure that the mother will not be required to return to the register office once the father has been contacted. Instead, she will discharge her duty to sign the register by signing a declaration when she first attends. Therefore, when the birth is registered, once the father's information has been obtained, the entry will be considered to have been signed by the mother.

Lords amendments 81, 87, 88 and 89 address an issue raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its report published on 30 April. New section 2B(1) of our provisions will enable the information given by a mother under section 2A about her child's father to be prescribed in regulations. This information is essentially contact information to enable the registrar to contact the man concerned in those exceptional cases in which a child's parents are not co-operating with each other.

As currently drafted, the power to prescribe this information lies with the Registrar General, rather than with the Minister, and it is therefore subject to no parliamentary scrutiny. However, the report made clear the Committee's view that the power is substantive in nature. The provisions under which the Minister has the power to make regulations are included in the list of relevant provisions set out under section 39A of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, as inserted by this Bill. These amendments would include in that list of relevant provisions the regulation-making power conferred by new section 2B(1). They address the concerns of the Committee by seeking to ensure that the information given by a mother about her child's father is prescribed by the Minister and subject to the negative resolution procedure. I commend the amendments to the House.

Several hon. Members:

rose -

Order. The Minister has also made reference to other amendments in the group. The Lords amendment under discussion at the moment is Lords amendment 50, and the question is that this House agrees with Lords amendment 50.

I will be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to discuss Lords amendment 50 in relation to the travel authorisation provisions. I welcome the amendment from the Government. It follows a similar amendment that was tabled by my noble Friends Lord Freud and Lord Taylor on Report. There was a good debate on that occasion, in which Ministers made a commitment to return with a Government amendment. This amendment effectively delivers on that promise, and it was agreed with cross-party support in the other place.

This is a sensible amendment. I could never understand why the Government were treating the powers relating to driving licences and travel authorisations in different ways, but two good things have now happened. First, we are now treating them consistently and, secondly, because Ministers will have to report back to Parliament, the affirmative resolution procedure will give this House and the other place the appropriate powers to decide whether this significant sanction should be carried forward on a permanent basis. I welcome this Lords amendment and we give it our support.

The Minister is right to say that this represents a concession on the part of the Opposition parties, which understandably had grave reservations about allowing officials to have the power to withdraw passports, rather than it being done through a judicial process. I have to say that those reservations remain, but at least we now have the promise of a review after two years, at which point the matter will return to the House. I hope that whichever Government are in power at the time will take seriously the lessons learned from that process and be willing to conclude that doing this through officials rather than through the courts is not the way to proceed, if the evidence suggests that that is the case. I hope that the pilot will be undertaken with an open mind, and a willingness to accept the argument, to which we still hold, that judicial protection for these important civil liberties should remain enshrined in practice.

On the changes in regard to birth registration, I know that my hon. Friend Paul Rowen, who is unable to be here this evening, has taken a close interest in that issue and sought to persuade Ministers to re-examine it. I therefore welcome the fact that their lordships have tabled amendments to reflect the fact that joint registration can raise concerns, albeit in a small minority of cases, and that issues of domestic violence, among others, mean that the provisions need to be looked at again. I welcome the fact that the other place has sought to amend the Bill to take some of those concerns into account, and the amendments therefore have our support.

With the leave of the House, I am grateful for the agreement of the hon. Members for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) and for Northavon (Steve Webb). With respect to the measure on travel documents, I hope that the evidence that we have obtained from experience abroad will be replicated, but, as the hon. Member for Northavon has acknowledged, we will make a full assessment of the pilots and bring the matter back to the House, so that all hon. Members can take a view. I also hope that he is satisfied that we are incorporating sufficient safeguards-notwithstanding his dislike of the word "safeguards"-in the administrative approach, so that people who are affected by the measures will feel that their civil liberties are protected. I commend the amendments to the House.

Lords amendment 50 agreed to.

Lords amendments 51 to 102 agreed to.