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.