As I said in my reply, some 45 staff are involved in administering the relevant schemes. Six of them deal directly with the liability to maintain family provisions. I have no proposals to increase the numbers of staff. A review of the liable relative provisions is under way. In addition, we are monitoring the implementation of the one parent family payment to see how it works in practice. I do not propose to make changes until I see exactly what way that develops.
It might be useful to explain some of the statistics in this area of liable relatives provisions in order to clarify for the Deputy the fact that there is no pot of gold or goldmine available out there. Since the provisions of the 1989 Act came into force on 29 November 1990, some 19,301 cases in payment have been examined to determine liability on the part of a spouse to make contributions to the Department.
The results are as follows. Of those 19,301, some 4,962 or 26 per cent were not traceable. Of the rest, 9,140 or 47 per cent were themselves on social welfare payments, so the possibility of obliging them to make maintenance payments was insignificant. Of the employed and self-employed there were 5,199. Of those, 967 were unable to pay. There were 978 under investigation and 2,509 are to be investigated. Determination orders were made in relation to 745, with 350 of those paying and 343 not paying. On subsequent re-examination 52 were found to be in changed circumstances and not to have a liability. It can be seen that 26 per cent were not traceable. Of the 19,000 checked, 47 per cent were in receipt of social welfare payments. That accounts for about 73 per cent who were not in a position to make a payment or whom it was impossible to find in order to make a claim. I have explained the statistics regarding the balance, and £1,183,189 was collected.