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Tim Loughton: The new clauses are quite chunky, and again I make the point that we had no inkling about them in Committee. It is not clear whether these provisions are connected to the child safeguarding provisions in the next group and which in turn have connections to the forthcoming Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill. From what the Minister said, it would appear that they are more to do with a numbers exercise, to ensure that the correct figures are analysed. If that is the case, the Opposition certainly have some concerns about the wide-reaching nature of new clause 2.
New clause 2, as I understand it, places obligations, through regulation, on various people involved in child care to provide information, not about children in general, but individual child information, the nature of which we do not know. According to subsection (3), the information can be provided to the Secretary of State or "any prescribed person". Who will those prescribed persons be? Will it be you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or will it be me? Who will be involved?
Subsection (4) is even more wide-ranging. It states that the Secretary of State
That is, it appears, without any exemptions. The subsection continues
Who will those information collators be? Who will be licensed or allowed to collect, analyse, view and disseminate this information "to any prescribed person", as mentioned in paragraph (b), or
Not many members of the population are left out.
1 pm
There is then the provision that "any information collator" may pass on information to any other information collator. All the way through, the new clause appears to give enormous powers to the Secretary of State to decide who he thinks should handle, interpret, collate and act on this information. We do not have an inkling about these people, not least because we have had no explanation of this quite powerful new clause. It appears that the only safeguard is in subsection (7), which reads:
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"No information received under or by virtue of this section shall be published in any form which includes the name of the child."
That may be unavoidable in some circumstances—when child care is provided on a one-to-one basis, for example, or in small groups.
I fear that the new clause has been put together belatedly and perhaps rather hurriedly. I have serious concerns about whether it conflicts with the Children Act 2004. This matter was handled by the Minister's predecessor, but she may recall—the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) certainly will—that we had lengthy debates about the nature of the information databases. The Opposition continue to have serious concerns about them—and those databases are now beginning to be put into operation.
One of the safeguards that we were given—specifically written into the Act—appears in section 12(4)(h). It is that information of "such other description" may be put on to these databases. Specifically, medical records are not included, or such other personal records as the Secretary of State may by regulation specify. In that measure, the sharing of information was specifically curtailed for medical records. For very good reasons, we supported that. There were other categories involved as well. We do not appear to have such safeguards in the new clause.
Individual child information—not numbers—can be produced and must be produced as requested, and passed on to an indeterminate group or groups of people to do indeterminate things with it. Medical records, among other things, are not specifically exempted. Does the Minister agree that there is a potential conflict with that section of the 2004 Act? Can she give me some assurances that that was not intended, and say whether some further detail will be added to ensure that such a conflict cannot happen?
Will the Minister identify who the information collators are likely to be, and what they are expected to do with the information? I want a definition of what individual child information is likely to amount to. That is important. Much in the 2004 Act was essential to promote the sharing of information among professionals in dealing with vulnerable children who might be at risk of harm. We agreed with that, and that was the thrust of what became the 2004 Act. There were also some perfectly good provisions that protected the confidentiality of children and their parents. Those provisions seem to have been ignored in the framing of new clause 2. I would be grateful if the Minister gave us some more detail—which was, alas, not forthcoming before today's deliberations.
Annette Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD):
I concur 100 per cent. with the hon. Gentleman. At the top of my copy of the amendment paper I wrote "Child Protection". I assumed that the provision was an extension of what we were talking about with the Children Act 2004 in the context of databases. There were some words of reassurance that we were considering numbers relating to payments, but that was not how I understood it. That might be blamed on my interpretation. However, other people might have made the same error. If I had had a red pen in my hand, the amendment paper would have been covered in comments about ambiguity and non-understanding of terms.
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That means nothing to me. We then have the "prescribed person". I turn over, as it were, to the regulations and the notes and I read that "prescribed" means "prescribed by regulations". I do not think that I have ever seen such accompanying notes—if they can be called that—which actually say nothing.
Then we have the "information collator". I had no idea how wide that definition was. I did not know whether it went beyond local authority employees. We then have the phrase:
I have made some notes along subsection (7) that there was a slight saving grace in that there will be no publication of
I have the greatest concern about accepting the new clause without either a clear statement from the Minister today or an undertaking that there will be a clear statement as the Bill progresses through its stages of consideration. I am concerned about the whole.
The Minister's predecessor was extremely helpful to one of my constituents who was refused funding as a provider. It appears that my local authority had been misinterpreting regulations about how funding could be used and where. That shows that we must be absolutely clear about the regulations on the allocation of funding. The problem arose in the context of someone who was being denied funding for a nursery place, and I am grateful to the Minister's Department for sorting that out for me.
Justine Greening (Putney) (Con): I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). The new clause is far too broad. The Government need to be far clearer about what they are trying to achieve with a measure that they seek to introduce at such a late stage in the consideration of the Bill. There is a real danger that parents throughout the country will be concerned about the level of information being collected on their children. It would be ironic if parents were dissuaded from using child-minding services because of concern about the collecting of information that would then be permitted about their child.
We must examine closely what the clause seeks to achieve and whether the information powers that it contains are excessive to achieve the Government's objectives. I hope that the Minister can confirm what the Government are seeking to achieve and why they need particular information. Perhaps it will be possible to be more specific about what information will be collected, by whom, by what powers, when, how regularly, where it will be stored, who will have access to the database, and perhaps the central control of the information. If so, the House would be able to say much more confidently whether the proposal before us is good or bad.
I am worried that the reference to "any information collator" could include the Child Support Agency, and could apply to cases in which non-contact orders have been made. The new clauses do not make any reference
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to the Data Protection Act 1998, which may conflict with them. I find it difficult to believe that there is any information about the child care industry that it not made available to the Government. Can the Minister clarify the nature of the information that she lacks? The Opposition are struggling to understand why the new clauses are necessary.
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