---

Beverley Hughes: I sympathise with hon. Members who are anxious about new clauses that have been tabled late in the proceedings, and I shall try to deal with their concerns. Government new clause 2 reflects provisions in the Education and Inspections Bill on individual child data in schools. Those are based on provisions in section 537A of the Education Act 1996, which was passed under the previous Administration. The powers in the new clause are almost identical to those provisions because, as I have tried to outline, we have made a big push on early-years provision, so they need to apply to that sector too.

The power is an enabling one, based on the long-standing provisions in the 1996 Act. Hon. Members are understandably anxious to probe the nature of the information that will be provided. That will be dealt with in detailed regulations, which will define the nature of the data collected and identify those who can collect it. Information collators may be local authority officers, civil service statisticians or anyone who has the right to collate information on behalf of Government. There is therefore a circumscribed group of people who can collect that information.

Tim Loughton: Will all the people who are given powers as information collators be subject to scrutiny under the Bichard proposals in the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill? Can the Minister guarantee that anyone who is nominated as a collator who has access to that information will be vetted accordingly?

Beverley Hughes: The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill proposes that specific groups of people will be subject to the highest level checks in the barring and vetting scheme if they collect or collate information. Those groups include people who are responsible for the updating and upkeep of data and procedures on the information-sharing index to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. I will go away and ask if those people, and the data provision under the new clause, will be caught. My understanding is that they will not, because that data and information is not of the same order, but I shall certainly ask about that.

Tim Loughton: I am rather alarmed by that reply, as I thought that the Minister was going to say, "Yes, obviously." Those people will be in receipt of a great deal of information about where children are, what they do there, how many children there are, what their hours of attendance are, what sort of services they receive and which staff deal with them. It is essential to vet such people because if they had bad intentions they could use that information themselves or pass it on to others who might use it for purposes for which it was not intended. I therefore hope that the Minister will do a little more than go away and check. I hope that she will go away and make sure that the provision is watertight.

Beverley Hughes: As I told the hon. Gentleman, a compulsory check at the highest level will be made on
 
9 Mar 2006 : Column 979
 
the people administering the information-sharing index, but we have yet to finalise which groups of people are affected and which level of check will be imposed on those working in local authorities. That is an issue to which we will return during proceedings on the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill.

Hon. Members may be reassured to learn that current arrangements involve the transfer of individual child information from providers to local authorities. In the new clause we are seeking to standardise that practice. A survey that we conducted in December among a large number of local authorities demonstrated that the majority already collect information about early years settings on an individual child basis. The Department for Education and Skills requires that information to be sent to it in an aggregated form.

1.15 pm

Many local authorities welcome the proposal to mirror the way in which school data is provided so that individual child information can be passed on to the Department, because—to answer the hon. Gentleman's question—that will reduce their workload and make their task much simpler. I accept that that does not take into account concerns about the kind of information collected, but we envisage that the amount of that information will be limited. It could include identifying information on children such as gender and ethnicity, whether they receive special educational needs provision, and, of course, the number of hours that they spend in the setting, including the number of funded hours. That is essential because, as I said at the beginning of our debate, some providers lose out if parents take up the free nursery education offer with a number of different providers. Because the information that the Department receives is aggregated, we cannot ensure that funding flows to the providers who are caring for the child for a certain number of hours a week. Providers are particularly concerned about that, as hon. Members will appreciate.

Annette Brooke: When the regulations are published, will the Minister include a requirement that the local authority must not keep information on certain things? I am sure that we all accept the examples that she has given, but much more detail could be requested, and the new clause would permit a considerable amount of information to be held.

Beverley Hughes: It will not be necessary to include things on which the local authority must not hold information, because local authorities and providers can only hold and pass on information if the regulations empower them to do so. Indeed, that information is already circumscribed. For example, it is legally not possible for information on medical records to be held and passed on. We are simply talking about identifying information and the number of hours and weeks that the child spends in the setting. Such information can help us to assess whether child outcomes are achieved by local authorities.

Tim Loughton: I hope that the Minister understands why we are trying to establish the detail of the proposal. She said that medical records were exempt, and would
 
9 Mar 2006 : Column 980
 
not be kept on the database—a point that I made in relation to section 12 of the Children Act 2004. Does one provision override the other? The new clause does not refer to the 2004 Act or to the exemptions in it, so is there a measure that makes it explicit that the new clause is subject to those exemptions? The exemptions apply to national and local databases, and will not necessarily apply to the database that will be collated. I am not sure that there is an interconnection.

Beverley Hughes: Existing legislation is not swept away, as the hon. Gentleman will know from his careful reading of the clauses. The provisions that prevent the holding and passing on of medical records at present will take precedence.

For both reasons—for the flow of funding, and in order to assess whether local authorities are meeting their duty on outcomes for children in the round—we need the information. It is routinely held and passed on by providers and local authorities. It is important that we standardise that. Our survey of local authorities showed that some were collecting some information and others were collecting other information. The regulations will standardise the collection of information.

Justine Greening: I understand how the information might be used by central Government, but it seems slightly contradictory that the Bill gives powers and duties to local authorities to make sure that child care provision is available locally. I have many young parents living in my constituency, Putney, and I question whether the level of detail is appropriate. Local authorities are being given powers and duties to provide child minding and child care facilities, but the Secretary of State is seeking such a level of detail that the Department could interfere in individual nurseries. Surely it is for local authorities to take decisions. Why does the Department need such detail? Why can it not accept the summary detail that it gets in other areas of education?

Beverley Hughes: The hon. Lady is wrong about that. The level of detail that relates to children of other ages is not aggregate. Local authorities must increasingly provide individual level data, because the funding flows from Government to local authorities. Local authorities may allocate it, but the level of provision is based on numbers of children, and in this instance, where those children are accessing the free nursery entitlement that the Government have provided. We want the money to flow more effectively to the providers. In order to give parents more flexibility, so that they have a range of options for that nursery offer, we need to make sure that we can disaggregate in the case of children for whom the offer is spread over a number of different providers. That is happening now and providers are losing out, because only one provider is getting the total amount of money, whereas there might be another one, two or three providers who have the child for part of the week but are not getting the money that flows from that.

The other important issue is the outcomes duty. Local authorities will want to test themselves as to how far, for the population as a whole, they are improving outcomes for children and reducing inequality. We as a
 
9 Mar 2006 : Column 981
 
Department want to assure ourselves that local authorities are fulfilling the terms of that duty. There will, of course, be further opportunity to discuss the matter in the other place, and I can assure hon. Members that further details of how we envisage the measure working, short of the regulations, will be available for that debate.

---