The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chairman:
†
Mr.
Peter
Atkinson
†
Allen,
Mr. Graham
(Nottingham, North)
(Lab)
†
Brennan,
Kevin
(Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools
and
Families)
†
Brooke,
Annette
(Mid-Dorset and North Poole)
(LD)
†
Butler,
Ms Dawn
(Brent, South)
(Lab)
Dorrell,
Mr. Stephen
(Charnwood)
(Con)
†
Duddridge,
James
(Rochford and Southend, East)
(Con)
†
Dunne,
Mr. Philip
(Ludlow)
(Con)
†
Flello,
Mr. Robert
(Stoke-on-Trent, South)
(Lab)
†
Foster,
Mr. Michael
(Worcester)
(Lab)
†
Hill,
Keith
(Streatham)
(Lab)
†
Jackson,
Mr. Stewart
(Peterborough)
(Con)
Laws,
Mr. David
(Yeovil)
(LD)
†
McCarthy,
Kerry
(Bristol, East)
(Lab)
†
MacShane,
Mr. Denis
(Rotherham)
(Lab)
†
Miller,
Mrs. Maria
(Basingstoke)
(Con)
†
Russell,
Christine
(City of Chester)
(Lab)
†
Walley,
Joan
(Stoke-on-Trent, North)
(Lab)
Mark
Oxborough, Committee
Clerk
†
attended the Committee
Thirteenth
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Monday 23
July
2007
[Mr.
Peter Atkinson
in the
Chair]
Draft Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) Regulations 2007
4.30
pm
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and
Families (Kevin Brennan):
I beg to move,
That the Committee has
considered the draft Children Act 2004 Information Database
(England) Regulations
2007.
Unaccustomed
as I am to public speaking, I commend the regulations, which were laid
before the House on 4 July, to the Committee. They make provision in
respect of the establishment and operation of the database ContactPoint
under section 12 of the Children Act 2004. They place a requirement on
local authorities to participate in the operation of that database; and
they specify what information will be held, who must or can provide the
data, how long it can be retained, and who can be granted access to it.
They also state how accuracy is to be maintained.
The Government have made a
significant commitment, through the “Every Child Matters”
programme, to transform the delivery of services to children, young
people and families. The aim of the programme is to ensure that all
children, regardless of background or circumstances, have the support
that they need to be happy, to stay safe, to enjoy and achieve, to make
a positive contribution, and to achieve economic well-being.
ContactPoint will be central to delivering on that promise.
ContactPoint is a simple
directory that will enable practitioners working with children and
young people to find out who else is working with the same child. From
there, service providers will be able to work together to deliver
better co-ordinated support, as appropriate. We estimate that
ContactPoint will save practitioners a minimum of 5 million hours a
year. That time will be better spent helping children, young people and
their families than in searching for the contact details of other
practitioners.
If
ContactPoint is to make children’s services more efficient and
effective, it will be necessary and proportionate to hold a small
amount of information for every child. A more selective system would
provide support only for those children who have already been
identified as having additional needs; it would also fail to identify
those children who are missing out on universal services. ContactPoint
will make early intervention easier, allowing practitioners to address
problems before they escalate. However, I make it clear that the
database will hold only basic identifying information on all children
in England until their 18th birthday, and the name and contact details
of practitioners working with those children. It is more like a
telephone directory than some sort of
parliamentary almanac. ContactPoint will not hold any subjective
judgments or case information about the child or the family.
Consultation has been
invaluable throughout the project. We sought the views of more than
1,100 children and young people. Those views played and will continue
to play an important role in the development of ContactPoint. We also
worked closely with a range of partners, including front-line
practitioners, to ensure that the system meets their needs and
addresses any concerns that they might have. We are delighted that
Barnado’s, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children, the National Children’s Home, the Children’s
Society, Kids, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and
the Children and Families Court Advisory and Support Service have
agreed to become national partners in ContactPoint. Those organisations
provide support to the most vulnerable in society, and their
endorsement is testament to their confidence in
ContactPoint.
The
proposals rightly led many to stress the importance of maintaining
accuracy and security, and of preventing the misuse of ContactPoint. It
is right that we debate these issues today, and I look forward to a
constructive discussion. The regulations provide for the operation of
ContactPoint, which will be a vital tool in helping to improve outcomes
for all children and their families. I commend them to the Committee.
4.34
pm
Mrs.
Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con): I believe,
Mr. Atkinson, that this is the first time that I have served
under your chairmanship. I am sure that it will be a
pleasure.
We share
the Government’s objective of improving the quality of decision
making by professionals working with children, particularly in helping
the most vulnerable. The key issue is how best to achieve that
objective, and whether the database will assist or hinder
us.
I should like to
restate some of our fundamental concerns. The information sharing
index, now called ContactPoint, was first debated before I became a
Member, during the passage of the Children Act 2004. Regulations were
laid down to set up a trial last year and I was a member of the
Committee that considered them. Now, on this third occasion, we are
discussing the regulations to set up a database. Our position has been
consistent throughout. We need to ensure that time and money are
focused most efficiently to support those who need that help, rather
than spreading resources too thinly.
We remain concerned that
information indicating a risk of abuse and neglect could become lost in
a mountain of data. Many during the earlier debates cited the case of
Victoria ClimbiĆ(c), where, according to one academic,
“there was no shortage of
information but there was a shortage of wisdom of how to understand
that information”
I and
others have made our concerns clear to the Government, and we were
pleased that consultations and trials have been put in place to assess
the real impact of this new index. Today I should like to cover
some of the concerns about these proposals that have been expressed not
just by parents and children, but by professionals.
The debate in the other place
last week, led by my noble Friend Baroness Morris of Bolton, elicited
clarifications on some of the issues that concern us, but others are
still outstanding. When we debated these issues 16 months ago, the
Minister for Children, Young People and Families, the right hon. Member
for Stretford and Urmston (Beverley Hughes), said that the trials were
a first step in checking the feasibility and that the consultation
among those affected would guide the Government’s first steps. I
should therefore like to cast the Committee’s mind back to some
particular issues that the data index research has looked at, to see
whether we are picking up as thoroughly as we need to on the concerns
of those who are going to be most fundamentally affected by these
proposals.
The
first issue is the question of accuracy and updating, the second is
security and access to data, and the third is the impact of information
sharing. I hope that the Minister can respond in some detail to these
issues, because they are important. The number of people in the Gallery
today shows how many are interested in our discussion. Almost half of
those who took part in the Government’s consultation felt that
there could be a concern about the accuracy of the data on the
database. Given that a great number of the consultees will be the
people responsible for the accuracy of that data, it is somewhat
concerning that there is a deep-seated uncertainty about whether the
database can be as accurate as it needs to be to do its
job.
I should like to
look at two issues—I am sorry to have to go into such great
detail, but this is a very complex and technical area—some of
the data trials themselves, and the more general point about who will
be responsible for updating. Extensive and very technical data trials
were undertaken by a company called Atkins over the past 12 months. The
trials reported last August. Their aim was to look at the index and its
ability to transform children’s services by supporting more
effective prevention and early intervention, in order to ensure that
additional services are put in place for children as early as possible,
and that practitioners in health, education, social care, youth justice
and the voluntary sector can find out in detail who is working with
which child. I was pleased, as the Government doubtless were, that
there was a good match in the national data trials for the Department
for Work and Pensions and the then Department for Education and Skills,
and for the health data sets that were used.
However, I was concerned when I
looked in more detail at a further addendum to the Atkins report, which
was produced after the initial report. Some significant weaknesses were
highlighted in getting good matches from some of the local practitioner
data sets, especially those pertaining to some of the most vulnerable
groups of children—those who might be known to youth offending
teams, for example, or the children of Traveller communities.
I am sure that the Minister is
aware of the data to which I refer, but other members of the Committee
might not be, so I shall give them a flavour of some of the problems
that the data highlighted. In Essex, which provided data as part of
these trials, data on about
40 per cent. of children from Traveller communities for whom information
was available did not sit comfortably alongside the national data set
that had been put together by the Department for Work and Pensions, the
DFES and the NHS. Therefore, 40 per cent. of the data that Essex has on
Traveller children will simply go into the ether and not end up on the
nationally held information database for those
children.
The same can
be said in respect of youth offending data. Information in a number of
different data sets did not match up with the DWP national data set. I
am keen to hear today what additional work has been done with local
authorities since the report was published to find out how this
significant problem can be resolved, because if it cannot be resolved
we face some significant problems in our entire approach to building an
index to contain the necessary information about children. I am
particularly concerned that we could be creating a culture of
over-reliance on an incomplete, if not flawed, database, which would
create further problems when we try to give professionals more
information about the children whom they are working with. I look
forward to the Minister’s response on that
issue.
The
second issue is the accuracy and updating of that information. It is
clear from what the Minister has said in the past that each local
authority will be responsible for the quality and accuracy of the data.
As the London borough of Southwark pointed out in the
Government’s consultation paper, there is no sanction to enforce
compliance on data sources supplying local authorities, so it is
difficult for local authorities to ensure that they are being given
accurate and timely data. As that is at the heart of whether the index
will work, it would be useful if the Minister told the Committee what
measures will be available to local authorities to ensure that the data
they receive are as accurate as they need to be to ensure that local
authorities fulfil their obligations under the new
regulations.
As part
of the consultation, there was an indication that practitioners will
have a responsibility to update information when they are aware that it
is necessary. Perhaps the Minister will tell the Committee whether that
is a legal responsibility, or something that practitioners will do as
part of their day job. Will there be any compulsion on them to update
information, and to ensure that it is accurate according to the
information records that they
have?
I
also want to mention security and access, an issue that caused great
concern to those who participated in the consultation. I am sure that
members of the Committee are aware that the consultation has covered a
wide range of organisations, including those representing children,
parents and professionals. Despite the obvious concern of all those
groups about the sheer number of people—some 330,000 in
total—who will have access to the proposed database, and the
fact that more than half of those consulted said that no more should be
added to that number, the Government decided to add yet another
category: fire and rescue staff.
I am sure that the Minister can
justify giving yet another category of people access to the database,
but perhaps he will answer this more fundamental question: what will he
do to allay the overwhelming concern among so many different people
about
allowing 330,000 people access to data on our children? That should not
be causing the problem that it so clearly is causing.
Clearly, training will be
provided, which is to be welcomed. I am sure that the Minister is aware
that there are too many examples of security lapses. We see them almost
daily in our papers, and they relate to similar databases operating in
sensitive areas. He is aware of the case involving Leeds Teaching
Hospitals NHS Trust, in which 70,000 instances of inappropriate access
were recorded in one month alone. Does he feel that that level of
inappropriate access will be replicated in the children’s index?
If not, why not? In what way will it differ from the case that I
mentioned? If that level of inappropriate access is replicated, what
resources will local authorities be given to enable them to cope with
that huge demand on their time?
Such concerns will be
particularly acute in relation to any temporary or contract staff who
are given access to the database, and who might not have the same
commitment to security as other users. The Minister is aware of the
problems that the Child Support Agency had with temporary staff who
were given unrestricted access to credit reference agency data,
enabling them to make unauthorised checks on individuals. Ministers
have given assurances that those with access to the database will be
checked by the Criminal Records Bureau, and quite rightly, too. That
will come under the remit of the vetting and barring scheme once it is
set up. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole and I are aware
of that scheme, because we did a lot of work on it last year.
Members might recall from
debates on the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill last year that CRB
checks cover only known criminals. They do little to give further
information about overseas workers, who make up a significant and
increasing proportion of the health and social care work force.
Effectively, one could say that overseas workers are simply not covered
by the scheme, due to the lack of an effective network to feed in
previous criminal convictions from the countries of origin of many of
those who come to work here in health and social care.
Who will be responsible for
ensuring that any security breaches are acted on? Will the information
be available to Parliament, to ensure that we are aware of any issues
that arise locally from the index being put in place, so that we know
whether the system works quite as perfectly as the Minister and his
hon. Friends before him have said it
will?
In
the Government’s consultation, many organisations expressed a
great deal of concern. The children’s rights director at the
Commission for Social Care Inspection undertook research among
children. Of the children it spoke to, an important minority of 18 per
cent., who were perhaps some of the most vulnerable children, did not
want social workers to be able to access the index. There was concern
about the high rates of turnover among social workers, and it was
unclear to the children whether practitioners formerly involved in
their cases would still be able to access their records in
future.
Ms
Dawn Butler (Brent, South) (Lab): Does the hon. Lady agree
that part of the problem when we have such
a high turnover of social care workers is that children and young people
often feel the need to keep repeating themselves, and that a
ContactPoint system will alleviate some of the necessity for repeating
their details, as they will have that one contact
point?
Mrs.
Miller:
The hon. Lady makes a strong point. However, the
only problem with the index is that, as the Minister has outlined, it
will simply keep very sketchy data, so although it will alleviate the
problem of a child repeating their name, the name of their GP, their
address or the name and address of their parents, it will not hold any
further data. I think that that is what the Minister said, anyway. The
problem that the hon. Lady is alluding to should be dealt with by
social services departments. I know that my social services department
in Hampshire deals with that issue regularly, and it has looked into
putting its own in-house systems in place so that that does not become
a problem. I am unsure that the index will alleviate the problem
outlined by the hon. Lady, but the Minister can correct me later if I
am wrong.
Let me return
to the research by CSCI, because it is important that we understand
children’s attitudes. Some 23 per cent. of children were against
Connexions workers and careers advisers being able to access the index.
They felt that it was not appropriate for careers advisers to know such
a broad spectrum of information about them. I am sure that the Minister
will say that there will be professional use, training and an ability
to view the database on a selective level, but we find from CSCI that
children had a negative attitude towards the database from the start. I
would be grateful if the Minister outlined what plans he has, if the
index goes ahead, to help ease the communication block that clearly
exists before the index has even started.
I am
concerned that the index could work in quite a harmful way to undermine
the confidence between children and professionals, so I shall move on
to a little more evidence about that from the Government’s
consultation. It is not only children and parents who are concerned
about the way in which the index will work. Professionals who work with
children and who would be responsible for inputting and running the
database also have concerns and seek reassurance. The consultation
stated that the Nursing and Midwifery Council will need to see that the
new index is within the NMC code of professional conduct as regards how
it will affect nurses, midwives and community health nurses. Will the
Minister confirm whether that will be the case?
Has the Minister had any
representations from the National Union of Teachers? In the recent
consultation, it said that it did not feel that the database has been
established as a necessary and appropriate means of dealing with child
protection issues. Those references are not exactly glowing. The
Independent Schools Council believes that there is a lack of evidence
that it is technically possible to put adequate security measures in
place to safeguard such a system. Can the Minister give the Committee a
categorical assurance that it is technically possible to put in place
security to ensure that there are no security breaches? Such breaches
are clearly causing great concern in the minds of parents and
children.
I turn to the
information-sharing part of the regulations. Some clarifications have
been made—indeed, some
amendments may have been made to the way in which that will work. I
remain concerned that professionals might well be drawn into recording
masses of data, without one person taking responsibility for acting on
and being accountable for the outcomes experienced by many children and
families.
The
Opposition are still concerned that disincentives might be created that
will keep young people from consulting some services. When we debated
regulations on testing in Committee last year, we discussed the
possibility that if reference was included on the database to the fact
that a child had consulted certain services—perhaps sexual
health or drug advisory services—although no information would
be stored on the database, it would be clearly flagged to anybody who
saw it that the child had been referred to, or had referred themselves
to, that service.
The
Government’s own consultation indicates that although only 9 per
cent. of children and young people might be deterred from accessing
services, they might well be the 9 per cent. who need those
services’ support the most. Is the Minister confident that that
problem has been overcome? The research and consultation suggest that
it still exists. Perhaps he could reassure the Committee further about
that important issue, which caused a great deal of concern to Members
from all parties last time round.
I remind the Minister of the
words of the Minister for Children, Young People and Families, the
right hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston, when we discussed the
index
before:
“Our
sole objective is to ensure that the index aids practitioners and so
helps to prevent the kind of tragedies...that have occurred over
the past few decades.”—[Official Report, Second
Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation, 27 March 2006; c.
14.]
She then cited the case of
Victoria ClimbiĆ(c) as the latest such
tragedy.
The
Minister will also be aware of the fact that in 2005, the Select
Committee on Education and Skills questioned whether the index was the
best use of resources, whether issues of security and confidentiality
would be resolved and whether it would improve outcomes for children. I
fear that the Government’s own research in the past year
suggests residual concerns about those
matters.
The policy
intention behind the database is to improve the quality of decisions
made by professionals dealing with children. Will the database, in this
form, achieve that aim? We believe not. Users could see it as a
disincentive to use important professional resources. We also believe
that the database might not be complete and accurate enough to provide
professionals with the support that they need. The Government’s
own trials indicate a potential high failure rate in matching local
with national data
sets.
The
Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee in the other place concluded
that ContactPoint was not compatible with article 8 with the European
convention on human rights, which guarantees the right to privacy and
confidentiality of personal information. That Committee’s
arguments were compelling; I am sure that the Minister has considered
them in full. It is a shame that the Government have not listened to
its
recommendations and guidance on the database. It is an oversight on
their part not to have done more about
it.
On balance, we
feel that there are simply too many outstanding concerns, too many
unanswered questions and too many children, parents and professionals
who are deeply concerned about how the index will work in reality. We
shall not support the draft regulations, and we hope that by raising
these issues, we can gain the support of other Members who share our
concerns. They might be looking at the regulations afresh and
questioning whether the Government should go back and reconsider them
again before
approval.
4.59
pm
Annette
Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): I believe that
it is the first time that I have served under your chairmanship,
Mr. Atkinson. I welcome the opportunity to do so, and I
welcome the new Minister to his
position.
We
all want the strongest possible system of child protection, and there
can be no disagreement about the need for effective multi-agency
working and communication between professionals involved, in the
child’s best interests. The question is, how do we best achieve
that? Members of both Opposition parties have expressed reservations
about the information-sharing index, now ContactPoint, throughout the
passage of the Children Act 2004 and beyond. The Liberal Democrats
supported the 2006 regulations on the data matching trials, because it
seemed only fair and reasonable to conduct trials. However, we have
much greater concerns now that we have reached this stage.
I shall refer to the stage
before the data trials, because I spoke about the results from the
trailblazers evaluation last time we debated these issues. I am not
convinced that the trailblazers results have been sufficiently
analysed, or that they provide an adequate basis for proceeding with
this enormous national project—the biggest Government database
yet. Will the Minister tell me whether any evaluation of the
trailblazers shows quantitative or empirical evidence of the way in
which the trials improved outcomes for children? How did they impact on
the lives of vulnerable children? When I analysed the information, it
seemed to comprise mainly anecdotal accounts, not hard evidence, so I
should be grateful if the Minister will provide some more
information.
The hon.
Member for Basingstoke covered the data trials extremely well. I
endorse her points, so I shall move on. It has taken a long time to
reach this stage of the process, but I congratulate the Government on
keeping to what was said right from the beginning: it would be a
step-by-step process, which would not be rushed into. I welcome the
consultation that took place, including that with children and parents.
Approximately one third of the formal responses came directly from
young people and parents. Will the Minister confirm that the majority
of respondents from that group expressed their opposition to the
establishment of ContactPoint, raising concerns about the impact on
their privacy? That brings us to the human rights issue, illustrating
the heart of the matter for the people who were consulted.
I also welcome the attempts to
address some of the concerns that have been discussed throughout. The
Minister has already confirmed that the database will not flag up any
causes of concern. We spent a great deal of time discussing that issue
in Committee, on Report—indeed, throughout the passage of the
Children Act. I should like the reassurance that the database will not
include any subjective assessments whatever, either on its face or
behind the shield. How will indications be made in other ways? What
will trigger people to start talking to one another? Indeed, will there
be any triggers? I am not quite sure about
that.
Mrs.
Miller:
The hon. Lady raised the issue of information
stored on the database. Does she have any thoughts about the issue that
Action on Rights for Children raised, concerning the law about
circumstances in which children under 16 can give informed consent to
information sharing? Action on Rights for Children feels that that may
have been misinterpreted, and it questions whether children will be
able to withdraw or give their consent to have information held on the
database.
Annette
Brooke:
I thank the hon. Lady for that point, which I
shall cover in part at least when I discuss sensitive
services.
I reinforce
the point that the national partnerships, being formed with
organisations such as Barnardo’s, are of great interest. If the
index goes ahead, they will be helpful. However, we must bear in mind
that many organisations still have deep concerns that simply have not
been addressed. I concur with the hon. Member for Basingstoke that the
communications strategy and how we explain matters to children, parents
and practitioners will be of great importance. During the passage of
the Safeguarding of Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, we discussed how on
earth people would understand it. How much money is being allocated to
the communications
strategy?
Whom and
what should be covered by the index? Let us consider the size of the
database. Logically, I have always felt that, if a national database
were to exist, all children would need to be included because we would
never know where to draw the line about whom to include and whom to
leave out. I have expressed the view that a simple, local objective
database might be more acceptable, but then there is the problem of
children moving between authorities. Now that we are discussing the
details of implementation, it seems that the problem of children moving
between authorities will still exist. I do not know how it will be
picked up that a child has moved from A to B or, indeed, when splitting
time between parents, that a child spends part of the time in one area
and part in another authority
area.
A calculation
was made by a speaker in the debate in another place. That suggested,
certainly in London boroughs, that people updating the database might
be having to handle between 1,000 and 3,000 changes of address each
day, simply because of the massive movements taking place. Poole
authority, the main authority in my constituency, is very small, and we
would start wondering why on earth the database was needed. A unitary
authority with a total population of 140,000 people would have a pretty
good grip on
matters.
The
measure is very much oriented towards the large cities, but that is
where it is most difficult to capture the data. The British Association
for Adoption and Fostering points out that only those children who are
ordinarily resident in England will have their details on the database
and that many highly vulnerable children, victims of child trafficking
and unaccompanied asylum seekers might not fall within the definition.
I should be grateful for clarification on that matter. It is also
questionable whether Victoria ClimbiĆ(c), with her particular
status, would have been captured within the
index.
Members
of the Committee might be aware that I have raised the issue of
privately fostered children a number of times. We still have only a
voluntary notification system to local authorities in respect of such
children who come into the country. If notification has not taken place
because the Government have delayed setting up a compulsory
registration scheme, I cannot see how those children—many of
whom are very vulnerable—could be included on the
database.
Kevin
Brennan:
Perhaps it would be best to deal with the point
made about Victoria ClimbiĆ(c) now rather than later. We understand
that her aunt had registered her for child benefit and with two GPs, so
she would have appeared on the
index.
Annette
Brooke:
I also want to mention name changes. It is a
complex issue. In today’s society, a child often prefers to be
called something different from their official name at school. There is
also the problem of how that is correctly inputted to all the different
agencies. When we started debating such issues way back in 2003, I did
not realise that we would not be retaining child protection registers.
That has gradually come as quite a shock, as they are important. I
accept that we now have individual child protection plans and the
common assessment framework, but real worries have been expressed to me
that we are losing some of the important investigative processes that
took place under the old system. In other words, we might have fears
about abuse but, without everyone working together and tracking back,
we might not know the main causes of certain issues. I am deeply
concerned about the point that several professionals have made to me
that not as many full investigations are taking place as there used to
be. I would like to think that that is because there are fewer child
protection problems, but that is certainly not the
case.
The regulations
say that the details of those providing specialist or targeted services
will be included. I am not sure what is meant by specialist or targeted
services. It is fairly clear that sexual health, mental health and
substance abuse services may be added only with the explicit consent of
the young person, but I do not know what the other section includes.
Presumably, it includes things such as speech therapy, but could it
include other services that the young person would be concerned about
if everybody knew about
them?
The provisions
dealing with sensitive services worry me greatly. I know that the
Minister will understand
the point that I am about to make, which is not a populist view. We know
that there is probably a small number of very vulnerable 12 and
13-year-olds who are being exploited in one way or another and who need
access to sensitive services. When there was a proposal or at least
discussions about the matter, a great deal of debate took place about
whether any doctor who was involved should be required to notify other
bodies. The professionals who work with the most vulnerable girls had a
great fear that they would remain in abusive situations and not seek to
use the services. That concerns me
greatly.
Superficially,
it sounds fine to say, “Only with the child’s
consent,” but the word will get around among children that if
they are asked for permission and they say no, people will start asking
even more questions. I agree with the hon. Member for Basingstoke that
there is so much involved here, including the question of whether we
are talking about the children or their parents. We are dealing with
very sensitive matters, and with children under 16. We must work for
the best interests of the child, and sometimes that means keeping some
information confidential. I sincerely believe that, although I
recognise that the decision to keep information confidential must be
made by a professional, and that there must be strong guidance from the
Government on those matters that should be kept confidential. I fear
that the regulations are almost the opposite of the decisions that had
been reached on the basis of the careful working of
professionals.
Obviously,
security must be one of our greatest concerns, because everything comes
back to it. If there were not a worry about security, we might say that
it does not matter if the database does not work very well, but
security is the real crunch. I share the concern about the lack of CRB
checks on overseas workers. The case was made to me in a different
context recently. If a CRB check is done on someone who has been abroad
for a couple of years, that period is not covered in the check unless
the specific question, “Have you been abroad for several
years?”, is asked somewhere along the line. I ask the Minister
to consider that aspect
carefully.
User
numbers have been estimated at 330,000—an enormous
number—and I wonder whether there are any limits on the numbers.
I can envisage access growing like Topsy. We must take into account the
number of people who leave the caring professions. Sadly, there is huge
staff turnover and high rates of temporary employment in social
services, particularly in our big cities where all the problems are
thrown together. What provision is there for ensuring that former staff
no longer have access to the records when they do not need it? Does
such access end? We know that passes in this place carry on for some
while after their holders have left.
When it first hit the headlines
that the children of famous people might not be included in the index,
I thought that that said it all. There must be questions about
security, or why should we need to make special provisions? Now, we
hear that the provision applies only to shielding—I understand
that that refers just to the address—but even the name of the
carer might trigger something if domestic violence is involved. Is
there a process for appeal, so that people can ask to be shielded? That
could be very important in a domestic
violence case in which the parent did not want the perpetrator of the
domestic violence to track down the children.
On security, the 27th report of
the Select Committee on Merits of Statutory Instruments
says:
“The
Department have gone to a great deal of trouble to devise a scheme
which is as nearly perfect as is humanly possible. We are however
mindful of human
error.”
It goes on to
say:
“The
enormous size of the database and the huge number of probable users
inevitably increase the risks of accidental or inadvertent breaches of
security and of deliberate misuse of the data which would be likely to
bring the whole scheme into
disrepute.”
On
costs and savings, I find it difficult to accept the figure of
£88 million a year in savings. Were the 24 to 30 workers, given
as examples in trailblazers, administrators or front-line
professionals? We could be talking about different sets of people. Most
people are concerned that we should have as many front-line,
well-trained professionals as possible, so how many could be employed
with the money that will be required annually for the index and for the
set-up
fees?
There
must be a full cost-benefit assessment of whether the outcomes for
vulnerable children will be improved by the scheme. The Minister
outlined that there are potential benefits, and I do not think that
anybody can deny that. However, I cannot believe the statistics given
in support of the argument that the effort to track down GPs and so on
will save a huge amount of money. Is the universal database with simple
data on it really going to provide proactive protection? I guess that
that could be argued, but I am not sure that it will do so. There will,
however, be opportunity costs: we could use the money to reduce social
workers’ case loads and improve retention by providing them with
more colleagues, so that they have time to communicate meaningfully
with the other professionals who work with their clients and can
therefore do their jobs better. If we spent all that money on more
professional staff, including health visitors, we would know earlier
when children needed help.
I am not sure
that the index will aid really early, pre-school intervention, which is
all important. Given the risks, which must be seen as costs—in
terms of accuracy, security, the danger of over-reliance on the index,
and the great concern that people will not be able to see the wood for
the trees—I cannot at this stage see that the benefits outweigh
the costs.
5.19
pm
James
Duddridge (Rochford and Southend, East) (Con): I do not
wish to delay the Committee for long, given that my hon. Friend the
Member for Basingstoke has covered a number of points, but I rise to
seek clarification on two issues.
First, can the Minister allay
my concerns about Government IT projects? In my modest experience, they
do not tend to be particularly good at delivering the fine detail. I
have had constituency cases that have involved engaging with the Rural
Payments Agency, tax credits, the Child Support Agency and the health
service, but I have yet to find a Government IT project that has
delivered on time. I would be grateful if the Minister would say that
he has a degree of confidence in the delivery time scale and
costing.
Secondly, the Minister said that
the database was not subjective. We can draw a parallel to the consumer
reference agencies: quite often, inferences are drawn simply from the
fact that there has been a database inquiry. Such inquiries could
provide an indication, for example, that people are making lots of
applications for credit. Will the Minister indicate who will be able to
analyse how many times the database is referenced? Such information
could provide an indication that a child is at risk, which would be a
positive interaction in terms of identifying problems, but it could
equally cause security problems, because people not permitted to access
information might be able to do
so.
Furthermore,
I am concerned about malicious references to the database. There are
examples of people maliciously making inquiries to the credit reference
agency to reduce a person’s creditworthiness. Obviously, in the
case of children, that would be a much more serious issue. Drawing
further on that parallel, will there be any blight on houses? We have
all heard about houses that have been blighted by poor credit
references. Will the identification with a particular house of a child
who has had a child protection issue—I am thinking especially of
houses in multiple occupation—cause problems for future
occupants with whom authorities do not associate a
risk?
5.22
pm
Mr.
Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con): I would like to ask
the Minister a specific question in respect of the EU 27 migrant
workers, to which the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole
alluded. Post May 2004, they are able to work in the United Kingdom
under the free movement directive. This country specifically absented
itself from responsibilities related to data sharing on criminal
records. Given that many will come to the United Kingdom as temporary
or agency workers to work, for instance, in national partnerships, how
confident is the Minister that those people will be covered by
regulation 10(b) and the measure relating to the enhanced criminal
record
certificate?
5.23
pm
Kevin
Brennan:
Perhaps you will forgive me, Mr.
Atkinson—it was remiss of me not to say that this is the first
time that I have served under your chairmanship and that it is a great
pleasure to do so.
I thank hon.
Members who have contributed for both the content and tone of the
debate. The points made have been serious and detailed. As hon. Members
have pointed out, this is an important issue and plank of Government
policy, and we are talking about children and about ensuring that they
have the best possible services available to them, so it is right that
I respond in some detail. I may move back and forth slightly between
the contributions of the hon. Members for Basingstoke and for
Mid-Dorset and North Poole, because they covered some of the same
ground.
The hon.
Ladies raised the issue of why we should spend the kind of money that
we are spending on IT when there is a shortage of people to work with
children. Part of the point of ContactPoint is to improve efficiency.
That makes financial sense—we based the financial
assessment on the idea that the database will release time that is
currently used by practitioners to search around for information from
all sorts of different sources. There is an opportunity cost involved,
and some of the money could be put into employing more front-line
staff, but our assessment is that the time savings for existing
practitioners would outweigh using the money to employ additional
front-line staff because existing front-line staff would be given more
time to deal directly with their responsibilities rather than having to
search for information from a variety of different sources.
The hon. Member for Mid-Poole;
I am sorry, she is the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole. We
have served together on Select Committees before, but the names of
constituencies
change—
Mr.
Jackson:
They do not get any
shorter.
Kevin
Brennan:
As the hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary
position, the names do not get any shorter.
The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset
and North Poole said that an opportunity cost is involved. There would
be an opportunity cost involved in not doing this, because we would be
allowing practitioners to carry on wasting time trying to search for
information that could be readily available through the provision of
this database.
We
will have to persuade Parliament—if and when the Committee
passes these regulations and they come into operation—that the
system is cost-efficient. We shall attempt to do so by showing that the
benefits of the appropriate information sharing and integrated working
in terms of improving the quality of the service provided to children
and families are clear. We will do that by surveying the people
involved in this work and the experience of the trailblazing
authorities, which she has also mentioned. They have already developed
local systems and the work has confirmed that these benefits can be
realised by the introduction of ContactPoint.
The hon. Member for Basingstoke
asked how we would ensure that the information would be accurate and up
to date. The data that will be contained in ContactPoint will come from
a range of national and local organisations that currently hold this
information. By taking data from a number of different sources,
ContactPoint will be updated as soon as one of those organisations
receives new data about a
child.
Much of the
data will be supplied by automated and regular data uploads that do not
require practitioners to carry out any additional work, so there need
not necessarily be an additional burden, because the system will be
able to access those data in an automatic way. As soon as a source
system has the new data, they will be sent to ContactPoint on the next
scheduled data upload. Where technically possible, the data will be
provided in real time. Practitioners who do not have systems that
automatically update ContactPoint will be able to enter new data
directly on to the system through a simple web interface. The local
authority ContactPoint management team will also be able to update or
correct information on a child record directly where
necessary.
Mrs.
Miller:
The Minister might be coming on to this point, but
in case he is not, may I say that his own research suggests that even
where databases for local practitioner activity exist—I am
thinking for example about databases on children of Traveller families
or on children who receive special educational needs
support—there are big gaps in terms of the way that they
“talk” to the other national databases? Does he share my
concern that that might mean that significant numbers of children may
not have accurate database entries because the systems simply do not
work together? How will local authorities ascertain the
facts?
Kevin
Brennan:
I thank the hon. Lady for making that point; I
was coming to it. Some of the matching problems that she talked about
and that have been identified from local data sources are due to the
fact that children are not always known to national data sources, so it
is right that that data did not match—there would be something
wrong if it did. Other sorts of problem are due to the need to
establish how to handle the addresses and other details of Traveller
children. That will be difficult, but we are committed to working with
local authorities and others to establish the best possible procedures.
It is a fact of life when dealing with Traveller children that it will
be more difficult to identify some of these pieces of
information.
Mrs.
Miller:
I want to press the point further. We are not just
dealing with Traveller children. The Minister will be well aware that
DWP data are 98 per cent. accurate. The majority of people in this
country register for child benefit, so DWP data are very accurate and
robust from the point of view of providing a complete database of
children. The Minister rightly says that that might not include
Traveller children. However, the data from the data trials, on which he
is relying, suggest very clearly that the problem goes well beyond
Traveller children and that it impinges on every single practitioner
data set that has been examined. They suggest that there was a
sometimes very significant gap between the national data set and the
local data set. I cannot accept his
explanation.
Kevin
Brennan:
I am sorry that the hon. Lady cannot accept my
explanation, but the evidence shows too that, in the vast majority of
cases, the data matching is accurate. There are some small elements
where that is not the case but, in the vast majority of cases, the date
of birth, the name of the child, and the address are sufficient to
produce a good match. In the small minority of cases in which there is
difficulty with data matching, we need to work with local
authorities.
It is
important to recognise that failure to find a matching record across
all data sets does not necessarily mean that there has been an error in
the matching process. In many cases, it means simply that the child is
known to one database but not to others. For example, a child might be
registered with a GP but, in a small number of cases, might not be the
subject of a child benefit claim. That can happen.
The hon. Lady asked also about
whose responsibility it is to ensure accuracy of the database. Local
authorities will be responsible for the ContactPoint records of
children in their area. My Department is
funding two, full-time posts in each local authority area to manage the
data quality of ContactPoint. The Data Protection Act 1998 makes it
clear that everyone who holds data, including those who provide data to
ContactPoint, must take reasonable steps to ensure that the information
that they hold is
accurate.
James
Duddridge:
Will there be two people for each authority? I
ask that question because I come from a unitary authority area, which
may very well have a larger number to deal with than a district
authority.
Kevin
Brennan:
I might have to respond to the hon.
Gentleman’s question later, when I have pondered it a little
further. Children and young people, or those acting on their behalf,
have the right under the Data Protection Act to see what is being held
on their records, and to have inaccuracies corrected when they are
found.
The hon.
Member for Basingstoke asked about the position whereby local
authorities are responsible for ensuring accuracy but cannot force data
sources to put their house in order, and about how they ensure that the
information they receive is accurate. Under the Data Protection Act,
local authorities are required to take reasonable steps to ensure that
data supplied to ContactPoint are accurate. They will inform a data
supplier if supplied data conflict with data held by ContactPoint. That
should prompt action to verify the data held by the data supplier.
There are two possible outcomes in that situation: either the data are
found to be wrong and are corrected for future supply to ContactPoint;
or the data are found to be new information, such as a newly notified
address, in which case the local authority can be informed and, once it
is satisfied, the local authority will be able to include the data in
the child record.
The
hon. Lady asked also about practitioner responsibility for updating
data to ContactPoint. As I mentioned earlier, ContactPoint will take
data from case management systems used by practitioners, so in feeding
in data they will not need to do anything more than their regular day
job. Once they have updated their own systems, the supply of data to
ContactPoint will become
automatic.
The hon.
Lady mentioned also the case of the Leeds NHS trust and the report that
14,000 staff logged 70,000 incidents of inappropriate access. I must
say that it is misleading to use that particular statistic—it
featured, I think, in the report of the Independent Schools
Council—to support an accusation regarding the potential for
misuse of ContactPoint. Drawing parallels with the Leeds system and
ContactPoint without clear references to the detail of the recorded
incidents will alarm people unnecessarily and could undermine
confidence in ContactPoint.
Such misuse will be detected in
ContactPoint by the automatic and regular checking of access audit
trails, which will be followed up by disciplinary action in the event
of any misuse. The hon. Lady quoted what the Merits of Statutory
Instruments Committee of the House of Lords said. That Committee,
despite reservations, said
that
“The
Department have gone to a great deal of trouble to devise a scheme
which is as nearly perfect as is humanly possible.”
I do not know what more one could
do.
The hon. Lady
also asked whether enhanced CRB checks could be undertaken on
practitioners who come from overseas to work here. I understand those
concerns. The CRB does not have access to overseas criminal records at
present. It provides information to employers seeking certificates of
good conduct or criminal records from a number of countries, and we are
determined to work with the CRB to ensure that ContactPoint guidance is
clear about the requirements for checks on overseas staff who are
granted access to the database.
The hon. Lady also asked about
the inclusion of fire and rescue—whether a further group of
practitioners would be able to access ContactPoint. Fire and rescue
services provide support to young people, often very vulnerable
children with serious underlying problems—fire setters, for
example, whose vulnerability might be the cause of their fire-setting
behaviour. It is important that those services are able to work with
other practitioners to provide support to such
children.
Mr.
Jackson:
May I return to the Minister’s comments on
overseas nationals working in the United Kingdom? Is he saying, in
effect, if the prerequisite outlined in the regulations to provide an
enhanced criminal records certificate is not feasible for a person who
wishes to work for national partner or a public organisation that has
access to the database, for the reasons that he gave, that it will be
set aside? Is that what he
means?
Kevin
Brennan:
I do not think that that is what I said. I said
clearly that the CRB provides information to employers seeking
certificates of good conduct or criminal records from a number of
countries, and that we will work with the CRB to ensure that the
guidance is clear about the requirements for checks in relation to
overseas staff who are granted access to ContactPoint. There is no
question of waiving the requirement.
The hon. Members for
Basingstoke and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole asked whether we had
taken the views of children and young people seriously enough when
consulting on the matter. We sought their views directly. A
considerable amount of time and effort was spent seeking the views of
more than 1,100 children and young people from a wide range of
backgrounds. We also considered a wide body of research on the views of
children and young people, and we have taken on board the experience of
the local authority trailblazers that developed local pilot systems and
consulted children and young people and families. The information
showed that children understood the benefits of information sharing and
of ContactPoint. Understandably, they want reassurance about security
and so on; nevertheless, they can and do understand and support the
need to ensure that information can be shared, when it is appropriate
for their protection.
Why is there not a major
campaign to inform children, young people and families? The
“Every Child Matters” website contains a section on
ContactPoint, and we will continue to keep that updated. Among other
things, it gives general information on security
and access, and on how we engage with children and young people. This
autumn, we will be working with our delivery partners, local
authorities and national partners, using appropriate material,
including child-friendly appropriate materials, in local communication.
Those materials will be based on what children and young people and
adults have told us about the issues that most concern and interest
them.
It is
unfortunate that there has been so much misinformation in the media
about ContactPoint. I readily understand some of the concerns caused by
press reports saying that the database will contain information about
what children eat and other press stories that are completely
inaccurate. It is important to have accuracy on the nature of the
database.
The hon.
Member for Basingstoke asked whether an IT system could safeguard young
children and said that the real problem was that we need better
information sharing. Of course, the IT system on its own cannot
safeguard children; it is improvements in the way that practitioners
work together that will improve the safeguarding of children, and
ContactPoint should make it possible for practitioners to work together
much more easily and efficiently. ContactPoint will not get
practitioners off the hook, nor will it give rise to a tick-box
mentality—thinking that if they go to a ContactPoint they will
have done their job. The responsibility will remain on the professional
practitioner to act if they believe that action is
necessary.
The hon.
Lady also raised the monitoring and following up of security breaches
in respect of ContactPoint. That responsibility lies with our national
partners in the first instance, and they will be accredited to ensure
that their processes for doing so are adequate. For other
organisations, either the employing organisation or the local authority
will be responsible for monitoring and following up security breaches
on a case-by-case basis.
The hon. Lady asked about
appropriate security measures and I can assure her that the system was
designed from the beginning with a defence-in-depth approach to
security. It will require practitioners who have the appropriate
permission to access it to have basic security measures such as a
password and a log-in, they must also have a PIN and a token to access
to the system. As much defence in-depth as possible is built in to the
system’s design.
The hon. Lady
and the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole also asked about the
European convention on human rights. The Government take their
responsibilities under that convention very seriously indeed. As we do
with all legislation, we sought the necessary legal advice on the
relationship between ContactPoint and the Human Rights Act 1998. The
Government are confident that if the database were to interfere with
children’s rights to privacy under article 8 of the ECHR, any
interference would be proportionate and justified as is permitted,
because practitioner access will be strictly controlled and limited to
those who need access.
Mrs.
Miller:
Was there any mention of provision for a challenge
in respect of article 8 in the legal advice that the Minister obtained?
If he does not have that information to hand, perhaps he will write to
me.
Kevin
Brennan:
I will be happy to write to the hon. Lady on that
point. A challenge is always possible under the Human Rights Act on
almost any subject. I repeat that the Government are confident that the
legal advice we have received is that such a challenge is unlikely to
be
successful.
The
hon. Members for the Basingstoke and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole
also raised the impact on confidentiality of having so many people able
to access the database. The people who are given permission to access a
ContactPoint will be practitioners who provide support and services to
children, people who should already have the best interests of children
at heart in all they do and who are already acutely aware of the need
for confidentiality in their jobs. As they are now, practitioners will
be required to make a professional judgment about whether it is
appropriate to share information with others who are working with the
same child. ContactPoint will make absolutely no difference to that
fundamental professional principle.
Mr.
Jackson:
I am listening carefully to the points the
Minister made with regard to local authorities. What sanction will
there be on local authorities to proceed with investigation of misuse
of the data? If it is not recorded as a key performance indicator for a
local authority, it may not be a priority. That is a concern if one
considers the pace at which the Standards Board for England
moves.
More
specifically, may I ask the Minister what is the time scale for
reconsidering section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 in respect of
increasing the penalty for misuse of the data? Has he any idea about
that?
Kevin
Brennan:
I do not have the answer to the latter point and
I may have to write to the hon. Gentleman if inspiration does not reach
me before I finish my already lengthy
speech.
On the hon.
Gentleman’s point about investigations, local authorities will
have a legal duty in that regard; to my knowledge, there will be no
specific target in that respect, but they will have to fulfil their
legal duty and can be challenged if they do not.
I turn now to the point made by
the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, and I promise to learn
her constituency name for the next time that we encounter each other.
She asked whether the local authority trailblazers had produced
empirical or really hard data about the benefits of ContactPoint. As
she knows, the trailblazers were members of the expert panels that
assessed and confirmed the operating costs and benefits of
ContactPoint. We are content that that information creates a robust
business case for the establishment of ContactPoints. I accept her
scepticism about that, but that was our assessment of the
evidence.
Annette
Brooke:
Part of the question is about the cost of
the hard evidence. However, the hard evidence that we are looking for
is the improved outcome for children.
Kevin
Brennan:
I certainly accept that that is the case. The
hard evidence will be demonstrated by the fact that practitioners will
have more time to work directly with
children rather than having to search out information, which should be
readily available to them, when they have a concern about the children
with whom they work.
As ContactPoint has no case
data—or, as I called it earlier, subjective data—the hon.
Lady asked what the triggers would be for practitioners to be able to
talk to each other about their concerns. Stakeholders and practitioners
have worked with us and developed a common process for dealing with
children’s needs in a wider context. That process will be
integrated into their working procedures. It states clearly how and
when they should look at ContactPoint. Guidance has been issued as to
how and when they should communicate in relation to it.
The hon. Lady also asked about
different spellings of a child’s name and the problems that that
could cause. For example, a child may have a nickname or, if they are a
member of an ethnic minority, they could use different names.
ContactPoint will use a sophisticated search engine that can handle
different variations in data. It will match variations of names,
misspelled names and process cases in which the surname precedes the
first name. It can also hold aliases, multiple names and nicknames if
that is necessary.
Name changes
will be dealt with when detected by practitioners by holding metadata
in ContactPoint. ContactPoint will be able to link data from a
practitioner to previous information even when a name has changed.
Therefore, that matter has been very carefully thought through and
there is a system in
place.
The
hon. Lady also asked about the cost of maintaining child data in cases
in which children move about a lot. ContactPoint is automatically
updated whenever a practitioner updates their own records. Therefore,
the costs are very low and have been included in the operating costs,
which I mentioned earlier.
The hon. Lady also asked about
health-based services and why they were the only ones that were
considered to be sensitive. The Government response to the consultation
reflected the views of those who argued that inclusion on ContactPoint
of practitioners’ details relating to sexual health, mental
health and substance abuse services might deter take-up of those
elective services and that is why those details can be included only
with the explicit consent of young people. Those details will not be
visible to most users who access ContactPoint.
The hon. Lady asked whether the
process would ensure the withdrawal of access rights when people leave
their jobs. When a person leaves their job, the user manager, the
supervisor or someone in the local authority will be notified and they
will then cancel the user’s log-in and ID. In addition, the
security token that is necessary to gain access will be removed and
that will prevent access in future to
ContactPoint.
The
hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East asked about the general
issue of Government IT projects. We are determined to get this one
right. We are not trying to develop new technology here. This system
contains a fairly thin amount of data, although it is complex in other
ways. As he probably understands, we are mindful of the difficulty of
running large-scale IT projects, which is why, as the hon. Member for
Basingstoke mentioned, we are taking a very steady, staged approach
to our work, which will draw on appropriate expertise and be subject to
very strict financial and operational controls. The project is reviewed
regularly at key points by the Office of Government Commerce. We do not
underestimate the technical challenges involved in the IT project and
we expect to learn many lessons, which perhaps we can share when
developing ContactPoints with others. Stakeholder involvement has been
a key factor, and we have embarked on a very large-scale programme
involving stakeholders in the definition of requirements and in
designing the system. We will follow Government best practice for the
introduction of major changes to try to minimise
risk.
The
hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East asked whether ContactPoint
is on schedule, and I can confirm that it is on schedule to deliver as
per our timetable—by the end of 2008—in all 150 local
authorities. He asked also about unauthorised users misusing the
system. Every time a user accesses a child’s record, they will
have to provide a reason for doing so, which will form part of the
information recorded in the audit trail. Where an unusual pattern of
use is identified, an immediate investigation will be instigated, and
users will be asked to explain their activity. If it is concluded that
misuse has occurred, sanctions can be applied, including the deletion
of the user from the register of those allowed to use ContactPoint or
even prosecution under the Data Protection Act or the Computer Misuse
Act 1990, which can lead to a fine or imprisonment. Of course, the
sanction would depend on the severity of the
misuse.
In the time
available, I shall try to mop up some of the other points raised. I can
confirm to the hon. Gentleman that the two posts for local authorities
is an average, rather than absolute figure for local authorities. He
raised another point about who can analyse the number of inquiries
about a child. Practitioners will not be able to see how often and by
whom a record on ContactPoint has been accessed. It will be monitored
only by those looking for patterns of unusual activity, as I mentioned
a few minutes ago. It will not be available to those who supply
services when making decisions about a child. I hope that that
reassures him. He made further comments about credit agencies, but
those are not applicable in this instance. Certainly, a house could not
be blighted by the fact that somebody has accessed ContactPoint, for
the reason that I have just given: that information will not be
generally
available.
The hon.
Member for Peterborough—I always welcome interventions from
Whips, having been one myself for the last two years—asked what
sanctions are available for local authorities that do not investigate
potential misuse. The Secretary of State has a
direction-making power so he could direct an authority to investigate,
should it prove necessary, although I think that that is highly
unlikely.
The hon.
Member for Basingstoke mentioned significant gaps in local data. Data
from local authorities ranged from more than 90 per cent. down to 50
per cent. That lower figure is due to immigrants who contact their
local authority before others, which means that local authorities know
about some children who are not always known to national data
suppliers.
I have
tried to cover most of the points raised during the debate, and once
again thank hon. Members for their very detailed points. I say to the
Committee—I hope that anyone listening on the outside will
remember this—that this database will hold only very basic
identifying information about a child, such as the name, address, date
of birth, gender and unique number of that child, and the contact
details of parents, carers and those providing services to the child.
Practitioners have told us that that simple tool will save them a
considerable amount of time, and evidence from the trailblazing
authorities show that the local systems have brought significant
benefits to practitioners and, more importantly, to children and young
people in families. Introducing that as a national tool will increase
the benefits to children and young people in families and to
practitioners. That is part of our “Every Child Matters”
programme—it will include every child. The regulations support
and underpin ContactPoint, and I commend them to the
Committee.
Question
put:—
The
Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes
5.
Division
No.
1
]
Foster,
Mr. Michael
(Worcester)
Question
accordingly agreed to.
Resolved,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Children Act 2004 Information
Database (England) Regulations
2007.
Committee
rose at four minutes to Six
o’clock.
