Clause
13
Notification
of non-compliance with duty imposed by section 2: educational
institutions
Jim
Knight:
I beg to move amendment No. 137, in
clause 13, page 6, line 37, at
end insert—
‘(1A) Where a
local education
authority—
(a) itself
provides services in exercise of its functions under section 54(1),
and
(b) receives a notice under
subsection (1) relating to a person to whom this Part applies who
belongs to the area of another local education
authority,
it must as soon as
reasonably practicable give notice to the service provider for the
other local education authority of the circumstances notified to it
under subsection (1).
(1B)
Subsection (1C) applies where, in exercise of its functions under
section 54(3)(b), a local education authority makes arrangements with
another person (“the provider”) for the provision of
services.
(1C) The arrangements
must secure that, as soon as reasonably practicable after receiving a
notice under subsection (1) relating to a person to whom this Part
applies who belongs to the area of another local education authority,
the provider gives notice to the service provider for the other local
education authority of the circumstances notified to the provider under
subsection
(1).’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss
Government amendments Nos. 138 to
141.
Jim
Knight:
I will move on from my surprise that Opposition
Members do not support making the necessary practical arrangements to
provide support for post-16 learners and other
individuals.
Mr.
Gibb:
I cannot let the Minister get away with that parody
of clause 12. It is not about educational support for young people aged
16 or 17; that comes both after and before clause 12. It is about
simply identifying people to whom the Bill applies and putting their
names and identities on a
database.
Jim
Knight:
I am sure, Mr. Bercow, that you wish me
to address clause 13 rather than go back to debate clause 12, but
clearly I disagree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of
clause
12.
The
purpose of clause 13 is to ensure that learning providers tell
Connexions when a young person drops out of learning. We want that to
be straightforward and a light burden on the learning provider. For
instance, a large specialist college is likely to take young people
from a number of local authorities and that is why we only require them
to notify their local Connexions office. In his evidence, the principal
of Bedford college said, I think, that he worked with as many as 100
local authorities. Once a young person drops out, the Connexions
office where the young person lives is responsible for intervening to
provide support. Therefore amendment No. 138 makes it clear that the
Connexions service that is notified that a young person has dropped out
must ensure that the information is passed on to the Connexions service
where the young person lives. Without the amendment it would be
possible for a 16 or 17-year-old to drop out of learning and not
receive support—at the time when they needed it the
most—even though a Connexions office would be aware that they
had dropped out. The amendment formalises existing procedures for the
operation of the Connexions database and
service. The
remaining amendments are technical ones, necessary for the provision to
have the desired effect. Amendment No. 138 makes clear the wording that
describes whether the local authority provides the Connexions service
itself or through arrangements with another
body.
Amendments
Nos. 139 and 140 make the reference in clause 13 to clause 54 more
specific. They refer to particular subsections of clause 54: subsection
(1), which is where the local authorities’ duty to provide the
Connexions service is set out, and subsection (3)(b), which provides
for local authorities to make Connexions services available by
providing them themselves or by making arrangements with other
parties.
The
final amendment, No. 141, makes it clear that “services”
in clause 13, line 19, page 7, refers to Connexions services as a
whole. I therefore commend the amendments to the
Committee.
Amendment
agreed
to.
Amendments
made: No. 138, in clause 13, page 7, line 16, after
‘authority’ insert
‘itself’.
No.
139, in
clause 13, page 7, line 17, after
‘under’ insert ‘subsection (1)
of’.
No. 140,
in clause
13, page 7, line 18, leave out
‘those functions’ and insert
‘its functions under subsection
(3)(b) of that
section’.
No.
141, in
clause 13, page 7, line 19, leave
out ‘such’.—[
Jim
Knight.]
Clause
13, as amended,
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
14
Educational
institutions: duty to provide
information
Mr.
Gibb:
I beg to move amendment No. 17, in
clause 14, page 7, line 29, after
‘authority’, insert
‘provided that the relevant pupil
or student has given written consent for the information to be
provided.’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments: No. 16, in
clause 14, page 7, line 36, at
end insert—
‘(3A) Any pupil
or student to whom subsection (1) applies shall have the right to
examine any relevant information requested by a local authority before
that information is provided by the responsible person to the
authority.’.
No.
19, in
clause 14, page 7, line 36, at
end
insert—
‘(3A)
Any pupil or student to whom subsection (1) applies shall be given the
opportunity to correct any relevant information regarded by him as
inaccurate, subject to the agreement of the responsible
person.
(3B) For the purposes of subsection (3A), when
agreement cannot be reached between the pupil or student and the
responsible person the Information Commissioner shall decide what
correction, if any, should be made to the relevant
information.’.
No.
170, in
clause 14, page 7, line 36, at
end insert
‘which is
relevant to assessing their educational and support
needs.’.
No.
18, in
clause 14, page 7, line 43, leave
out ‘instructed the responsible person not’ and
insert
‘not given written
consent to the responsible
person’.
No.
97, in
clause 57, page 30, line 34, at
beginning insert
‘Subject to the written
consent of the pupil or
student,’.
Mr.
Gibb:
The clause imposes a duty on
educational institutions—schools and colleges—to provide
information about their students to a local authority if they are
requested to do so by that authority. The data sharing provisions raise
significant human rights implications, and I focus on those issues in
later amendments, particularly amendment No. 42. I alert the Committee
to the fact that the issues are of interest to the Joint Committee on
Human Rights. I say no more than that at this stage.
The hon.
Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) wrote to the Minister
setting out his concerns, and the Minister responded in his letter of
10 January 2008. The hon. Member for Hendon raised a number of
questions, which I will address when we talk about the data sharing
provisions in clause 57 and amendment No. 42. As far as the series of
amendments is concerned, I want to focus first on the rather innocuous
information that clause 14 seeks to obtain: the name, address and date
of birth of the student and the student’s parents. Also included
in clause 14(3)(c), however,
is
“information in the
institution’s possession about the pupil or
student.”
Such
information could relate to the student’s grades, test scores,
study problems raised by the student with his or her tutor, personal
problems raised by the student or financial issues that the student
has. It could relate to the student’s health, behaviour or any
other information that the school or college has. Clause 14(4) does of
course give the student the right to instruct the school or college not
to provide such information, but that amounts to an opt-out approach,
rather than an opt-in. In response to a question from the hon. Member
for Hove, the Minister said that he had rung Connexions that very
morning, and he said about young people’s consent:
“At the point at which
they go on to the database at 13, it is done on the basis of presumed
parental consent, so parents can not give consent for it to happen, but
that is just the very basic data. From then on in, the young person has
to give active consent for the data to be shared with other agencies.
That is what happens at the moment and when it transfers we do not
foresee that changing.”——[Official Report,
Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2008; c.
214,
Q494.]
That is
odd, given that clause 14(4) requires the student to instruct the
institution not to supply the information. Thus, if no instruction is
received, the college can presumably go ahead and supply the
information, notwithstanding the fact that no consent was actively
given.
3.45
pm
It would help
if the Minister clarified his remarks. By “active
consent”, did he mean the opt-out approach set out in clause
14(4), which I would not call active consent, or did he mean that the
data on the Connexions customer information system database can be
divulged to others only with proper active consent from the young
people, but that data from educational institutions going on to the
Connexions caseload information systems database can be made available
by the college on the basis of non-active consent, as set out in clause
14(4)? If the latter, why is the nature of the consent required
different?
Amendment
No. 17 would require written consent from the student before any
information about him or her could be supplied. The college or local
authority would actively have to approach the student, inform him or
her that information was being requested by the local authority and
request from the student written consent for that information to be
supplied. The danger of the opt-out approach is that the student will
not necessarily know what information has been requested or that he has
the right to object to that information being supplied. I suspect that,
if not amended, the clause will result in a large amount of personal
educational information being supplied to local authorities without
students realising it. Given that that information will be used for a
totally different purpose from that for which it was made available in
the first place, it is important that the safeguard in the amendment be
put in place.
The
Bill’s approach is in conflict with the principles of the Data
Protection Act 1998. For example, one of the key principles of the Act
is:
“Personal
data should be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful
purposes and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible
with that purpose or those
purposes.”
If
we do not put in place the safeguard that the amendment would provide,
we could find that students are reluctant to raise academic and
personal problems with tutors lest the information end up in the hands
of authorities or other people and their privacy
evaporates.
Amendment
No. 16 would give a student the right to examine any information held
on him by a school or college and requested by the local authority, so
that he could correct any inaccuracies. Amendment No. 19 would give a
student the right to have that information corrected, subject to the
agreement of the school or college. If agreement could not be reached
on whether the information was accurate, the matter could be referred
to the Information Commissioner for
adjudication.
We have
to be careful about personal data on us that is held by state-run
organisations. People need to be able to check its accuracy, and we
need to be sure that the information is secure. The Government’s
record on securing our personal data is not good: the Criminal Records
Bureau mistakenly labelled 2,700 innocent people as having criminal
records; the sex offenders register lost track of 300 hundred
offenders; 27,000 criminals, many of them serious, were left off the
police national computer; 100,000 innocent children are
on
the DNA database; 26,000 police-collected samples were mistakenly left
off the police national computer; and 500,000 entries were misrecorded.
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs lost 25 million personal
records, including information about children and people’s bank
accounts, and last year there were 2,110 other security breaches by
HMRC; the Department for Transport lost 3 million driving licence
applications; and the Ministry of Defence left a laptop, containing the
details of thousands of people who had expressed an interest in joining
the Army, in the back of a car, from where it was stolen. Again, the Data Protection Act
gives people the right to access their personal data, which is
important, and the right to correct or destroy inaccurate data. It is
important therefore that the Bill is consistent, and in accordance
with, the principles of that Act.
Privacy is a concern to the
Children’s Rights Alliance, which said that
“extensive measures in the Bill
for information sharing, in order to facilitate enforcement of the
duty, are a further serious threat to Children's
privacy.”
It also
conducted a series of focus groups with young people, discussing the
issue of information sharing. Its report says:
“There was concern that
if children thought adults were going to share information with other
people, they would stop confiding in adults altogether. They believed
that adults ought to be able to sort out difficulties with children and
young people without having to breach their
confidence.”
The report
includes a quotation from a 17-year-old young woman at the focus group,
who said:
“I
think the people who are passing information need to consider the
consequences of what will happen if they disrespect the child’s
wishes...like the child’s not going to confide in them anymore
or trust them. Obviously that's going to be bad if they’re in a
situation where they’re in danger or they’re self
harming...and then they’ve got no one to turn to because they
don’t trust
anyone”.
On the
issue of whether information could be shared with other organisations
without the permission of the young person, the report says:
“There was general
agreement that it was essential to try to get permission before sharing
information, and only break refusal of permission in the most
exceptional circumstances. One young man felt that he would be really
angry if he found out information had been shared without his
permission, even if the adult thought it necessary to share
information”.
The
Government must also use the right database and computer system. The
Association of Colleges says:
“The intention is that
local authorities will maintain and improve existing Connexions
Caseload Information Systems
database”—
the
CCIS. The association continues:
“AoC is not satisfied
that this database is fit for purpose and believes it will need
significant improvement in advance of
2015.”
The Local
Government Association, in its briefing, also talks about improving the
“accuracy” of the Connexions
database.
We also support amendment No.
170, tabled by the hon. Member for Yeovil, which would refine the
information that can be supplied to that
“which is relevant to assessing
their educational and support
needs”.
That must be
right. The Bill requires colleges and schools to provide any
information in the institution’s possession about the student or
pupil, which is far too wide a provision.
The
amendments are important, because they would provide legislative
protection for the privacy and rights
of 16 and 17-year-olds—on which the Bill seriously impinges. Such
issues are increasingly important in what is rapidly becoming a
surveillance society, and we must always be vigilant about protecting
people’s privacy, information and personal data. Debate
adjourned.—[Mr. Michael
Foster.]
Adjourned
accordingly at seven minutes to Four o’clock till Tuesday 19
February at half-past
Ten o’clock.
| 
