Childcare Bill

The new clauses are quite chunky, and again I make the point that we had no inkling about them in Committee. It is not clear whether these provisions are connected to the child safeguarding provisions in the next group and which in turn have connections to the forthcoming Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill. From what the Minister said, it would appear that they are more to do with a numbers exercise, to ensure that the correct figures are analysed. If that is the case, the Opposition certainly have some concerns about the wide-reaching nature of new clause 2. New clause 2, as I understand it, places obligations, through regulation, on various people involved in child care to provide information, not about children in general, but individual child information, the nature of which we do not know. According to subsection (3), the information can be provided to the Secretary of State or ““any prescribed person””. Who will those prescribed persons be? Will it be you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or will it be me? Who will be involved? Subsection (4) is even more wide-ranging. It states that the Secretary of State"““may provide any individual child information””." That is, it appears, without any exemptions. The subsection continues"““to any information collator””." Who will those information collators be? Who will be licensed or allowed to collect, analyse, view and disseminate this information ““to any prescribed person””, as mentioned in paragraph (b), or"““to any person falling within a prescribed category””?" Not many members of the population are left out. There is then the provision that ““any information collator”” may pass on information to any other information collator. All the way through, the new clause appears to give enormous powers to the Secretary of State to decide who he thinks should handle, interpret, collate and act on this information. We do not have an inkling about these people, not least because we have had no explanation of this quite powerful new clause. It appears that the only safeguard is in subsection (7), which reads:"““No information received under or by virtue of this section shall be published in any form which includes the name of the child.””" That may be unavoidable in some circumstances—when child care is provided on a one-to-one basis, for example, or in small groups. I fear that the new clause has been put together belatedly and perhaps rather hurriedly. I have serious concerns about whether it conflicts with the Children Act 2004. This matter was handled by the Minister’s predecessor, but she may recall—the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) certainly will—that we had lengthy debates about the nature of the information databases. The Opposition continue to have serious concerns about them—and those databases are now beginning to be put into operation. One of the safeguards that we were given—specifically written into the Act—appears in section 12(4)(h). It is that information of ““such other description”” may be put on to these databases. Specifically, medical records are not included, or such other personal records as the Secretary of State may by regulation specify. In that measure, the sharing of information was specifically curtailed for medical records. For very good reasons, we supported that. There were other categories involved as well. We do not appear to have such safeguards in the new clause. Individual child information—not numbers—can be produced and must be produced as requested, and passed on to an indeterminate group or groups of people to do indeterminate things with it. Medical records, among other things, are not specifically exempted. Does the Minister agree that there is a potential conflict with that section of the 2004 Act? Can she give me some assurances that that was not intended, and say whether some further detail will be added to ensure that such a conflict cannot happen? Will the Minister identify who the information collators are likely to be, and what they are expected to do with the information? I want a definition of what individual child information is likely to amount to. That is important. Much in the 2004 Act was essential to promote the sharing of information among professionals in dealing with vulnerable children who might be at risk of harm. We agreed with that, and that was the thrust of what became the 2004 Act. There were also some perfectly good provisions that protected the confidentiality of children and their parents. Those provisions seem to have been ignored in the framing of new clause 2. I would be grateful if the Minister gave us some more detail—which was, alas, not forthcoming before today’s deliberations.