Childcare Bill

As I told the hon. Gentleman, a compulsory check at the highest level will be made on 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 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. 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.