Education and Skills Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for his answer. I thought that he was going to answer the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, in the next group, but he has done it in this group—that was a joke. I thank him for his answer to this group of amendments and, indeed, to previous ones. In reply to his answer on our first group of amendments, the last thing that we would want to do is restrict access for any special needs assessment or financial support; I fully accept what he said in reply to that group. I am also grateful to the Minister for explaining and reassuring us that there is no direct connection between provision of database information and enforcement, and that the local authority will have to exercise its judgment and go through all the stages that we will come to later on in the Bill. I must say that the more he explains what everyone has to do before we get to compulsion, the more I wonder where all the people are going to come from to do the work. On my amendment relating to Connexions, I am fully aware that the power already exists, but our amendment is to prevent the information being used more widely. A general concern is that, as drafted, this part is worded too widely; it could have allayed some of our fears if the provisions had been worded more tightly. In conclusion, on this group and the previous group, as the Minister keeps going back to previous groups, I fully acknowledge that the systems that the Government use are of the highest standards and they require that people handle the information with the utmost care. What worries me is what happens when the information is printed off, downloaded onto a disk, or when it is on a laptop computer. Then it is not just a question of highly sophisticated technology but of people, with all their human failings. That is where most of our concerns about that sensitive data arise. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 75 not moved.]