Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (Disclosure of Pupil Information) (England) Regulations 2009

These regulations represent the first use of the data-sharing power under the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and are part of a wider programme of work, the Migration and Population Statistics Improvement Programme, which is being taken forward by the National Statistician. This work seeks to address the problems faced by local authorities in estimating highly mobile populations, taking into account short-term migration. The Government are committed to helping to improve the accuracy of the population estimates produced by the ONS, particularly at the local level. This is in order to underpin the correct funding of local government, NHS and other public services. Both central and local government need accurate information on migrant numbers and overall changes to the size and structure of the population for resource allocation and for the planning and delivery of local services. The ONS has evaluated the content of the school census and identified the information that it needs for essential research and methodological work on population and migration statistics. The regulations will allow the DCSF to share this information with the ONS, including pupils’ names, birthdates, addresses, ethnicities, spoken languages and dates of joining and leaving schools. Access to these specific data items will enable the ONS to evaluate current estimation procedures and, if necessary, to develop new approaches for the derivation of migration statistics, population estimates and projections. The benefits to accrue from this include better information on local populations, including areas with high rates of population turnover; better information on estimates of numbers of migrants; improved accuracy of mid-year estimates and projections of population; improved enumeration strategies for the 2011 census; better assessments of coverage of the 2011 census leading to better estimates; development of ongoing research into the use of administrative data in updating population statistics without a traditional census; and improving resource allocation, policy formation and planning and delivery of services. When collecting school census data, the DCSF gives a fair processing notice to parents—in effect, the privacy policy for the data that it collects—which already states that information from the school census may be shared with other government departments, including the ONS, for statistical and research purposes. At present this covers only educational statistics. These regulations are designed to make it possible for the ONS to use these data to improve migration and population statistics as well. Data confidentiality and security arrangements are a fundamental part of the preparation of the data-sharing agreement between the two departments. The ONS and DCSF will put the necessary measures in place to protect these data to avoid the disclosure of any private information about individual children. The ONS and DCSF have already worked to tight confidentiality guidelines with excellent data security records. I hope that the Committee will support the regulations to help to improve the accuracy of ONS migration and population statistics. I beg to move.