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

I thank the Minister. The key issues that I want to test a little further relate to the security of the data to be made available and whether the data are in fact already available in other forms. I accept that the regulations have gone through a number of other channels already and that they were considered in a significant debate in the other place, and here I associate myself closely with the comments of my honourable friend Nick Hurd. Because the measure relates to pupil information, I should declare my interests as recorded in the Register: I am a director of four academies in the north of England and vice-chairman of an educational foundation. I turn first to the issue of the data and ask whether these regulations are absolutely necessary. When any statistician is asked whether they want more data sets, the answer is always that they do. However, do they actually need them? That is what I would like to focus on. The Minister has already referred to the school census data collections. I went on to TeacherNet to look at the guidance for the 2009 collection. It states that the data are widely used by the DCSF policy divisions, other government departments, local authorities, external agencies and educational researchers. Therefore, the first question to pose is: given that that freedom already exists, why is it necessary to have secondary legislation to make that information available? The specific requirement under Regulation 6 talks about the use of pupil names. It states that names will be used only for cross-referencing purpose, but I should like the Minister to say little more about why it is necessary to introduce pupil names. I draw the Committee’s attention to the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee’s consideration of the draft of what became the Children Act 2004. That document refers to the confidentiality of data relating to young people. I know that that is an issue that the Government take very seriously—I do not for a moment suggest otherwise—but it would be appreciated if the Minister answered those questions about the security of data entered by schools. Turning to other potential data sources, when I was looking at how one might get better information on migration flows, I was interested to note that on the internet, where there is a huge amount of information on such things, the UK Border Agency has already produced its estimates of migration flows, especially from eastern Europe. It seems to track them very closely, which is encouraging. Again, if that is the rationale behind introducing this secondary legislation, what contacts and communication does the Minister have with the UK Border Agency on utilising the data that clearly already exist? The agency could refer to the fact that 32,230 people were removed from the UK, a rise of 6 per cent. That is a granular level of detail. If the regulations are about trying to track migration flows within the UK, one ought to look at the data sets already available in the public domain. When it comes to pupil information, which is specifically what is dealt with by the regulations, many websites—all the school and local authority websites—give ample information about the number of pupils registered at a particular school. One can then track that backwards to see whether the number of pupils registered is increasing. For personal affinity purposes, I happened to look up the great town of Middlesbrough in the north-east of England. I was able to see the pupil roll not only at the King’s Academy, of which I am a director, but at the feeder primary schools. There is lots of detail, even down to the level that there are 17 nationalities at the school speaking 16 different languages. That level of data is quite rich by any stretch of the imagination. When we then look at the Office for National Statistics database—as a bit of an anorak when it comes to data, I am sad to say that I find it really enjoyable to mine into that—we find that quite a lot of data sets are already there. When it comes to people and society, population and migration, the Office for National Statistics website, under the heading ““Neighbourhood statistics””, has 31 data sets available—this is for the local authority of Middlesbrough. A lot of those data sets are not linked back to the 2001 census, which shows the important need for updating the information. There are data sets from as recently as 2006-07. This is about testing the security of the information, particularly given that this is sensitive information about children. I also want to put on the record our view that the list in the instrument of the variables that will be input should be the limit and that the department should not be coming back for more variables and more personal information. The second point relates to the current availability of statistics. Given that this is 2009 and the last census was in 2001, a census cannot be seen as the panacea for all issues. As the evidence to the Treasury Committee inquiry on counting the population—this is in volume 1 of its 11th report from 2007-08—stated, often the take-up for the completion of a census can be as low as 60 per cent or 70 per cent. The people who are least likely to complete the census are migrant workers, for obvious reasons. I question the reliance on the idea that the census will provide the answer; it will give some of the answers. Finally, we are now in 2009 and the next census is in 2011. Could the data that will be required not wait? Could the extra page that is proposed be put into the census form to capture all this information, so that people have that security? For the school census data, there is a requirement to stipulate whether parents have given approval for the data to be released and to be moved on; there is a requirement to say whether parental approval has been given. I can happily come back to the Minister to refer to the specific section in the guidance for schools, but I should like him to comment on that. The guidance document talks about the uploading of fields to Connexions, the Jobcentre people. It states that it must be stipulated, ““Yes, permission has been given by a parent or guardian for the information to be shared””, ““No, permission has been refused by the parent or guardian””, or, ““UNS””, which is unsought. The SNR field should be used when the school has sent out fair proceeding notices but no response has been received from the parent or guardian. Those are pretty important safeguards, particularly when we are talking about children. Will they apply in the uploading and the use of data by ONS?