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

This is the first time that I have had the pleasure of debating with the noble Lord, Lord Brett, and I am delighted to be able to do so, albeit from the further reaches of the Moses Room. I fail to see, when there are only three people in the debate, why we on these Benches have to be sent to the far end of the Room. Maybe it is in a vain hope that our arrows will fall short. I can promise the noble Lord no arrows today. We understand the purposes of the regulations. Given the very mobile population that we have today, it is essential that statisticians have sufficient information to ensure that local authorities are properly resourced to look after those people who move into their area at fairly short notice. However, when we are talking about the data on children, I share the Conservative spokesman’s concern about security. Only this week, we have been told that the number of people who will have access to the ContactPoint database will be in the region of 400,000—a figure that we did not have when debated this issue in your Lordships’ House. Will the Minister say how many people are likely to have access to the information about which we are speaking today? Can he also assure us that the data will be used only for the purpose for which they were collected? That may be the case at the moment, but I understand that the Coroners and Justice Bill, which is on its way down the track, will allow wider data sharing without consent. In other words, the data will be used for purposes beyond those for which they were collected. Will these regulations be affected by the measures in the Coroners and Justice Bill? If so, will they return to your Lordships’ House for discussion at that time, because that would certainly widen the effect of these regulations considerably? I looked in some detail at the various items of information about each child that are to be collected and shared. Will the Minister say why it is necessary to provide the child’s full address? If the purpose is to ensure that local authorities are properly resourced to look after the various needs of the child, I see no reason why the full address needs to be given. Why not simply give the local authority ward in which the child lives? That would be quite sufficient. Given that the child is most vulnerable to any paedophile when his or her full address is known, it strikes me that, if there is any way at all in which the usefulness of these data could be undiluted while avoiding giving the full address, which may be provided under Regulation 4(b), that would be highly desirable. The regulations clearly relate to children of school age, because the information comes from the school census. When this was debated in another place, a question was asked about young people who are just above school age and whether there were any proposals to address the fact that, in many cities, there are large numbers of students above school age in both higher and further education who are not counted until they leave the city, which is too late for the city to be given any resources to look after their needs. I am afraid that, when I read the Minister’s reply, it was not terribly clear whether there were any plans to deal with this. I realise that this is slightly beyond the scope of the regulations, but the noble Lord might be able to help me on it. My colleague in another place asked whether there would be any other benefits of this kind of data sharing—for example, the ability to track tendencies such as girls being taken out of school and going abroad to be married. I can think of other trends that might be picked up by the statisticians and which could be an additional benefit of this kind of sharing without contravening the narrowness of the purpose for which the information was collected. I have a question about the younger age range. Paragraph 7.3 of the Explanatory Notes tells me that, at the younger end of the age range, the only institutions from which the information will be called in are the maintained nurseries and the direct grant nurseries. There are lots of early years settings other than those two categories. Of course, local authorities provide a great deal of resource and have an obligation to ensure that there is enough provision, not just in terms of what they provide but also from the private sector, the voluntary sector and other organisations. As they have this obligation, I should have thought that it was necessary to collect information about children in the early years setting age range. Currently this provision is available for three year-olds but some state-funded provision will soon be available for two year-olds from the poorest families. Therefore, local authorities need to have the relevant information. If that were collected, it would certainly help them to fulfil their obligation to ensure that sufficient provision is available in the area. Is there any proposal to extend the collection of data to cover those very young children in order to assist local authorities to demand appropriate resources from the Government?