Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) (Revocation) Regulations 2012

My Lords, these regulations will revoke the Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) Regulations 2007, which are commonly known, fortunately, as the ContactPoint regulations—and I shall henceforth refer to them as such in the interests of brevity. The ContactPoint regulations place duties on all local authorities in England to participate in the operation of the former ContactPoint database. They specify what information can be held, who provides it, how long it can be retained and how its accuracy is to be maintained, as well as who can be granted access to it. As noble Lords will know, ContactPoint was decommissioned back in August 2010. Although I know and am very clear that the purpose behind ContactPoint was a good one—to address the issue that was rightly flagged, whereby professionals need to share information about vulnerable children—we felt that the way it was executed was disproportionate, and that it was unjustifiable to hold information on every child in England and make it accessible to hundreds of thousands of people. It was a commitment in both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos to close it. The simple point is, therefore, that without ContactPoint there is nothing for the ContactPoint regulations to apply to. It is true that we could have revoked the ContactPoint regulations at the time, but we decided not to because it might have been possible to amend them to support a more proportionate approach to information sharing. We wanted to explore the practicality of a new national signposting service to help practitioners find out whether another practitioner is working, or has previously worked, in another area with the same vulnerable child. That was why we asked Professor Eileen Munro to consider the potential value of such a service. In May 2011, Professor Munro issued the final report of her review. She concluded that the arguments for and against a national system were finely balanced and that there was no compelling case to recommend one at that time. We accepted that conclusion and therefore do not see any reason to retain these regulations. It is simply good housekeeping to remove them. That was, of course, just one of a number of conclusions reached by Professor Munro, and I should like to say a little more about her review and put the narrow issue regarding these regulations into a slightly broader setting. Professor Munro's review of child protection was the very first review commissioned by the Department for Education and reflected the importance that we attach to child protection, and to trying to get it right. In light of her findings, we are now committed to taking through a package of reforms to improve the child protection system in this country. The general message from Professor Munro was that we needed to move towards a child protection system with less central prescription and interference, where we placed greater trust and responsibility in skilled professionals at the front line. Like her, we want a shift in mindset and relationship between central Government, local agencies and front-line professionals working in partnership. Effective and appropriate information-sharing between agencies is essential if children are to receive the help they need. We know that information is not always shared between agencies and professionals when it is in the best interest of the child to do so. It is crucial that professionals should access the information they need when they need it to make the right decisions for children and young people. Decisions about what information to share and when to share it can require difficult and complex judgments. That is why, time and again, poor information-sharing has been highlighted in serious case reviews. Getting it right is not easy, and we think that it was too simplistic to say that national IT systems in themselves will address that and improve practice. We think that this is a good example of where local solutions are likely to be better than national ones. We believe that it is for local areas to consider the most appropriate way to ensure that information is shared effectively across all agencies. We are working with local authorities, the Association of Directors of Children's Services, health colleagues and the police to develop effective information-sharing policy and protocols in the context of delivering early help to vulnerable children and families. Professor Munro said that local authorities should look at improving their 24-hour access service so that a practitioner concerned about a child can speak to a social worker at any time of day, and we are working with them on that. We are also encouraging local approaches and welcome initiatives such as the multiagency safeguarding hub established in Devon. That is not to say that we should not also look at capitalising on existing systems. In that context, we are working with the Department of Health, which is considering the feasibility of the system for practitioners in A&E departments and other urgent care settings so that they can have access to relevant information about a child, which could cover, for example, whether a child was the subject of a child protection plan or a statutory care order. A key part of that work is the revision of the interagency guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, which Professor Munro called for. That will make clear the importance of interagency working, on which effective information-sharing depends. We will be consulting on the revised version this spring. At the same time, Professor Munro is due to submit her interim progress report. That will highlight examples of best practice to support areas in developing local approaches. That is some of the broader context, but the issue before us today is, as I said, quite narrow. Without ContactPoint, we no longer need the ContactPoint regulations, and I therefore commend these regulations to the Committee.