Children Bill [Lords]

Public Bill Committee, 21 October 2004.

Standing Committee B

Clause 9 - Information databases

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 34, in

clause 9, page 7, line 21, leave out 'one or more databases' and insert 'a United Kingdom-wide database'.

Welcome back to the Chair, Dame Marion. In the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), let me say how appropriate it is that your return is accompanied by the sun's rays tripping through the autumn sky, across an azure-blue background poking fun at the gun-grey clouds of despair that haunted our proceedings earlier in the week. My hon. Friend extends his apologies that he will not be joining us this morning. I am sure that the Committee will wax less lyrical as a consequence, but I shall try my best to fill in for him.

The clause is very important and I anticipate that the Committee will take a fair amount of time to discuss it. I shall talk in fairly general terms about the whole clause, unless you indicate that we shall have a clause stand part debate, Dame Marion. I would be happy to defer a more general discussion until that stage.

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible suggestion. Also, as it is very warm in this Room, hon. Members may remove their jackets if they so wish.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am grateful, Dame Marion.

Information databases are an important aspect of the Bill. We agree with the proposal in principle, but there are still enormous gaps in what the Government have set out in the clause, despite the amendments made to it in the upper House, and it remains little short of Horlicks, if that is a parliamentary term. We need far greater clarification from the Minister this morning before we can support the clause, because we do not know what we would be supporting. She admitted that the consultation documents are not available yet anyway, so we do not know what we will be consulting on.

The point of the database is clearly to fulfil Herbert Laming's strong suggestion in the Climbie report that there should be more joined-up working between all professionals involved in child protection. To facilitate that, we need joined-up information sharing, as I am sure the entire Committee would agree. What is proposed is quite radical and drastic, but it probably

needs to be so to avert in future the sort of tragedies that happened with Victoria Climbie and all the others, whom we do not hear so much about.

In effect, however, the clause gives the Government the powers to institute what can only be described as a surrogate identity card scheme for young people. That sets off an awful lot of alarm bells with people who are already sceptical about more databases and ID cards for the population in general, so it is essential that we get the clause right. Amendment No. 34, to subsection (1), would limit the Secretary of State to one database—we need to get one database right. The clause gives him the power to set up any number of databases, and we need to question seriously what he intends to do.

As I said, improvements were made to the clause in the upper House, largely at the suggestion of my noble Friend Earl Howe. We were able to persuade the Government to add a number of conditions about the content of the regulations, such as the sort of information that could be kept on such databases and the time for which it could be kept. We also sought an assurance that medical records would not be kept on the database. I shall return to that issue on a later amendment, as we want to know whether that could still happen under some of the catch-all subsections in the clause.

The Government launched some 14 trailblazer authorities. I am not sure whether there are still 14; I think that about a dozen are still going. They included my own local authority, West Sussex county council, which has done a lot of work in this area and, in many respects, is in the lead. I have had many conversations with people at the council who are playing a leading role, and I pay tribute to them for what they have done. I disagree with the approach that they are taking, but they are doing a comprehensive job.

The point is that those trailblazers are only halfway through. It is only recently that they have applied for second-wave funding to complete their research. We are therefore being asked to write a blank cheque both for local authorities to set up a database, about which I am less concerned, and for the Secretary of State to set up any number of databases, the conditions for which are exceedingly vague, the purposes of which are not determined, and the operation of which has not yet been decided. Their operation cannot yet have been decided because the Government's own trailblazers have not yet reported. A still greater concern is that the trailblazing teams are not all talking to each other. They are doing a lot on their own but, they tell me, there has been no joined-up working between them. We could end up with a host of different suggestions being made.

We must know what we are committing ourselves to in a clause that gives the Secretary of State enormous powers over information held on 11.5 million children throughout the country. We need many more assurances from the Minister before we can support the sort of proposals that are being made.

Great concern is being expressed by many professionals about how many of those databases there will be. There is particular concern among the

medical profession about a number of issues. The British Medical Association asked a number of questions:

''How do Ministers envisage collating information required under Clause 9(4)?

Will they use the route of the automated Exeter Registration System which is run by PCOs to collate the information?

Whose responsibility will it be to provide the information -primary care organisations or individual GP practices?

What impact will the requirements have on GP practices and primary care?

Some children are not eligible for NHS treatment, such as those who come to this country with their parents who are working here short term. How will these children be identified?''

We need to give assurances to the medical profession in particular, because it is an important player; otherwise, it will not contribute as the other contributors to, and monitors of, the database would want it to.

Currently, professionals can break confidentiality rules in cases in which they are concerned about abuse or neglect of children. However, the Bill appears to extend that power further, so we need to clarify and spell out exactly who can breach confidentiality, who can be informed of the facts resulting from that breach, and in what circumstances. My reading of the clause is that it fails to do that.

On security, there are also fears about who will be able to access the databases. Will the sort of people from whom we are trying to protect children be able to gain access to the data under the accessibility regulations of the Data Protection Act 1998? We need assurances from the Minister on that matter. I know that it is not her intention that such people should be able to gain access to the data, but we must make the provisions watertight.

I am afraid that Governments—not just this Government—do not have a good record on setting up IT systems. The recent revelations about the rocketing IT bill for the NHS are not great cause for comfort in our attempts to get this database right, to make sure that it is set up and to make sure that it is affordable. That is why I want to limit the Secretary of State to one national database, which is clearly set out, aside from the ones that may operate locally. That is the point of the amendment, to which I keep trying to return to stay in order.

The big concern of many of the children's groups is that we will have information overload. The NSPCC has said that information sharing alone is not a substitute for critical understanding and reasoned decision making. It points out that those dealing with the concerns about Victoria Climbie were in possession of information indicating that she was at risk, but failed to understand its significance. It concludes that too much poor-quality information will not aid decision making about children; instead it will make it more difficult. That is an important point.

I asked the Minister on Second Reading how putting details of my children and those of other Members, whom I hope are not at risk, on to a national database with 11.5 million other children will improve

protection for, and promote the welfare of, vulnerable children. That groups includes both those already on child protection registers and those who need to go on a register for enhanced monitoring and protection.

In Children Now magazine, Lisa Harker from the Daycare Trust mentioned comments from the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, who warned in an article in The Times about

''sleepwalking into a surveillance society''.

This will be another database that, as I said at the outset, will be a radical change in giving the Government Big Brother-style powers in their crudest sense. Those powers must be justified. Having information for the sake of it will not necessarily help the children. Lisa Harker herself says:

''We need to avoid making professionals slaves to technology by placing undue burdens on them to record information. And we should question whether the benefits of storing copious information about children are offset by the disadvantages of information overload and creeping surveillance.''

Barnardo's has said that

''the lack of clarity and the duty imposed on a wide range of professionals . . . to disclose information for inclusion in the database may lead to a culture where recording concerns becomes an automatic response; a 'form filling' exercise rather than a reasoned process of professional assessment with a direct connection to the provision of services. We fear that professionals may be drawn into recording masses of concerns without any one person taking responsibility for acting and being accountable for the outcomes experienced by the many children, young people and families in need of support.''

Even one database, to which we are trying, through the amendment, to limit the Secretary of State, may contain just an enormous mass of low-grade information that does not contribute one iota to helping vulnerable children.

A lack of clarity in the establishment of the database could seriously damage relationships among children, their families and professionals. If children think that confidential information about them is being passed to people to whom they would not want it passed, and it cannot be described as in their best interests because they are vulnerable, they are less likely to come forward to professionals for help with their problem, medical or otherwise.

We will come on to the phrase ''cause for concern'' in subsection (4)(g), which is particularly contentious. I know that other hon. Members will join in that debate, so I will not go into that.

We also have serious concerns about the complete absence of any appeals procedure, and I may come back to that later. We are setting up a national database and several local databases, putting potentially very damaging and damning information about certain individuals—parents or other professionals—in connection with children who are deemed to be vulnerable or at risk. Nowhere in the Bill, certainly in the clause and especially in subsection (1), to which the amendment pertains, is there any mention of an appeals procedure whereby parents or other professionals can challenge information about them that may not be justified.

I have looked back at a couple of other Acts, which I considered as Bills in Committee, to see what procedures were put in place that are pertinent in this

case. In the Adoption and Children Act 2002 there is a clear safety net in the form of a review of determinations concerning children going into care and, ultimately, adoption. In the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, in which we set up a leviathan structure of powers concerning the financial services community and protection for its customers, there are clear sections about setting up tribunals and having reviews of contestable decisions. There are no such provisions anywhere in this Bill.

If a database is to be set up—whether a national one established by the Secretary of State or a local one—there will be scope for vexatious information to be put on it by certain professionals who do not like certain parents. Vexatious information about professionals could also be added, and information about a one-off incident that is never likely to be repeated could be kept. However, there is no way for the target or victim of that information to challenge its veracity or the fact that it will be kept on a national or local database for an indeterminate length of time. We need checks and safeguards for databases containing large amounts of information.

Giving the Secretary of State enormous powers to set up a multitude of databases—not just the one that we are trying to limit him to—with all sorts of Henry VIII-style, catch-all powers under regulation, causes great concern. We need to strike a far better balance; it is only fair for those people at which the finger of blame is pointed because they are seen to be a risk to children in some way. There must be a right of appeal in certain circumstances.

I could go on, but several amendments to this important clause have been tabled. If we are to give the Secretary of State the powers outlined in the clause, we must know exactly how he will use them, how people can relate to them, and how people can be protected against them being used in ways that we do not intend. The amendment would tie the Secretary of State down to a national database, which would not contain lots of information but act as signposting, across local authority boundaries, between certain professionals who have had contact with vulnerable children.

Experience has shown that transient children are the most vulnerable. They may be in the care of Newcastle authority one minute and appear in Brighton or Norfolk the next. A proper national database is essential so that when a child comes into contact with an authority, it can check whether the child has any form and whether concerns have been expressed by professionals in other authorities. Under the rules of the child protection register, when a child leaves one authority, another authority must be notified. If only it were that simple. Too many children disappear off the radar, and they tend to be the most vulnerable.

Setting up a national database that can cross-reference as much information as possible about who knows best about a child, so that the professional in Brighton knows to talk to the director of children's services, or whoever, in Newcastle, where the child was last recorded, is the best way to try to keep tabs on vulnerable children. We need to tie down the purposes and mechanisms of that national database much more

tightly than the clause does. The amendment would initiate some strict definitions of what the databases will achieve and how they will operate. I apologise for being so long-winded.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly drew attention to the phrase ''one or more databases''.

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

Order. I ask the hon. Lady please to shout a little louder as the Hansard recording cannot pick up her voice.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I am surprised by that request, Dame Marion, as I was a teacher for many years. Perhaps I had the most effective control over my classes by speaking quietly. It is quite embarrassing for a teacher to be told that she is not speaking loudly enough. However, I will try to speak up, and I trust you will remind me if I let my voice drop.

We share the concern about the amount of power that is being placed in the hands of the Secretary of State without having full information about the limits on that power. I am not yet convinced of the case for a United Kingdom-wide database, but I assume that there will be a free and open debate on the subject this morning, which will be a learning exercise for us all.

One reason why I am not convinced is that I have differences with the Conservative Opposition inasmuch as I believe that the purpose of the measure is that there should be a preventative agenda. Therefore the proposal should not be confined to children who have been highlighted as being vulnerable at a particular time. My perspective is different: there is a strong case for a local authority database that contains simple details, some of which are specified in subsection (4), and which cover all children. However, that gives rise to the question about how information is to be shared when a child moves from one authority to another.

In my work as a local councillor, I witnessed many problems when children arrived at a place and there was no information about them, but the existence of a national database will not solve that problem. Local authorities are not notifying sufficiently now, and I am not convinced that they will set to and pass on the necessary data simply because there is a United Kingdom database. I want the Minister to tell me how data will be shared between different local authorities.

I support questioning the Secretary of State's huge power in respect of one or more databases, but at this stage I am not absolutely convinced about the case for a United Kingdom-wide database. How will the provision link to the NHS database for children? The police also have a considerable amount of information and I should be interested to know how they share information between police forces. I have been looking at their new system for sexual offenders and how it is flagged up. Has it been considered as a model for data sharing? That would perhaps allay some of our concerns.

I do not want a full discussion of the matter, but I will flag up all the questions that the Joint Committee on Human Rights raised, some of which were answered in the interim by the Lords amendment, which we greatly welcome. However, at least half are still unanswered, as far as I can see. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said that an answer had been given about how long data would be stored, but I cannot see that in the Bill. Perhaps I am missing something.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

On the hon. Lady's point on how long information can be kept, the Bill now specifies that regulations must give details about that. We still do not have that information because we do not have any of the regulations, and we are unlikely to get it before the Bill passes through Parliament. However, at least we got a provision into the Bill that the information must be set out at some future stage. She is right to say that the information is not there.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is exactly right; we just do not know the answer to the question. Is it right to store data beyond the age of 16 or 18 or after an issue in a family has long since been resolved? The problem is that we have seen no draft regulations. I understand that, for many other Bills, draft regulations are available at least before Report.

The Joint Committee's report states clearly that it has written to the Minister asking what the justification is for not dealing with the details of the proposed database—singular—in primary legislation and for answers to the questions that it lists above. I should very much like her to respond to all the outstanding questions during this morning's debate; otherwise, we cannot move on.

Finally, I echo the comments of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham on the concern about the success of Government IT systems generally. Interestingly, just this week we have had the Government response to a Select Committee report on IT and, in turn, the Select Committee's response. The Work and Pensions Committee published the Government response to its

''major report into why many IT projects in the public sector become defective, waste large sums of taxpayers' money and cause distress to thousands of clients.''

The potential for distress in the area that we are discussing is incredible, as the hon. Gentleman said.

The Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood), said:

''Overall, we are very dissatisfied with the Government's response. The Government's record on IT projects needs to get better. We produced a well-argued report into how the Government's record . . . could be improved. Our report was widely recognised throughout the media and industry . . . However, we have received a response from the Department that all too often does not fully engage with the letter or spirit of the report's recommendations.''

The feeling is that there is not a learning experience from past failures. Again, we must be very wary of the introduction of a complex system with which things

could go badly wrong. I am not sure that we can support the amendment, but nevertheless an important point has been made by flagging up the phrase ''one or more databases''.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

Many thanks, Dame Marion, for being prepared to wait until I arrived before starting the proceedings. I apologise for nearly being late.

The debate on the clause is one of the most important debates that we shall have on the Bill, and I am pleased that we have time to consider the issues properly. The measure is one of the most complex parts of the transformation agenda that we have set for ourselves and of the whole-system change that we want to achieve in children's services. We want to build all the services around the needs of the child, get multi-agency working going, and move to an agenda of prevention, to which the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) referred.

Let us return to the reasons why we are going down this road. I think that all hon. Members accept this. When I read the report on Victoria Climbie's death and the other reports that we have had over the past 25 years on the tragic and often unnecessary deaths of children, I saw that something that always comes up is the failure of professionals, either within one agency or across agencies, to share information properly. We are trying to get people to work together and share information at an appropriate stage, and that is why we are moving down the road of providing a tool for professionals. It is no more than a tool. The creation of databases will support better information sharing between professionals within an agency and across agencies.

If we do not go down the database route, we will still have to introduce a set of new protocols, ways of working and regulations for professionals to ensure that information is shared better. The databases are one of many tools, but an important one. It is critical that we tackle some of the complex issues raised by hon. Members, face up to some of the tensions within those issues and try to resolve them in as open and collaborative a way as we can across the political parties, so that we can provide an effective tool that will enable professionals to share information and thereby perhaps prevent child deaths in the future. That is the whole purpose of the idea.

The Government's record—the public sector's record—on establishing new IT systems is dire. We all accept that. That was the case as much under the Conservative Government as under the Labour Government.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

The Labour Government have spent a lot more—wasted a lot more.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

We have invested a lot more, because of changes in information technology. However, we are not good at establishing IT systems, and it is for that reason that we have two or three principles behind our approach. The first is that we should keep it as simple as possible—I hope that hon. Members agree with that. That has particular

implications for the amendment. Secondly, we must go slowly, so that at every stage in the development, we check and re-check the feasibility and doability of the project, both in practical and financial terms. Thirdly, we must be as open as we can. We are, therefore, deliberately going slowly and deliberately trying to keep things as simple as possible. We shall also be open, and I am happy, in seminars or elsewhere, to share with hon. Members from both sides of the House the way in which our thinking is progressing. The last thing that we want to do in relation to the issue is to move in a way that does not build consensus.

There are many difficulties. One of the key issues is how one achieves the correct balance—to which the Joint Committee on Human Rights referred—between the rights of the individual to privacy, as enshrined in the Human Rights Act 1998, and the need to protect children effectively and to prevent them from suffering harm or falling into danger. We are thinking through that difficult issue.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am grateful to the Minister and hear what she says. It is right that we should get things right. I started my comments by saying that the change is so radical that we must get it right. Does the Minister therefore not think that, rather than giving rise to scepticism and opposition because of the vagueness of the proposals, it might have been more sensible to omit the clause from the Bill and to return to the whole subject as part of the more comprehensive database regulations that will need to be drafted later in relation to police records because of the Bichard inquiry and Soham? If that work had been done, the Government would have been clear about the extent of what they were proposing. They are not at present.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I would have agreed with that, but for three reasons. The first is that we must make progress on the issue and we need the legislative framework to enable us to do so. Secondly, we have said openly that we will use the affirmative procedure in both Houses as we develop the regulations, and we stand by that. I hope that engaging in debate with hon. Members on both sides of the House will lead to intensive discussion on the regulations as we make progress on phasing them in. Thirdly, we also needed to clarify in law the powers of professionals to share information and how they can operate. The database is only part of the system that we will establish to achieve better information sharing. Much of clause 9 clarifies the rights of professionals to share information about children and their families where that is appropriate to safeguard and protect them and to promote their well-being. Those are the three reasons for proceeding in this way.

Chris Mole (Labour, Ipswich)

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the current difficulties is that many professional agencies are not confident about what information they can legitimately exchange? The case of the Soham murders and Ian Huntley was a stark example of agencies arguing among themselves about whether provisions of the Data Protection Act

1998 applied. Therefore, it is vital to clarify the legal framework in which data can be exchanged between agencies.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I completely agree with my hon. Friend's extremely helpful intervention. It is partly to respond to fears expressed by many professionals at the front line about whether they can share information that we have clarified in law their existing powers and authority.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

We have had this conversation before, and the question that arises is why is it necessary to include these provisions in the Bill, if that work can be done anyway? Why is the problem not tackled by investing heavily in training the work force? The fact that people are allowed to do things but do not understand the law and how it applies makes one feel that there is another motive behind the regulations that we have not yet seen.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

The hon. Lady is right that training is equally important. There is not one answer to ensuring that professionals share information more effectively. Part of the answer is clarifying professionals' powers and duties, which we are doing in the Bill, part of it is providing them with the tools to do so, hence the establishment of the database, and part of it is training them so that they understand when and how it is appropriate to share information. We are not saying that training is not important—of course it is—but we hope that those solutions will provide a stronger infrastructure to support the sharing of information.

We have talked a lot about recruiting and retaining social workers. I am not a social worker, but some hon. Members have been. They tell me that they spent far too much time chasing up and ringing various people, seeing who else was involved in a case, going down a lot of dead ends—thinking that perhaps it was X or Y, but finding that it was not—and often being unable to trace other professionals involved in a case. I hope that we can use the best information technology as an effective tool to support professionals so that they do not waste their time trying to track down who else they should talk to but do what they ought to be doing: promoting the well-being of children and protecting them.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

My confidence in the proposal has been greatly increased by my discussions with experienced social work professionals involved in some of the pilot projects. They have made it clear that the proposals are developing out of good professional practice and are not being imposed on them by geeky adolescents with a penchant for IT. The serious point of my question is whether my right hon. Friend believes such a system will encourage and require individual workers to take more personal responsibility for the information that they have and for sharing it with fellow professionals?

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

That is one of the objectives, so I hope that it will occur. Equally, it is important to put on record that holding, recording and even sharing information with other professionals is not an excuse

for or an alternative to inaction. During the training process, we will ensure that professionals do not think that simply because they have indicated on a database that they are concerned about a particular individual, they do not have to act. That is important.

We hope that the database will enable professionals to focus more on protecting the child. We also hope that it will be a tool that gives the professionals a fuller picture of the child, so that they can take better-informed decisions about them. We hope that the databases will support us in identifying much more quickly the children with whom others have contact and whether they are getting the universal services to which they are entitled. We also hope that it will help us make a much earlier identification of need and provide more effective action because the professionals know who else is involved. Those are the purposes behind what we are doing.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

An amendment in the other place, which I believe was suggested by Liberty, proposed to scrap the whole idea of the database and simply to include a duty to co-operate on all the people involved. Why is that not a satisfactory solution? At the end of the day, we need people to co-operate, rather than just rely on the database.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, that is to misconceive the database. The duty to co-operate is included in clause 7. Clause 9 makes clear the powers to share information and establishes a process in which information is a tool to support better co-operation. The database is nothing other than an effective tool, taking advantage of modern technology.

I want to move on to the issues raised by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. He said first that the consultation documents are not yet out, and I apologise for that. I had said that we hoped to have them out in time for debate in Committee, but I have to discuss them with colleagues and we need consensus across Government on these difficult issues. However, I am making best endeavours to ensure that the first of our consultation documents will be out before Report, which is in a couple of weeks, so that Members will have been able to have at least an initial look at it. I put that in the context that we are not going to rush anything or curtail the consultation or debate in any way.

The hon. Gentleman's second point was that the database was a surrogate ID card. It is not a card and children will not carry anything around with them. It is not the same at all and has a completely different purpose. The concept of ID cards is more about supporting us in tackling international crime and terrorism. A record will not appear anywhere. As we made it clear in the other place, the database will not include any detailed information on the child in terms of the case details. To return to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, there will be no NHS health or police records on the database. We may discuss this in greater detail when we talk about causes

of concern. The database will simply have the name of the GP or the doctor and the details of any other health service professional who is working with that child.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I appreciate that no one is talking about a physical card that children will carry around, but the Minister is trying to minimise what will be on the database. Subsection (4) sets out that it is not just

''(a) his name, address, gender and date of birth;''

''(b) a number identifying him;

(c) the name and contact details of any person with parental responsibility . . .

(d) details of any education being received . . .

(e) the name and contact details of any person providing primary medical services . . .

(f) the name and contact details of any person providing to him services . . .

(g) information as to the existence of any cause for concern in relation to him;''

and any other information that the Secretary of State cares to include. That could be vast. The Minister is underplaying the extent of what can be held on this database.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

The wording in clause 9(4)(h) puts it beyond all doubt that medical case records can never be included on the database. The hon. Member quoted paragraphs (d) onwards which refer to the names either of the institutions or the professionals working with the child. There are no details about the child itself. For example, the educational details will be just the details of the child's school, not whether the child is a non-attender or has special educational needs. It will simply be the details of the educational establishment if the child attends one or not if the child is receiving education at home.

Let me give an example of where that is quite important. It relates to the universality and whether it should be a smaller database just of those children who are at risk of harm and abuse. Having a universal database is one way we can ensure that all children access the universal services to which they are entitled. We know that some children are missing school. If we have details of the education being received by the children on that universal database it will be much easier. As the hon. Gentleman knows we have huge difficulties in trying to keep track of children who are missing education. This will make it much easier to trace those children who are not in school and thereby to ensure that they get the education that will enable them to contribute in adult life.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I do not disagree with what the Minister says, but she has just completely contradicted herself. She said that the database will have details only of the school or educational institution that provides an education because we need to know about those children who are not receiving education. She then referred to the details of that education. Subsection (4)(d) refers to ''details of any education''. It does not say details of any establishment providing the education. We will come to this in a later amendment but she has clearly contradicted herself.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I am sure that this is parliamentary counsel's drafting. I am receiving nods from my officials. This is parliamentary drafting to describe the information that we require on the database, which is the institution that the child attends. It could be a child who is educated at home. An amendment has been tabled in relation to home education. [Interruption.] I have got it right.

Subsection (4)(d), as currently drafted, is drawn widely to allow the database to record where a child or young person is receiving education, whether that be at home or in other institutions, such as pupil referral units or hospitals, as well as in schools or colleges. That is why it is drafted in that way.

The hon. Gentleman said that we were asking for a blank cheque. We are not, which is why any regulations that we implement in relation to the clause will be subject to affirmative resolution in both Houses. I hope that the assurances that I am trying to give hon. Members this morning will convince them that we are in no way trying to do anything behind closed doors. We want to be as open and as consultative as possible.

The BMA asked us several questions, and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham is right to refer to them. There are questions to be asked by a whole range of professionals, and we look forward to working with the BMA in formulating the regulations in a way that will benefit the practicalities to which it refers and that will ensure that we take advantage of its expertise.

The hon. Gentleman says that we have at least 10 trailblazers.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

There are fewer all the time.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I do not know how many there were before, but there were 10 by the time the document arrived on my desk. Those trailblazers are meeting and discussing particular issues and, of course, we are taking advantage of the experience that they are accumulating in thinking through some of the regulations and protocols. Therefore, they are meeting and discussing issues together and with us.

This is an iterative process, which is why we need affirmative resolutions. We want to build on what we learn from the trailblazers. On the other hand, we would let down the memory of Victoria Climbie and would not fulfil Lord Laming's recommendations if we waited for three, four or five years until the trailblazers were firmly embedded before we even started to make progress on information sharing and on developing a tool that can promote better information sharing.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

The Minister says that discussions are being held with the trailblazers. Will she say whether there has been any discussion about the issue of access to the confidential services for young people that the Family Planning Association raised and that we are obviously very keen for them to take advantage of? We all know that young people are sometimes reluctant to seek advice unless they can be sure that it is confidential.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

This is one of the very difficult issues that we must think through, and I hope that the consultation paper, which we will have ready before Report, will start to address that sort of issue.

There are three aspects to confidentiality. The first is the sensitivity of the information, to which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham referred. When information is sensitive, we want as far as possible to work with consent, particularly of young people. Another aspect, on which trailblazers are helping and showing us the way, is that technology is such that we can make certain pieces of information visible only to certain people. So one can hide information. The point is not that information is being hidden, but that the fact that a particular professional is working with a child can be hidden from other professionals. My hon. Friend the Minister for Public Health will know much about that as an expert in the field. We believe that we have found the way through on that issue.

Domestic violence is another area in which confidentiality is important, so the consultation document deals not only with advice on sexual health or contraception given to young people, but with all abuse, including alcohol and drug abuse. We do not want addresses to be released widely.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

Under the clause, if a young person in such a situation were unwilling to give consent for the information to be released, would the information that the young person had used this service automatically be released? What sort of work has been done on that?

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I ask my hon. Friend to wait for the consultation document. There are two issues. The first is open to debate, but my view is that if a professional is working with a child, they should indicate that. The second question is whether others should have access to the knowledge that a professional is working with a child when that information is particularly sensitive. That arena allows flexibility in creating a system that operates to ensure that where the professional judgment is such that it would not be in the child's interest for others to know that a professional was working with the child, the information could be hidden except for in those exceptional circumstances where it becomes relevant. That sounds a little tautologous, but it is a difficult issue.

We should not say to professionals, ''You can choose whether or not you put on to the information database that you are working with a child.'' All professionals need to show that, but whether their work is visible to other professionals working with the child is another issue. The technology enables us to give the confidentiality that is necessary in some circumstances.

That deals, I hope, with some of the confidentiality and security issues talked about by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham.

Tim Loughton indicated dissent.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

The hon. Gentleman does not agree. However, I want to deal with the issue of why one database, not more.

I agree with hon. Members that we need to find a system whereby if children move across local authority boundaries, they can be traced. At the moment, we are carrying out a feasibility study on whether we should have one national database or 150 different local databases, with perhaps a 151st database. The databases would have to be interoperable, which is why it is important for the system to be developed nationally. Information about where a child's record is could be kept on the 151st national database. I am told that the technology allows that, so that if I rang up and needed to track Joan Smith, the 151st database would enable us to find where that record was kept and would also hold children's records if they are not located in one local authority.

I have been told that the technology enables such a system, and if that is right, it will deal with many of our concerns about how information is properly held as children transfer over local authority boundaries.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Is it not right to say, as I have been told by some of the trailblazers, that they are operating different IT systems at the moment and that a national standard has not been set to make them interoperable? What the Minister is trying to achieve will not be achieved at the moment.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

The trailblazers have different systems, which we will have to develop. That is part of the process that we will go through over the coming years as we develop one national standard to ensure interoperability.

One could argue that some of the investment in the local authority trailblazers will not be used over time, but it was important to get the trailblazers up and running so that we can use the knowledge that they acquire. They are doing it in very different ways; the Sussex example is interesting and rather a good one. It is kept incredibly simple and I am impressed by it. Others are using causes of concern, for example, in a different way across the country. We are having to learn from that. I hope that all hon. Members will talk to the trailblazers as they develop their expertise.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am delighted to hear that the Minister is impressed with West Sussex council's system, and one would expect that of a three-star rated, Conservative-run authority. Would it not have been more sensible if, as part of the conditions for the operation of the trailblazers and the grants of about £1 million to put them in place, there had been a central, uniform system that they all used to get them off to a good start? The absence of that will only delay the process yet further, and, as the Minister said, it has wasted investment on promoting different computer systems that do not ''talk'' to each other.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I wish that it had been that easy, but we have to decide what to design and we are learning from the trailblazers and from experts. If we

could have designed a system first we would have done so. We are using the trailblazers to build the expertise needed to design a prototype.

Chris Mole (Labour, Ipswich)

Does my right hon. Friend agree that to take a national position on the form of a database at the pilot stage would completely undermine the purpose of piloting to generate best practice in innovation in local areas?

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

If we had known what we needed to design, we would not have needed trailblazers. We needed the pilots in order to understand where to go from here. One needs to design to a purpose.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

The Minister is talking about something completely different. Trailblazers are needed to decide how they gain, use and share the information. That is quite separate from having a computer system that is compatible with other computer systems, whereby when they have decided what information is relevant, it can be shared. We are talking about two different things.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is a more IT, techie sort of person than I am. I am not the world's greatest in that regard and I look to my hon. Friends to help me. However, as I understand it, one has to know what information one wants before one can design the appropriate system, which can then be interoperable. Am I correct?

Meg Munn (Labour/Co-operative, Sheffield, Heeley)

Yes. She is right; he is wrong.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

My very good hon. Friend also tells me that Sheffield, the authority in her constituency, is another excellent trailblazer from which we are learning a lot. Sheffield and West Sussex gave me a good demonstration, which I hope that the hon. Gentleman has seen. Telford and Wrekin, too, is doing a good job. There is a lot of good stuff from the trailblazers in their different ways.

We are considering whether to have local databases, which I would prefer as it would be the simplest option. That is how to get the proposal off the ground, but do we need a 151st system to enable knowledge to be spread across the piece? Why not have a database of children who are at risk of abuse? I put those arguments on the record because they are important.

We want to take a preventative approach, as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said. The thrust of the reform agenda is to ensure that people do not merely react when things go wrong to try and stop them getting worse, but that they prevent a crisis occurring. A preventative approach means identifying children before they are on the at-risk register.

About 3 million of the 11.7 million children in Britain—about a quarter to a third—have an additional need of some sort, although that does not mean that they are at risk of harm or abuse. If we want to identify those additional needs at an early stage, a universal system that enables earlier identification is an advantage in ensuring that ''Every child matters'', to repeat the title of the Green Paper.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend about the necessity of universal provision, but as we discussed at our last sitting, there is an alarming gap in provision for children who may come unaccompanied through immigration and not be picked up again. I will not rehearse the iniquities of asylum policy, or our previous debate, but I ask her to assure me that she will continue to consider the issue and do everything that she can to plug that enormous gap. We cannot seriously say that we respect the memory of Victoria Climbie until we do so.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

There is a range of children—asylum-seeking children, Traveller children and others—who could easily fall through the net. A data-sharing system will help us to identify those children, and any child in Britain is covered by the Children Act 1989. Children who come in as asylum-seeking children may show up at a housing or social services department, a GP practice, a school or a youth club. Therefore, the system will support my hon. Friend's objective of trying to ensure that we protect all children in Britain; that is what we want to achieve.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I entirely agree, but my point is about children who do not go to school and youth clubs and who are not taken to hospitals. The evidence from Operation Paladin suggests that a significant number of children come into the country but do not thereafter become known to anyone. That is of enormous concern.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I do not think that Operation Paladin proved that. I think that it proved that the systems to deal with the children about whom we are all concerned, who are trafficked in and do not come in as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, are more robust than they were in the past. We did not identify those children at risk through the Operation Paladin experiment. They probably come in with adults, so they are not identified at the point of entry, and they emerge later, if we are lucky, or they do not emerge and are exploited later on. Operation Paladin has not given us all the comfort that we would have wanted in terms of trying to get to grips with the trafficking and exploitation that occurs with children who are brought in.

Let me return to why we want a universal data system. I think that we are probably talking about local systems supported by a national system. Earlier, I was making a point about additional needs. A universal system also ensures that we can identify most children. Nothing will be 100 per cent. effective—my hon. Friend is right about that—but a data system will enable us to identify and know about more children than we currently do. That is to be applauded. The system will ensure that children have access to the universal services, which is very important. We have talked about children who are not at school. I think particularly about children who are not in the NEET group—those who are not in education, employment or training. That is another area in which we want to do things better. The system will help local authorities

to plan for services. A local database will also prevent the stigmatisation that is associated with being on the record of a social services department. I hope that that explanation convinces people that going down the universal route is the most important thing to do.

On amendment No. 34, I hope that I have convinced the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that I share his desire, as we go down the database route, to have a system that ensures that we can track children across boundaries to prevent them from slipping through that net. I hope also, on the basis of simplicity, that he does not pursue his amendment, because it would tie us down to building just one database system, and the dangers of not succeeding would be far greater in that case. The amendment pre-empts the feasibility work that we are doing and that we will consult him on as to what works best. I hope that I have convinced him that we intend to be as open as we can in pursuing this policy, and that he and others will work with us to ensure that it works for children.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

We have had a long but useful debate on the amendment, which probably mitigates the need for more lengthy debate on other parts of the clause. However, an awful lot of questions remain unanswered. The Minister said that I accused the Government of wanting a blank cheque. Well, that is what they want. It is not an inappropriate analogy and, furthermore, there is no date on that cheque as to when the proposal will come into force and when we will know how it will work. We do not know how much it will cost and how many people will be involved, so we do not know how much the cheque will be for. We do not really know who the beneficiaries will be or who will have the authority to access the account and sign the cheque off. Despite everything that she has said at length, the analogy is a good one. It is a very blank cheque.

Some of the Minister's responses were not adequate. She gave an excuse about consultation—I know that the process takes a long time, but the Government have had a long time. The Bill started in the Lords at the beginning of this year, Lord Laming's report came out at the beginning of last year, and Victoria Climbie died four and a half years ago. There has been a lot of time for the Government to produce more detail on essential parts of the Bill such as clause 9. She was unable to produce the consultation details for the Lords stages of the Bill or for this Committee, and she may not be able to do so by Report—the final stage in this House. It is not good enough to say, as she put it, that this is ''the way these things go''.

We are being asked to sign a blank cheque without even seeing the consultation details, let alone the proposal that the Government intend to put forward as a result of that consultation. We are possibly years down the track from seeing what the Government will physically and practically produce, which may or may not be acceptable to many people with great concerns.

The Minister says that they will not rush the consultation. I entirely agree that, although it is late already, it is appropriate that everybody has their views heard. Will she at least say that we will be able

to debate the subject on the Floor of the House, because it is of such magnitude? I know that she will tell me that she is not in control of the parliamentary timetable and that it depends on the Whips, but she could at least do her best to try to secure parliamentary time to debate the important subject of databases and information sharing. The subject goes beyond the remit of child protection, because Home Office matters and the implications of Soham are attached.

It is not as though the Minister would have to pull any great favours to do so, because until yesterday afternoon's debate on the national service framework for children, no Government time in this Parliament had been given to debate child protection issues. The only debates on that subject have taken place in Opposition time. We have not had a debate about children on the Floor of the House since she became the Minister for Children, Young People and Families. That is a pretty poor record, and I hope that she will use this excuse to try to lever time out of the Whips so that all hon. Members can contribute to a debate.

The Minister went through the list in clause 9 trying to minimise what will be included in the database. However, the only guarantee that she can give, because of additions that were inserted in the House of Lords, is that medical records will not form part of that data, but everything else can. On the subject of education, she again gave the excuse of parliamentary counsel drafting, but again that is not good enough. She gave a sigh of relief when she apparently knew what she was talking about once she received a note from her assistants. Why can education not be tied down more specifically to the identity of the education provider or the fact that education is taken at home if that is the alternative?

The Minister also mentioned the important subject of stigma. We do not want to do anything that stigmatises children who appear on a register. I have raised that subject with children who come out of the care system. Someone doing work experience for me has been through the care system and is exceedingly impressive and articulate. I have consulted him and many others. The response that I have had is that there is no overriding wish from supposedly vulnerable children—children who have been in the care system—to go on to a universal register with everybody else to make anonymous the fact that they have greater requirements and may be deemed vulnerable. They would much rather be specifically placed on a database and flagged up as having greater needs so that we pay greater attention to them and make sure that they get the help and support that they require. They do not care about the fact that they may be singled out; that is certainly the response that I have had. The excuse that we need to dilute the group of vulnerable children by making them an anonymous part of 11.5 million children does not wash.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I suspect that I know the young man whom the hon. Gentleman mentioned; he is indeed an excellent young chap. However, does the hon. Gentleman not place too much responsibility on his

shoulders in asking him to speak for every young person in the country? Has he, for instance, consulted A National Voice, the national organisation for young people in care? Has he sought its views on the matter?

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I started off by saying that I had consulted a number of people. I have not consulted A National Voice but, of course, I have not based my views entirely on those of one individual. I have been to see a number of care action teams, which are made up of young people who have been through care in various counties and I have brought them to seminars and summits here. I have not detected the fear that if vulnerable children only—however we want to define them—were put on a register, enormous stigma would go with that. I have found that such children have been rather relaxed about that. We can have a debate on the subject but I do not think that it should be such an overriding concern that we need put every one of our 11.5 million children on the database.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

As I said before, the database's purpose is to strengthen prevention and protection. From what the hon. Gentleman has said, he should have no concern about the indication of causes of concern on the database. They will just ensure that vulnerable children are given the services and the protection to which they are entitled. We think that we ought to be able to flag up on the system the concerns that professionals may have about such children's well-being and welfare.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

We shall come on to ''causes for concern''—a notorious phrase—later. I would hope that there would be no reason to flag up causes for concern about my or any other Committee member's children. I could not guarantee that, but one would hope so—certainly in the case of my children, however much they like to make out otherwise when things are not going well. The point is that I have not heard the Minister, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) or anyone else make a case as to why placing my children on the database would enhance the service and support that we need to focus on children who have needs, are on the child protection register, are looked after and have had problems. I do not see that cut-across.

I should like to take up a few other points. Quite rightly, the Minister said that the point of getting the database to work properly is to cut down on a lot of time wasted as a result of professionals chasing one other around. That is absolutely right. It is why we support the database. I am not saying that we do not need the database; I started off by saying that I agreed that we need databases and local databases. I particularly agree that we need localised databases that can talk to other databases. I still have concerns that we are not nearly far enough down that road and that a lot of investment has gone in the wrong direction. I agree that we need a national database to link up the 150 localised databases.

The Liberal Democrats take a different view, but they have to explain how all the children who move—there are an awful lot of them—will be protected in the absence of a national database. Many children fall

through the gaps. Even a national database will not catch those anonymous children who, as the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre said, are in the country even though we do not know about them. Those children are kept away from being presented to professionals, because they are more vulnerable. We need to do as much as possible for them. Even a national database will not pick those cases up, but it will fill in some of the gaps.

There are also data protection principles to consider. There are a number of questions that the Minister needs to answer, if not now, then later in the discussions on the clause. Principles established in the Data Protection Act 1998 are germane to what is being set up. The fourth principle of data protection states:

''Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.''

We have heard nothing about the veracity of the information, about how and by whom it will be checked, or about how wrong or vexatious information will be challenged. We have no details of how that information will be kept up to date. We do not want just a series of snapshots of odd instances. We need a dynamic database that brings together different strands of information. The analogy that I like to use is of a jigsaw: we need a jigsaw master to piece the bits together to create a picture that shows whether intervention should be launched on behalf of a vulnerable child. Whether the jigsaw master is, ultimately, the director of children's services or someone else remains to be seen.

The fifth principle of data protection states:

''Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.''

The Minister has acknowledged that that is at least a requirement of the regulations, but we need an indication of how that requirement will be defined when those regulations are eventually produced. We need constantly to review the worth of the information on the system. We have heard nothing from the Minister about how that will be achieved.

We also do not know how individuals can access those data. Will children have a right to do so when they are under the age of 18? Will they have that right when they reach 18? Is it appropriate that those data are kept on the system only when the child is still a child? Is there a case for its being kept after the child is 18 or, as in the requirement for children coming out of care or children with disabilities, up to the age of 22? Do such arrangements cease to be appropriate when children reach seniority?

Is the Children's Commissioner empowered to run the national database? We do not know who will be in charge of it. We know that the Secretary of State can write the cheques—we are giving him a large book of blank cheques.

An awful lot has gone unanswered. However, after an hour and 20 minutes I shall return to the amendment, as I know you wish I had done earlier, Dame Marion. The amendment seeks only to

constrain the Secretary of State to the establishment of one national database. I have elaborated on our concerns about how that database will operate. The proposals say nothing about constraining local databases. The Minister tried to suggest that I was in favour of just one database and nothing else, but I am not. I am favour of the 150 or so local databases under the aegis of directors of children's services in local authorities. I am also in favour of a national database, run, ultimately, by the Secretary of State, although his powers to run it will, I hope, be defined.

The Minister has signally failed to deal with the amendment by telling us why the Secretary of State needs more than one database. What would the other national databases do? If there is to be no more than one national database, the Minister must accept the amendment, as we are giving the Secretary of State all the necessary powers for a single database. If we are to consider withdrawing the amendment, surely the Minister must say why the Secretary of State may want more than one national database, and what purposes the additional databases would serve. If she cannot do so, she will obviously have to support the amendment.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I think that we shall want to move to a Division. I shall deal with only two issues, or we will end up going round the houses.

First, the information on the databases will be covered by the Data Protection Act 1998. All the rights that ensue from that Act will be appropriate to the Bill's provision. We need authority to go further than the amendment would allow. For instance, we may decide to go for 150 databases or for some other number—and a case may be made for London having a regional or sub-regional database. We need flexibility in order to make the best decision. We do not want to be constrained by an amendment that will allow us only one choice.

Secondly, whichever way we go, and although we must set national rules, we shall also want interoperability between the databases, so that they can talk to each other. Even with a national system that supports children moving across boundaries, local systems could talk to each other and operate against the rules. We do not want 10 trailblazers doing different things; we want to include authorities throughout the country. Much as I would like to help Opposition Members by agreeing to the amendment, it would not give us the required flexibility.

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will debate the matter fully. I would love to debate children's issues more often on the Floor of the House. I shall use my best endeavours to find time for further debates. Indeed, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), who is responsible for community care, led a good debate yesterday, in Government time, on the national service framework for children. I hope that Opposition Members will show the same interest in debates on children that they show in debates on other issues.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am terribly sorry, but the Minister has not addressed the point. She mentioned London. I entirely agree that a good case can be made for a London-wide database. That was clearly shown in the case of Victoria Climbie; she was moved a short distance from one authority to another, but the information was not linked up. Nothing in the amendment would prevent a London-wide database being established, because powers elsewhere in the Bill allow children's services authorities to co-operate London-wide, either singly, doubly or with many others. That would not be ruled out by the amendment. It could still be achieved under subsection (1)(a) on individual databases.

The Minister's case falls completely. She has not told us what the additional databases would achieve, or what would be their purpose. In the absence of her addressing the object of the amendment, I fear that I shall have to press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 2, Noes 12.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 35, in

clause 9, page 7, line 25, at end insert—

'(2A) Any person or body establishing or operating a database under this section shall ensure that the database operates to safeguard and promote the welfare and best interests of every child whose personal information is held.'.

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 36, in

clause 9, page 8, line 31, at end insert—

'(7A) The requirement to disclose information for agencies specified in subsection (6)(b) will not apply if disclosure would be detrimental to the child's welfare or safeguarding.'.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am afraid, Dame Marion, that it is me again; I shall try not to speak for quite so long this time. I think that we have established a few principles on the clause.

I am sure that we can all agree with the spirit of proposed new subsection (2A). I fear that the Minister may come up with a technical explanation, given to her by her civil servants, of why it would not be appropriate or achieve what we want. However, the purpose is to impose on those responsible for establishing and operating the databases a clear duty to ensure that all databases operate to safeguard children and promote their best interests and welfare.

It is clear that databases can be established under clause 9 only when their purpose is to support co-operation to improve the well-being of children and young people under clause 7, to safeguard or promote the welfare of children and young people under clause 8, or to fulfil obligations under section 175 of the Education Act 2002. However, no corresponding duty is placed on those establishing or operating the databases to prioritise the safety and well-being of children.

Where a database is established and operated by another agency—a ''body corporate'', as it is referred to in clause 9(2)—it will not be subject to any duties in relation to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of children. That is the point at issue; we are trying to make that obligation clear. In the cases in question, there is no clear and unambiguous duty on persons and bodies that establish or operate databases to prioritise the safety and welfare of all children and young people whose records are kept.

Because of the range of people who would be accessing or inputting data in the system, the potential sensitivity of that information and the fact, as I have already pointed out, that the clause is something of a skeleton provision, surely accountability on the part of the people operating the databases is essential. They should work to safeguard children and promote their welfare, and they should be accountable on those points.

What are the guarantees on safety of access? I have already raised that point, and we still need more assurances from the Minister. Database management cannot be regarded as an administrative or technical role. It is surely essential to the safety and effectiveness of the system that everyone who accesses or records information is police checked and trained to work in line with best practice, and that their use of the database is monitored. Likewise, decisions about the recording, disclosure or analysis of information held on the system should always be taken in light of the need to safeguard children and promote their welfare.

We have already had a debate about the poor record of Government IT projects, and we need to get the one that we are debating right. There is a need for one named person who can be held clearly to account for the operation of each information-sharing and assessment database. We did not ascertain in our earlier deliberation who that person would be. I assumed that it would be the director of children's services, in a local role. Presumably that is the person with whom the buck should stop. We do not know that yet; perhaps the Minister would deal with the point.

If a breach of security occurs on a database, information on it turns out to be wrong, or information is not put on the database although it should be, where does the buck stop? Surely the whole point of joining up services under a children's services authority and appointing a clear head of that department, in a director of children's services, is that that is where the buck should stop. That should be the case just as much with IT and database matters as with

the management of the department as a whole, the structures and the joining up of professionals that we spoke about earlier.

Proposed new subsection (7A) in amendment No. 36 is self-explanatory, and I am sure that we would all agree with its intentions. However, I suspect that the Minister may again trot out an excuse for not including it in the Bill. It is important that it is included. The amendment's purpose is to ensure that agencies retain the discretion not to disclose information in situations in which to do so would be detrimental to the child. If they were forced to disclose such information, that would be self-defeating in what we are trying to achieve through the Bill—none of us would want that. The amendment would mean that sensitive services such as those dealing with drugs or sexual health would be permitted to make judgments about whether to disclose, in cases in which such disclosure might result in the disengagement of the child from that service. A blanket policy of required disclosure, for which the Bill appears to provide, might put some children at risk. I am concerned about the possible impact of automatic notification on children's access to essential but sensitive services.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, in paragraph 115 of its 19th report, flagged up concerns, stating:

''We remind the Government that Article 8 requires that there be adequate procedural safeguards regulating the disclosure of sensitive personal information, and these may require participation by the person who is the subject of the information in decisions concerning the inclusion and disclosure of certain types of information.''

Article 8 of the European convention on human rights states:

''Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.''

Unless we qualify the terms of the clause, we risk a challenge under that article.

There are particular areas where one might want greater safeguards. It has been pointed out by various women's organisations and organisations concerned with domestic violence that such safeguards should be in place for special agreements with child protection and social care agencies, and for children and spouses who are fleeing domestic abuse or forced marriage. In such situations, information about those concerned, including their whereabouts, must be tightly controlled. As the clause currently stands, blanket requirements to log the contact details of the service with which a child becomes engaged will automatically disclose that child's location. A birth parent, for example, could then readily access that database for information on their child under the Data Protection Act 1998. What safeguards are there when there is a risk of violence from a non-resident parent towards a child and the other parent?

Earlier this week, I had an interesting meeting with representatives from the Commission for Social Care Inspection, discussing the issue that I raised in the Committee and on Second Reading about responsibility for children placed in private children's homes away from their local authority area. I was

given the report on a recent inspection of one children's home in my constituency about which I had particular concerns.

I was not aware of the procedures for access to those reports. The results of inspections of elderly care homes are placed on the internet—on the website of the inspecting agency—and the responses by the care home owners to the inspection reports can also be placed on the website. Inspections of children's homes are exempt from that requirement, so one cannot go to a website and find out about them. However, any one of us—any member of the public—is fully entitled to go to a local social services department or to the CSCI and ask for a copy of the inspection report on a private children's home. All one has to do to get that report is to produce identification, such as a driving licence, passport or credit card. The CSCI then has a duty to present that person with the full report on that private children's home.

There is no requirement on the person at the CSCI to check the background of the person to whom they are presenting that report, who could be the non-resident parent of a child housed in a private children's home for whom there is no contact order because of a perceived threat of violence. There is no safeguard that would prevent the person requesting that report from getting it. He would not have to justify the grounds on which he required it. The CSCI has no means of checking the identity of the person to assess any risk that he might pose to somebody housed in that private children's home. I find that rather worrying, and the Minister is expressing a degree of astonishment that it is the case.

I do not wish to deny perfectly permissible data to responsible people. However, the fact is that anybody can access such information, without any checks as to whether they pose a risk to those housed in a private home. There have been instances in which data have been misused. The CSCI told me about cases in which, after reports have been published, there have been burglaries at certain homes. They tended to happen during changeover time, when the staff were involved in meetings about the changeover and were not necessarily keeping an eye on the rest of the home. Crooks got hold of the reports and, on a fairly slim reading, were able to identify when was a good time to go and rob those homes. The CSCI has responded to that; it acknowledges that there is a security angle to the information that it let out.

Nothing has been done with regard to the security of the children in those homes, the details about how they are looked after having been accessed by somebody who might want to do them harm. That might be a relative who has no right of access or a paedophile trying to inveigle his or her way into making contact with certain people. I was alarmed to hear that, and I hope that the Minister will take it on board. Until I raised the issue with the CSCI, it had not realised its importance. The people to whom I spoke will discuss it with colleagues come back to me about it. That is a good example showing why we should ensure that the information that we place in databases does not

compromise the welfare of the children whom we are seeking to help, for instance in relation to domestic violence.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. Of course the reports would not identify individual children. The reason for making them so public would be, in part, in response to situations in which institutions have undergone no effective scrutiny whatsoever, and their children have suffered grave abuse.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I entirely take the hon. Gentleman's point, and do not seek in any way to exclude the information, to reduce the degree of inspection or, ultimately, to prevent authorities from improving or closing homes. In some of the cases that I cited earlier, I would have liked the inspectors to have stuck their noses in further, and named and shamed. I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman at all.

Of course, the children's identity is not revealed in any of the reports, and that should remain the case. However, for a potentially harmful person, be it relative, paedophile or anyone else, to be asking questions about a particular home suggests that the location of an individual has been compromised. Alternatively, a paedophile might just be looking for an opportunity to inveigle himself into the presence of particular young people in the homes. I am concerned about that, and about the fact that no checks are made, in relation to any particular risk, on the identities or motives of those asking for information. The situation is clearly different if the request comes from the police or from local authority representatives with an obvious interest in the home. They may be seeking to place children there, investigating potential abuse or finding out whether things have improved in a home where abuse has happened. However, if an ordinary individual, from the other end of the country, who apparently has no connection whatever with the case, says, ''I ordered a report on the home,'' we should ask questions, and there is no facility for doing so. That is my point.

A briefing from the Family Planning Association states:

''All young people are entitled to confidential services when seeking advice about sex, relationships and sexual health. FPA believes that professionals should not share information on young people's contact with sexual health services or where young people are known to be having sexual relationships. Information-sharing should only take place when there are serious child protection issues, or if they have the young person's consent.''

The FPA is concerned that if attendance at sexual health services is flagged on the database, young people will be reluctant to seek the advice and services that they need. I am not sure whether that would be flagged on the database or covered under medical records. Strictly speaking, those data are not medical records; I therefore seek the Minister's clarification.

I hope that I have given clear examples of situations in which there are worries that the protection and welfare of a child could be compromised by a lack of

proper safeguards obliging disclosure. It would be self-defeating if that could happen, as appears to be possible in the Bill. We are all trying to achieve the same end, so I hope that the Minister will respond constructively and positively to the amendments and to the spirit in which they were tabled.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I support the amendments, and I hope that the Minister will not find anything objectionable in them. It may be argued that they are unnecessary, but as the hon. Gentleman said, we cannot be careful enough, and no situation should be ambiguous.

We have had briefings from many organisations that support the amendments, and as the hon. Gentleman has expressed their views, I will not repeat them.

Amendment No. 35 refers to anyone who is involved with the database. I discussed the issue with an intern who is now working with me. He was employed on a part-time basis by a social services department, and was given the job of inputting data, but he was not subject to a criminal record check. The opportunity will exist for mistakes to occur unless the amendment, or a similar provision, is in the Bill. That example is probably as powerful as that quoted by the hon. Gentleman.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am grateful for that additional example. The hon. Lady may be aware of the recent case of Haringey council. Despite having carried out checks with the Criminal Records Bureau, it employed 18 people who had failed their CRB checks, which had thrown up previous problems, including one conviction for paedophilia. The person concerned was employed by Haringey social services to drive a minibus for disabled children. CRB checks themselves do not prevent such things happening.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I accept that. We are continually assured about the improved performance of the CRB.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

The hon. Gentleman has raised that issue before and I ask him to be careful before accepting everything that he reads in the media. When the matter was raised in the media, I took the responsible action of checking with Haringey council, which employs thousands of people in its social services department. I will write to all members of the Committee giving them the assurances that Haringey council gave me. The council undertook CRB checks on all members of staff; it is not that it did not undertake them—

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

But it still employed them.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

No. The hon. Gentleman is alleging that those CRB checks threw up issues that made the individuals inappropriate to work with children.

The undertaking that I have from Haringey council is that although a very few of the thousands whom it employs may have had criminal records, none of those records showed an offence that made the individual unsuitable to work with children. I shall write to all hon. Members about that, but I ask the hon. Gentleman not simply to repeat information reported

in the media. It is often misleading and serves to lower morale among social workers and social services departments, just when we are all trying to have confidence in the work that they are doing.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I am in a triangle here, which is rather difficult.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

We will have to have this debate later through the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole.

We do not want to do anything that will lower the morale of social workers who are already desperately demoralised. Their morale needs to be improved. However, a local authority took on one individual who quite clearly had a criminal conviction for paedophilia yet was put in charge of a minibus transporting disabled people around north London. If that is not the case, then the Minister should say so, but she did not respond to the point when I tabled my parliamentary questions.

The local authority's appointment strikes me as inappropriate, given that it was subsequent to a CRB check. My point is that CRB checks are not the be all and end all, and when local authorities take on people who have thrown up serious concerns, one wonders exactly what the point of these checks is in the first place.

Mrs. Brooke rose—

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

The hon. Lady cannot be beaten.

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

Order. I remind hon. Members that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole will now have the Floor and that we are now into interventions. It is entirely a matter for the hon. Lady whether or not she wishes to give way.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I should like to take up the Minister's kind offer to look into the matter and to write to us, because I want to proceed with the point that I was making about 10 minutes ago. I hope that the Minister will be satisfied with the opportunity to clarify the matter for us all.

I was trying to make the point that it is not always apparent that someone is working with children if they are temporarily employed to input data, but we should be absolutely clear that working on a database means that almost everyone is on the frontline of working with children, even though they might simply be inputting technical data. I therefore suggest this safeguard for those reasons alone, because it would be very easy not to require a criminal record check if one simply thinks, ''Well, this is just a temporary job. It's just a bit of data inputting.'' The point of my amendment is that such a job is more than that; children are involved. If the amendment is at all what the Minister wants, we need that protection.

Unsurprisingly, I am greatly concerned about the sensitive services. It is obvious that we do not want to deter parents or children from accessing such services. Again, just to give an example from my own experience, for a long time the main upper school

where I live had a very tough policy on drugs to the extent of instant exclusion. That meant that parents were frightened to go to social services for advice because they were afraid that their child would be excluded from school. It is vital, when parents or children seek advice, that such sensitive information is held and released or published only after due consideration.

I share the concerns of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, particularly those relating to children living with domestic violence, and forced marriages or even unforced marriages, in which young people are hunted out. There is an enormous amount of concern. I hope that the Minister will consider the amendments because they only enhance the Bill and this section on databases.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I shall return to the Haringey issue, because we clearly have a different understanding of it. I cannot recall a relevant parliamentary question, but I will reread the hon. Gentleman's parliamentary questions, because I cannot remember what information he said he had received from me in answer to one. I will write to all Committee members.

On the issue of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham raised some important issues. I shall write to him when I have read the Hansard report of what he said and had an opportunity to think through the implications, which are complex. We must protect the interests of children. That is paramount.

We share the aims of the amendments, but we do not believe that they are necessary. Access is important. It is one of the issues for our first consultation paper, which we hope to publish next week. We need to concern ourselves with who should be allowed to access the system. That must include those who are delivering services and those who are known to the child. Those are the sort of criteria that are sensible in determining who has access to the database.

On ensuring the appropriate checks, there is a range of considerations. We will have to set minimum requirements before granting any individual authority access to the system. A Criminal Records Bureau check would be an obvious start and we would have regard to anything arising from the Bichard report into the Soham situation. We will have a relevant practitioner level protocol and users will, of course, be obliged to have training on safe and secure use of the system, including compliance with data protection and human rights legislation and, where relevant, the Caldicott principles. We shall have to keep the criteria relating to conditions of access under continuous and close review, and anybody barred from working with children will be barred from access to the database. We are also considering audit trails, user authorisation systems and other such issues, which will add further security in relation to access.

Let me deal with the first amendment and then come on to the issue of sensitive information, whether about particular children or about domestic violence in families. The amendment is unnecessary because clause 9(1) links the express purpose of the database

provision in the clause to the duty in clause 7 for co-operation arrangements to be made with a view to improving the well-being of children in the authority's areas. It links the database's purpose to the clause 8 duty to make arrangements to ensure that professionals safeguard and promote the welfare of children and to section 175 of the Education Act 2002, which places a similar safeguarding duty on education authorities.

That means that anything that is done under clause 9 can be done only for the purposes of those duties. Anything that does not comply with those duties cannot be done. The comfort that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham seeks from the amendment exists and the measure does not need further reinforcement. I give him the further reassurance that in the guidance and directions, which will be subject to full debate, we will emphasise that link between clause 7 and clause 8 and section 175 of the Education Act 2002 with the powers and duties under clause 9.

Amendment No. 36 would limit the circumstances in which the database can be displayed. I recognise the importance of the issues that have been raised; we do not want to introduce a system that is detrimental to the interests of children, particularly where domestic violence or witness protection is involved or where children want to access services but want their access to those services to be confidential. We want the database to provide a tool to help people to act in the best interests of children. I keep repeating that.

However, the amendment would cause confusion because it would mean that practitioners would have to think about whether they should enter the fact that they are working with a child on to the database. The practitioner would have to apply a test whether disclosing the information that they were being asked to disclose would be detrimental to the child's welfare. We want to provide practitioners with certainty about using the database, not uncertainty.

If the amendment were passed, there would be scope for different interpretations by different professionals, leading, in my view, to those gaps in information that can lead to children falling through the net and being abused or subject to neglect. Therefore, while we agree that the amendment raises an important issue, we think that the appropriate place to take account of it is in the regulations and guidance.

The consultation document that we are preparing will start to flesh out some of the issues that Members raised. In the debate on the previous amendment, we talked about the trailblazers and how, on sensitive issues—particularly in relation to domestic violence—they are managing to block out access to information. Sheffield is doing that, as, I think, is West Sussex. Leicester has also developed some such facility.

On the issue raised by the Family Planning Association and others about confidentiality, I completely understand professionals' concern that they need to make that professional judgment to preserve the trust in relationships that they establish

with children, young people and parents with whom they work. Having said that, however, we need to ensure that professionals are involved in the databases in an appropriate way, not that they are not involved in the databases. The important considerations are around consent, which I talked about, and confidentiality.

We want to make sure that the decision that we take on the issue is one in which everyone has confidence. We do not want to deter young people and children from taking out services. The consultation that we are about to publish will talk about the best way forward in dealing with recording practitioner details in relation to potentially sensitive services. The key issues that we want to explore in that consultation will be the extent of inclusion of such information, the determination of who can see it and how we will try to ensure that the consent of the child and the consent of the parents is sought wherever that is possible, although there will always be exceptional circumstances that prevent gaining that consent.

I am pleased that Members have drawn out those important issues. I reassure Members that we take them seriously and want to bring everyone with us as we determine how we use the database in relation to both sensitive services and to people whose information we want to keep from others. I hope that, in the consultation about the document that I hope to issue shortly, we can bottom out some of the difficult issues and reach consensus. I ask the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham to withdraw the amendment because, although its content is important, it is not necessary.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am grateful to the Minister. We all look forward to bottoming out some of the information lacking from the Bill. I am particularly grateful for her clarification about amendment No. 35. She gave some more detailed assurances about how that would become clear and, though it raises an important point, is, perhaps, unnecessary. It is useful that she put on the record some of those assurances.

On amendment No. 36, things were going relatively well until the Minister used the fact that practitioners ''would have to think'' before they started to make decisions about what information should be placed on the database as an excuse for not accepting it. I hope that they will have to do that anyway and I still have concerns about allowing professionals to use their professional judgment where it may otherwise compromise the child's welfare. That is the whole point behind the amendment.

I will not press the matter to a Division and I am happy to drop the lead amendment, but we need further assurances on the second amendment. I reserve the right to return to that point on Report, when I hope the Minister will give us more concrete assurances about why it should not be in the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con): I beg to move amendment No. 212, in

clause 9, page 7, line 36, leave out from 'details' to end of line 37 and insert

'the name and contact details of any educational institution of which he is a registered pupil or at which he is registered as a student'.

We now come to the question of the information that is to be kept on the database. One category, which is set out in clause 9(4)(d), involves the details of the education that is being received by the child in question. This is a probing amendment to find out a little more about the details of the education that will be required to be kept on the database.

It is clear that any institution attended by the child will have to be included on the record. Paragraph (d) goes wider than that, because it refers to

''details of any education being received''.

That would include other forms of education. The explanatory notes on the clauses refer to

''details of any education being received whether in an educational institution or other setting;''

The purpose of the amendment is to probe what those other settings might be and what is the extent of the duty to record the education that is being received by the child. The education of such children is an important subject, especially those who are in care, and it is important that we should have as full details as possible about the education that they receive.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I rise to back up the points that were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison). The amendment was tabled in the name of our hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight, who sadly cannot be present this morning. I undertook to make some points on his behalf.

Vernon Coaker (Labour, Gedling)

He's electioneering.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

The hon. Gentleman knows more about the activities of my hon. Friend than I do.

The point of leaving out clause 9(4)(d) and qualifying it with the words that we propose to insert, returns to a point that we touched on with the Minister. She told us the reason she had been given by her officials why the terminology must be in the form that it is. I was not convinced and we need to probe a bit further in to why we need to use a rather wide and vague phrase. In addition, if the intention is purely to name the educational provider, whether it be a school, an academy, a special educational needs provider or at home tuition, why cannot that be said in plain English in the Bill? Why must it use the strange configuration that appears to allow greater details about the type, nature, extent, inadequacies and failures of the education that is being provided to the child? The Minister assures us that that is not the intention. Therefore, why can we not just use our wording in the first place? I look forward to further clarification as a result of this probing amendment.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

This is the way parliamentary draftsmen chose to draft the provision to ensure that we have information about where the child is being

educated. There is nothing more or less to this matter at all. It is simply as it is because a child could be in an institution, or be educated at home, or be in a pupil referral unit, or a hospital, as well as being in a school or a college. It is simply worded to encompass all of the possible institutions. The hon. Gentleman does not understand quite why we want it, but one of the advantages of the universal database would be that those missing from education could be identified much more readily. That would be a good advance.

The hon. Members for Isle of Wight and for Hertsmere might like to indicate any further details, beyond what I have said, that they require. I shall see whether we can address those in the regulations, which will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. However, the provision involves nothing more than telling us where a child is being educated.

James Clappison (Conservative, Hertsmere)

My hon. Friend and I shall want to reflect on what the Minister has said to establish what light has been thrown on this matter by her remarks. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I beg to move amendment No. 109, in

clause 9, page 7, line 43, leave out paragraph (g).

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment No. 37, in

clause 9, page 7, line 43, leave out from 'of' to end of line 44 and insert

'concern for his welfare, such basis for concern having been set out in national guidance'.

Amendment No. 225, in

clause 9, page 7, line 44, at end insert—

'(ga) details of the person (''the informant'') who has provided information in accordance with subsection (6)(b) or (c);'.

Amendment No. 190, in

clause 9, page 7, line 45, leave out paragraph (h).

Amendment No. 218, in

clause 9, page 7, line 47, at end insert—

'( ) In this section a ''cause for concern'' shall not include any matter internal to the child's family unless the informant has reasonable cause to believe that a crime may be or may have been committed.'.

Amendment No. 219, in

clause 9, page 7, line 47, at end insert—

'(4A) Any regulations made by the Secretary of State under subsections (1) to (4) must provide that—

(a) where information recorded on any such database is disclosed to another person, the person making the disclosure must notify the person about whom the disclosure is made of the information being disclosed, and provide them with a copy of it; and

(b) where information recorded on any such database is disclosed to another person, and the information relates to a child, the person making the disclosure must notify—

(i) the child if he is of sufficient maturity, and

(ii) his parent, carer and anyone with parental responsibility of the information,

and provide each of these persons with a copy of it.'.

Amendment No. 223, in

clause 9, page 7, line 47, at end insert—

'(4A) In this section a ''cause for concern'' shall not include any matter internal to a school, youth club or voluntary organisation unless the informant has reasonable cause to believe that a crime has been or may be committed.'.

Amendment No. 224, in

clause 9, page 8, line 20, at end insert—

'(6A) Nothing in this section shall entitle any person to any information about the cause for concern other than information of the kinds described in subsection (4).'.

Amendment No. 226, in

clause 9, page 9, line 6, at end insert—

'(12A) Any regulations made by the Secretary of State under subsections (1) to (4) must provide that—

(a) where information recorded on any such database is disclosed to another person, the person making the disclosure must notify the person about whom the disclosure is made of the information being disclosed, and provide them with a copy of it; and

(b) where information recorded on any such database is disclosed to another person, and the information relates to a child, the person making the disclosure must notify—

(i) the child if he is of sufficient maturity, and

(ii) his parents, carer and anyone with parental responsibility

of the information and provide each with a copy thereof.'.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I address in particular amendments Nos. 109 and 190. No one will be surprised that we have tabled the amendments, because we oppose the inclusion of subjective data on the database. On amendment No. 109, ''any cause for concern'', as outlined in subsection (4)(g), is subject to wide interpretation. A number of professionals, rightly, will be involved and we want them all to access and use the database, but different professionals obviously have different thresholds for causes for concern. We must worry about the fact that something could be flagged up, accessed by other people and perhaps affect a child's whole future one way or another, and all because there was no common threshold.

The report on the Children Bill by the Joint Committee on Human Rights notes that the phrase ''any cause for concern'' is open-ended and subjective, and bound to include very sensitive information about a child. That raises questions about whether it is compatible with article 8 of the European convention on human rights. I have met a number of the trailblazers and found that experience worthwhile. However, it was clear that some—I think, most—of the people whom we spoke to did not feel that the flags of concern were necessary. Having had that debate, I believe that we need the simplest possible database; we want to concentrate on enabling professionals to talk to one another. The danger of flags of concern is that there would be a risk of information overload and some important messages might not be picked up. The tool might begin to become a substitute for talking to one another. If a professional is concerned, there should be direct communication so that there is no misconception. There can be misinterpretations as a result of merely ticking the box on the database. I feel that that could make the situation less safe. It is also subjective, which is wrong.

Our first instincts were to aim for the deletion of paragraph (g). However, it has occurred to us, having considered paragraph (h), that the provisions are very open-ended and could enable the Secretary of State, by regulation, to put flags of concern into all sorts of records that were being returned to the database. Only medical or other personal records are specifically ruled out at this stage. Clarity is needed from the Government about what information they consider could be covered by paragraph (h). As we are also concerned about paragraph (g) we should prefer both paragraphs to be deleted. That would enable us to give more confident support to the Minister's tool kit.

In the other place there was a suggestion that an alternative name might be found for flags of concern. I would not find that any more satisfactory; the principle is wrong and changing the name will not help at all. It is with the greatest strength of feeling that I speak to the amendments, because they would make a big difference to the confidence and wholeheartedness of our support for the clause.

Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Caernarfon)

My cause for concern is that the phrase ''any cause for concern'' is unclear and in danger of becoming a catch-all that is used as a minimum criterion—a way for a worker to feel that he or she is doing something, whereas there might in fact be no guarantee of service or duty to act.

''Every Child Matters'' stated:

''Technical solutions alone will not secure the changes that the Government is seeking to achieve.''

It argued rather that local authorities should lead a process of cultural change, including information sharing and developing a common understanding. Is the Minister confident that ''cause for concern'' is a term that is widely used and commonly understood among the professions concerned with child care? I am not certain that that is so.

I am also uncertain whether the subsection is likely to lead to a cultural change, as the Government wish. Hon. Members may know that I used to teach social workers. Conventionally, we would split the material that we taught into knowledge, skills and attitudes. Without a doubt, attitudes are the most difficult things to get at. Achieving cultural, attitudinal change is the most difficult thing to achieve. I wonder whether registering a cause for concern might be one of those technical details that would allow workers to avoid attitudinal or cultural change in the organization.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

There are many amendments in the group. I shall talk in general terms about the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole , with which I have a good deal of sympathy, and touch on a couple of those tabled by our absent hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight. I shall then concentrate on amendment No. 37, which is intended to be helpful.

The hon. Lady is right. The phrase ''cause for concern'' comes from nowhere. It is meaningless and highly subjective. It has no basis in law and no one understands what it means. That is not a good starting point for its role as a useful tool in making sure that a

database works. We should be interested to hear where the phrase came from and what the Minister thinks it means.

We must be careful about subjective data being added to the database. That is the reason for all the points I made earlier. All the major children's organisations that have given us briefings, which are obviously very interested in the Bill, seem to share that concern. Barnardo's, the National Children's Bureau, the NSPCC and the Children's Society have voiced their concerns. They say:

''Cause for concern is not a recognised criteria and would include unclear and subjective information, of unproven worth which may lead to inappropriate interventions while leaving vulnerable children at risk . . . For information sharing to make a positive contribution to safeguarding children and promoting their welfare the information shared must be accurate, objective and comprehensible . . . The power to record 'any cause for concern' will create a system of information sharing that fails to meet all three standards.

'Cause for concern' is not a standard used or understood by the caring professions, nor does it appear in any other child welfare or health legislation.''

If that is not right, will the Minister tell me where it is used?

The NSPCC's briefing also flagged up the Joint Committee on Human Rights report, which noted that

'''any cause for concern' is a phrase which is open-ended and subjective and which is bound to include very sensitive information about a child.''

The report reminds the Government that

''article 8 of the European Convention'',

which I have already cited,

''requires that there be adequate procedural safeguards regulating the disclosure of sensitive personal information and these may require the participation of the subject of the information in decisions concerning the inclusion and disclosure of certain types of information''.

The NSPCC briefing states that

''there are risks that this approach will make children less safe. Firstly, there is the risk of information overload''—

a point that I have already cited.

''In such circumstances practitioners may be at a loss to know how to respond or how to prioritise the needs of an individual child. Secondly, there is a risk that in recording a concern in this way a practitioner may feel a false sense of security and as a result the child's needs may be less, rather than more, likely to be addressed. Thirdly, allowing subjective information of this type to be recorded in the database increases the likelihood that children and young people or their parents will challenge the accuracy of the database record''—

although I am not clear how they can challenge it given the lack of any recognised appeals procedure in the Bill.

We do not want to undermine the purpose of the database. The expert groups involved have concerns, either with the definition of ''cause for concern'' in subsection (4)(g), or with the Henry VIII style subsection (4)(h), which allows the Secretary of State to put any information of any detail from any area, other than the single opt-out of medical records, into the database. The Minister's assurances are entirely meaningless until we get a handle on what subsection (4)(h) means.

We desperately need real examples of what ''cause for concern'' means and what it would entail. Is a cause for concern a child seeming upset at school? Is it a failure by a child to achieve the expected key stage level at school? Is it a child with a low birth weight? Is it the fact that a doctor has referred a 15-year-old girl to an obesity clinic—a point that I raised on Second Reading and that the Minister did not address?

Dari Taylor (Labour, Stockton South)

The very fact that the hon. Gentleman is listing so many different and clear causes for concern shows that if we started to specify a definition, we would leave out appropriate or new causes for concern. Although it is important to discuss the issue, the hon. Gentleman should acknowledge that he is asking for an impossible list of definitions of the word ''concern''.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I do not agree with that because I am asking for examples of what could be included. All the examples that I quoted need not be any concern of the database. It is a matter between the GP and his 15-year-old patient whether he deems it medically suitable to refer her to an obesity clinic if she has a weight problem at the age of 15. That need not be part of the database, but as the Bill is worded, it could be.

The fact that a child is underperforming educationally at school is primarily a matter for the child's teacher, the school, and the parents—or the people with parental responsibility—to deal with in educational parameters. That need not be part of the database in isolation, only when factors interact. If a child is presenting too often at a GP's surgery and is the subject of bullying at school or clear emotional distress that results from out-of-school experiences, that is when those pieces of information need to be brought together. That is when somebody needs to put together the pieces of the jigsaw, and it is down to the jigsaw master—ultimately the director of children's services—to do that. The phraseology of the Bill is not clear about what should be included, when and how, and what responsibility there is.

Both the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole and I made the point about the database providing an excuse for professionals not talking to each other, and that is a fair comment. I have said all along that we believe in the necessity of databases, but only those that operate properly. The database should be more of a fallback. Nothing in our amendments restrict professionals from picking up the phone and talking to each other, and surely that should be the first port of call. The trouble is that that is not happening at the moment, and it will not happen in future unless we establish some standard protocols.

The police do not speak as often as they might to social workers, and social workers do not speak as often as they might to teachers, GPs and others. That is why it is necessary that independently their information is filtered into a central source. If the cases are missed individually by the professionals, or if a doctor is unable to get hold of a social worker because they are busy on another case, sick leave or whatever, so does not pursue the cause for concern, or vice versa—I am not trying to pin blame on one group of

professionals—registering it on a local database under the aegis of a director of children's services would ensure that it is not missed. That should not negate the requirement for professionals to deal with each other more closely than they have in the past, so the two points are not mutually exclusive.

Amendment No. 37 would lay down a new definition because, as I have said, many of us feel that ''cause for concern'' is inadequate. We would redefine subsection (4)(g) so that it referred instead to

''concern for his welfare, such basis for concern having been set out in national guidance''.

That comes to the heart of the problem. We need national protocols specifically aimed at different sets of professionals, and preferably agreed in co-operation with the representative bodies of the different professionals at a national level.

Nick Palmer (Labour, Broxtowe)

I see what the hon. Gentleman is getting at, but earlier he made a plea for professionals to be allowed to see for themselves.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) did earlier, I question whether it is practical to identify all the issues that might be a cause for concern in a way that professionals would find helpful. Professionals will know a cause for serious concern when they see it, and they will not necessarily feel that it is helpful for the Government to send them a checklist.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

That is entirely what I am not proposing, which is why I have suggested centrally agreed protocols by the professional bodies. I am suggesting not that the Government place protocols on the professionals, but that the professional bodies—the British Medical Association, the British Association of Social Workers, and the equivalent for teachers, for example—agree an appropriate minimum standard for what would trigger a referral of a cause for concern up a step—

It being twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at half-past Two o'clock.

Standing Committee B

Clause 9 - Information databases

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following amendments: No. 37, in

clause 9, page 7, line 43, leave out from 'of' to end of line 44 and insert

'concern for his welfare, such basis for concern having been set out in national guidance'.

No. 225, in

clause 9, page 7, line 44, at end insert—

'(ga) details of the person (''the informant'') who has provided information in accordance with subsection (6)(b) or (c);'.

No. 190, in

clause 9, page 7, line 45, leave out paragraph (h).

No. 218, in

clause 9, page 7, line 47, at end insert—

'( ) In this section a ''cause for concern'' shall not include any matter internal to the child's family unless the informant has reasonable cause to believe that a crime may be or may have been committed.'.

No. 219, in

clause 9, page 7, line 47, at end insert—

'(4A) Any regulations made by the Secretary of State under subsections (1) to (4) must provide that—

(a) where information recorded on any such database is disclosed to another person, the person making the disclosure must notify the person about whom the disclosure is made of the information being disclosed, and provide them with a copy of it; and

(b) where information recorded on any such database is disclosed to another person, and the information relates to a child, the person making the disclosure must notify—

(i) the child if he is of sufficient maturity, and

(ii) his parent, carer and anyone with parental responsibility of the information,

and provide each of these persons with a copy of it.'.

No. 223, in

clause 9, page 7, line 47, at end insert—

'(4A) In this section a ''cause for concern'' shall not include any matter internal to a school, youth club or voluntary organisation unless the informant has reasonable cause to believe that a crime has been or may be committed.'.

No. 224, in

clause 9, page 8, line 20, at end insert—

'(6A) Nothing in this section shall entitle any person to any information about the cause for concern other than information of the kinds described in subsection (4).'.

No. 226, in

clause 9, page 9, line 6, at end insert—

'(12A) Any regulations made by the Secretary of State under subsections (1) to (4) must provide that—

(a) where information recorded on any such database is disclosed to another person, the person making the disclosure must notify the person about whom the disclosure is made of the information being disclosed, and provide them with a copy of it; and

(b) where information recorded on any such database is disclosed to another person, and the information relates to a child, the person making the disclosure must notify—

(i) the child if he is of sufficient maturity, and

(ii) his parents, carer and anyone with parental responsibility

of the information and provide each with a copy thereof.'.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

This is the last leg—what a shame. I was speaking to amendment No. 37 and had just taken the point from the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) about having central guidance. I certainly do not want the Government to impose guidance. I wish the professions to decide on the most appropriate guidance for practitioners in the field to trigger the cause for concern, whatever it will be called, to take their concerns to a higher level. I hope that there would be collaboration between the different bodies of professionals so that they do not operate from entirely different thresholds at a local level.

Nick Palmer (Labour, Broxtowe)

I agree that there is an issue about professionals operating at different thresholds. I doubt whether it is possible to solve that problem with guidelines from the national professional bodies. If the hon. Gentleman talks to teachers, social workers and others, they will tell him that either the guidelines will have to be so incredibly detailed that they will be impossible to draw up with any precision, or they will too broad to be useful in individual cases. Basically, professionals want to make these judgments themselves. If we try to impose guidelines either from the Government or from the professional bodies we will have difficulties.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying. The trouble is that, in the absence of guidelines, there is no guarantee that a GP in his constituency will not operate to a set of values and thresholds that may result in his referring to child protection issues, not because he has not seen any, but because he does not think that they trigger the cause for concern criteria. A GP in my constituency might do the complete opposite.

I should like to know what steps have been taken. Surely these are key bodies in the operation of all these measures in the Bill. That is the point of amendment No. 37. We are unhappy with the cause of concern criteria, but I am trying to put in a replacement. [Interruption.] The Minister is having a bit of a fit at the moment although not at my amendment I hasten to add. We want to be constructive so that we can improve what is already there.

Finally, I want to touch on a couple of the amendments in the name of my lamented Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner). His name has cropped up rather more today than when he is present.

Amendment No. 225 would add details on the database about who provided the information. This is an interesting point. Surely there needs to be some means of checking the source and therefore the veracity of the information that is being provided and, perhaps more importantly, for that person to be held accountable if the information turns out to be inaccurate or vexatious at a later stage. Amendment No. 224 clarifies what Ministers have been saying: details of the cause for concern should not be released to anyone not otherwise entitled to access it. It would be interesting to hear who the Government think should have that access.

Roger Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

I should like to speak to amendment No. 219 in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke). The Government seem determined to include any cause for concern in the Bill. The amendment probes what regulations the Minister sees as appropriate to safeguard children and young people whose information is recorded on the database and may be passed on to another person. Under the amendment, a child or young person would have the information that was being disclosed, so that they could check that it was accurate and appropriate. The amendment goes on to say that the child should be informed in the first place and, if they are not mature enough, the parent, guardian or anyone else with parental responsibility should have the opportunity to check the information.

It seems to me that if ''cause for concern'' is not well defined, there will be too little information on the database to be of any use. Alternatively, there will be so much that people have no confidence in it. However, confidence that the database is appropriate, accurate and instrumental in looking after the well-being and welfare of children is important for the professionals using it, so it is not appropriate to include any cause for concern on the database.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I shall bring this debate to a speedy conclusion, but if hon. Members feel that I have not touched on what they are interested in, perhaps they will indicate that to me. I shall preface my remarks by saying that all we are talking about is one tool, among many, to achieve better information sharing, because that will mean that people intervene earlier and more appropriately. We hope that, as a result, children will be better protected.

Nothing that we are doing with the database or anything else detracts from or diminishes the importance of the professional judgment of all professionals who deal with children. We are not replacing the judgment of the professional with a bit of ICT; we are simply introducing a database, and all that goes with it, to support better decision making and better professional judgment. It is in that context that we are working.

Let me pick up on the issues that people have talked about in relation to cause for concern. We are not talking about a system whereby recording that a practitioner is concerned triggers action to address that concern. The practitioner still has the responsibility to take action and to take the initiative. Having cause for concern indicates nothing more or less than that. If I had cause for concern about a child with whom I worked, all that would be indicated would be that I had cause for concern. That would suggest that I felt that if another professional had a cause for concern, they should talk to me. We would want to share the information about the child so that, between us, we could come to a better decision as to the action that we should take. There would be no information on the system beyond the fact that a professional had cause for concern and wished to speak to other professionals about the issue.

Nothing in the clause changes the way in which common law applies to the decision that a practitioner makes about whether they can discuss a child's case with another practitioner. If a practitioner were approached by another practitioner, he or she would have to have regard to all data protection and confidentiality obligations before deciding to share the cause for concern with the other practitioner.

The indication of a concern enables a practitioner simply to signal to others who subsequently look at the child's record that they have a concern about the child at that time. That would prompt contact—that is all. Then the two practitioners could see whether their observations were related, and that would help them to build a better, early all-round picture of the child's needs.

The database will not hold the detail of what a practitioner is concerned about, so it will always be professional judgment that determines whether an individual practitioner is worried about an aspect of a child's life that others dealing with the child might need to know about. We do not propose a system whereby recording a concern prompts action on a child's case, so there is no need for a common threshold in that sense. It is not a referral mechanism, as current mechanisms are. It should prompt discussion, and that discussion will lead to decisions on action.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I am delighted that my right hon. Friend makes that clarification. I hope that that will help local authorities to move away from what other hon. Members present will recognise as the Friday afternoon syndrome, in which other professionals—some of whom become very well known to social workers—clear their desks on Friday afternoon by offloading their anxieties about particular children over the weekend on to social services, without any hope or expectation that anything can be done about them. That is very poor practice.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

Finally, I shall deal briefly with two other matters. First, I agree that the information must be accurate, but to include the source of the information, as proposed in amendment No. 225,

tabled by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, would be a bureaucratic nightmare. The identity of the person who raised the cause of concern would be included, but not the source of the complaint. For example, if a child's name and address was obtained from a health authority, the fact that the name and address was thus obtained would not need to be entered on to the database.

Secondly, I understand, as do all hon. Members present, that practitioners need a clear understanding of what we want them to do. We will, of course, need to explain the detail in regulations and in guidance on how that aspect—the causes of concern—of the databases will work. That is why we are preparing the consultation paper and why we will subject the regulations to the affirmative procedure. We will take the public consultation exercise seriously; we want to hear what the professionals say and will have regard to that as we prepare the regulations for consideration by hon. Members. I hope that those final words of comfort will persuade hon. Members not to press their amendments.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thank the Minister for her brevity. I do not mean that disparagingly, because she conveyed some important points despite that brevity. However, I do not feel reassured on some of my original objections to paragraphs (g) and (h) of subsection (4).

First, we would feel more comfortable if it were not stated so definitively in the clause that there would be the opportunity to place flags of concern on the database. My reading of the clause is that that is definitive; it is not just a possibility that will be picked up later. That decision should be made after the evaluation of the trailblazers, and the big problem is that there will be a time lag in getting the evaluation results.

I was also not reassured by the Minister saying that the cause of concern would not be indicated in any detail. I accept the point, but I see flags all over the place, because that does not overcome the problem that anyone can feel a cause for concern on matters ranging from the minor to the most important. Over-cautious people might flag things up and others will think, ''I don't want to get involved in a lot of paperwork—I don't think I'll do that.'' There is such a great possibility of the flagging system going wrong that I cannot support it.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

Let me just provide some clarity. If I, as a professional, put a cause of concern on the data system, that will be because I have taken some action—it is not an excuse for inaction—and I feel that is important that another professional contacts me if they have causes of concern about a particular child. It is a false idea that a busy professional would put up thousands of flags of concern because they wanted thousands of other professionals to contact them to have conversations to decide what to do about the child. All the professionals are busy people; they will use those causes of concern appropriately, because otherwise they themselves will be overloaded with people contacting them about a child.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thank the Minister for her intervention. As I said earlier, things could work either way, but we have no way of knowing, because we do not have the evaluation. We have heard time and again that everything is dependent on consultation before the full regulations are set out. It is difficult when we do not know what lies ahead and what is involved. There has been no further information since the Bill left the other place, and I hope that more information will be available before Report. It would help if we at least knew the terms in which the consultation will be framed and saw the documents before they were sent out.

I am sure that the Minister accepts that I am not the only person raising those concerns, which worry many people throughout the country. I do not accept her argument, although I do not mean to be confrontational. We need to discuss the matter more fully on the Floor of the House, and I shall not divide the Committee on the amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I beg to move amendment No. 110, in

clause 9, page 9, line 13, after 'advice', insert 'and training'.

I can be very brief. Subsection (13)(e) of the clause refers to the need for advice on data protection. Training would fit in perfectly with that proposal, as a great deal of training will also be needed. The amendment would address some of my anxieties in that respect.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

The clause as drafted refers to the need for children and families to have advice so that they are aware of their rights under the Data Protection Act 1998. It is the professionals who work the system who would need training, and the clause is therefore not an appropriate place for the amendment. As I said earlier, I agree with the hon. Lady that training of professionals is important, but the clause is not the right place to specify it.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I have made my point; I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I shall not detain the Committee. We have had a lengthy debate and received some useful information from the Government, although not nearly enough. However, I fear that there are still too many gaps in the Bill as drafted and too many question marks, and it would therefore not be right for the Committee to agree to the clause stand part. I shall urge my hon. Friends to vote against the clause with a view to returning to it on Report, when I hope the Government will greatly have improved the proposal. We may then be able to support it.

As the Minister knows, I support databases in principle, but they should be properly quantified, qualified, manageable and practical databases that will actually work, and we have not been assured that they will work in their current form. I shall press clause stand part to a Division.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I endorse the hon. Gentleman's comments; there are still too many questions and not enough answers. Liberal Democrat Members have stated which proposals we strongly support. The Minister may suggest that we were dragged into it, but we have listened carefully to the arguments and worked them through logically. We accept many of the principles of the measure, and many of the Minister's reassurances. However, we still have many questions about what will actually happen—who has access, how long the data will be held and so on. Those questions were all raised in the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Any extra information that could be supplied between now and Report could only enhance the debate on the clause. I therefore also agree that we should vote against it at this point.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 13, Noes 5.

Clause 38 - Power to establish registration scheme in England

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I beg to move amendment No. 94, in

clause 38, page 27, line 16, leave out subsection (1) and insert—

'(1) It shall be the duty of every children's services authority in England in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State to establish and maintain a register of persons in their area suitable to foster children privately.'.

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 74, in

clause 38, page 27, line 16, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 104, in

clause 38, page 27, line 19, at end insert—

'(1A) It shall be the duty of every local authority to keep a register of individuals in their area suitable to act as private foster parents for children.

(1B) A local authority may refuse to register an applicant for registration under subsection (1A) if it is satisfied that the applicant, or any person living in the applicant's household, is not fit to be in the proximity of children.'.

No. 75, in

clause 38, page 27, line 20, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 76, in

clause 38, page 27, line 24, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 78, in

clause 38, page 27, line 33, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 79, in

clause 38, page 27, line 37, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 80, in

clause 38, page 27, line 41, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 81, in

clause 38, page 28, line 1, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 82, in

clause 38, page 28, line 7, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 83, in

clause 38, page 28, line 25, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 84, in

clause 38, page 28, line 28, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 85, in

clause 38, page 28, line 33, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 87, in

clause 38, page 28, line 40, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 88, in

clause 38, page 28, line 46, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 89, in

clause 38, page 29, line 9, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 90, in

clause 38, page 29, line 14, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

No. 91, in

clause 38, page 29, line 28, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I was getting alarmed at the number of amendments in this group, thinking that I was not prepared. Now I realise why there is such a large number—it boils down to the change of one word. Amendment No. 94 calls for a compulsory registration scheme for private fostering. I appreciate that the Government have moved some way towards such an arrangement by trying to strengthen the notification scheme. That is absolutely essential, but most professionals ask: if it is a good idea for a few years' time, why not introduce it now?

It is interesting to note that every report that the Government have commissioned in the past five years confirms that privately fostered children can be very vulnerable. A registration system involving the approval of private foster carers would protect their interests better than the current situation, under which private foster carers are required only to notify local authorities about arrangements. The reports include Sir William Utting's ''People like us: The review of safeguards for children living away from home'', which was commissioned in 1997 by the Prime Minister. That report referred to private fostering as a

potential honey pot for abusers. It was published all that time ago, and the many other reports published since have all come to the same conclusion.

While we welcome the power to establish the registration schemes, we do not believe that the proposals are sufficient to provide the protection that is needed for some of the most vulnerable children in the country. As we know, the key dilemmas for policy makers and practitioners are the extent to which it is realistic to impose controls on private arrangements made by parents for the care of their children and the extent to which all the different arrangements that fall into the category of private fostering can be subject to the same treatment. Opponents to the registration scheme often argue that the Government should not intervene in private life and that many families would find that unacceptable. The amendment would simply require keeping a register to be the duty of every children's services authority.

There are a lot of objections, and I am sure that the Minister will mention some. However, by passing this simple amendment and with the aid of regulations, which I know that she is keen on using, we could put constraints on the system that would overcome some of the fears. For example, we would need in particular to focus on private foster carers who propose to foster children not previously known to them. When the children are known to them, the new system could be seen as a cumbersome arrangement, but it would exist to assist parents, which is an important point. Parents who need to place their child with a private foster carer want to know that the carer is subject to some form of accountability.

Regulations could work with the amendment to ensure that inappropriate burdens are not imposed on carers. Individuals often care temporarily for a child whom they already know in their capacity as a friend, godparent or a member of the extended family, perhaps when there is illness in the family. There are many different circumstances in which the Government would not want to be too heavy-handed.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

In many of the circumstances that the hon. Lady has mentioned—when there is illness or bereavement in the family, for example—people need to look to friends, neighbours or members of the extended family to take over the care of a child for a short time. Private fostering comes into the equation only when the child has been in such care for 28 days, which is a long time.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those comments. I am on the defensive at the moment, trying to pre-empt some of the arguments that might be made against the registration scheme, and it is helpful that the figure is 28 days.

There is a further concern in my area because there are many language schools. They are concerned because they rely on host families to have young people with them for more than 28 days. I understand their concern, because the checks must be onerous from a business point of view, but in principle the families should be checked. Discussing this issue makes us think more and more about how we did not

think about those considerations when we let our children go off on foreign exchanges in the past. Now we are more aware of the dangers, we have to reach a balanced point of view.

I am aware that there are arguments against the scheme, particularly for the language schools in my area, but I would hope that we could develop a private fostering register. We would have to ensure that it did not catch up people with straightforward arrangements, although that would only be over 28 days. We would also need consultation to see how such an arrangement would affect people brought into the system for the first time, such as businesses, in the way that I have explained.

I have tabled a series of amendments that work together, but the fundamental principle remains that, with regulations, it would be possible to develop a private fostering registration scheme that addressed some of people's great fears. We often refer to Victoria Climbie and point out that private fostering was not involved in that case, but a private fostering arrangement was a part of another tragic case—that of Toni-Ann Byfield. We know that there are pitfalls, but I ask the Minister to consider the amendments.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I would be much less defensive than the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole because I cannot honestly believe that the Government are proposing such an inadequate scheme as that expressed in clause 37 and introducing the possibility of a registration scheme only in a sunset clause. No one in this country has the first clue how many privately fostered children there are. In 2001, the Department of Health estimated that there were 10,000 privately fostered children in the country and that 50 per cent. of them had not been notified to the local authorities. Goodness knows where it got that statistic from, because there is no basis on which they could estimate the number not known to the local authorities.

Victoria Climbie was privately fostered with a great aunt—that would go beyond the definition of a close relative. The Children Act 1989 states that a child is privately fostered if they stay for more than 28 days with someone who does not have parental responsibility or is not a relative. That is a very long time indeed.

The Government are aware of the experience of introducing regulations on child minding. People who cared for children in their own homes for more than two hours a day had to stop doing that in an unofficial capacity and become registered, a condition that has swiftly achieved the broadest acceptance in our society. Now, if parents need a child minder, a list is readily available of people who are police checked, approved and inspected and who can provide a decent service for their children.

Worryingly, private fostering is a cultural phenomenon. It is part of the culture in west African countries, especially Nigeria. Many people from west Africa come to this country to work or study, and they seek a private fostering arrangement for their children. Many of the people with whom they wish to leave their

children will not be known to them, or they may be aware of them through the extended family or through a network back home.

Surely, Victoria Climbie's extremely responsible and sensitive parents should have been able, if they had needed their child to be looked after, to check whether the local authority had a list of people prepared to take on private fostering arrangements. If they decided that they wanted to place their child with a particular person, they should have been able to ensure that that person had been thoroughly checked out by the local authority.

I do not know why the Government are so resistant to taking the sensible action urged on them by a previous chief inspector of social services, Sir William Utting. One wishes he had urged them to take that action while he was still in post. He suggested that legislation be introduced to require local authorities to maintain a register of private foster carers in their area who are approved as suitable; that it should be an offence to foster a child privately if the carer is unregistered or to place a child with an unregistered carer; and that standards should be published with the criteria against which private foster carers should be assessed for registration. The standards would be based on the current ones for child minders and would include elements of national standards for foster care.

I do not understand why the Government are not prepared to introduce such simple legislation now, rather than waiting for the future or perhaps, God help us, for another tragedy to occur in the meantime. We have debated this issue before in considering Bills; we tried to amend the Care Standards Bill in 2000. However, the Government are reluctant to take the issue on, which is extremely puzzling.

What I am urging is sensible, straightforward and profoundly in the interests of children and parents. It would ensure child safety. Thousands of children, including, perhaps, some of those from whom we never hear again after they pass through the hands of the immigration authorities at our ports, would become known to us. The measure would support Government policies aimed at defeating the sexual exploitation of children trafficked into this country and the exploitation of children coming into the country for domestic servitude. I suspect that that is a much greater problem than we fully understand. We would see progress on all those matters.

A short while ago, there was a meeting of Africans Unite Against Child Abuse. That excellent organisation is rooted in the African community in this country. As part of a week of events that AFRUCA was undertaking, I went to a discussion about child care in the back room of an African restaurant in Dalston. One lady stood up and exhorted everyone present to acknowledge that many people from the community living in London seek, after they have come to this country, worked and acquired some money and standing, to bring a child into the country on a private fostering basis, even though the child will not be looked after properly as a member of the

household. The child is used as a domestic servant to support the work of the household and to look after the children. The people of AFRUCA are extremely brave in raising such issues at national level. The Government should forget all about amendments to this useless notification scheme, which puts children at risk, and install a proper registration scheme now.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I have a good deal of sympathy with the amendments and the comments about the problems attached to the lack of a private fostering scheme. There is a sense of deja vu, as the hon. Gentleman said. We argued long and hard about this issue when we considered the Adoption and Children Bill. I certainly supported measures then to start a private fostering registration scheme. Last year, I promoted a private Member's Bill designed to do the same thing, which was supported by various members of the Committee that considered the Adoption and Children Bill, but still we are in this position. We seem to have made a little progress in getting the issue mentioned in the Bill at all. However, I cannot understand why, as the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) said, the Government are so resistant to the measures that they freely took on child minders.

As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, we cannot quantify the problem. I fear that the figure of 10,000, which was plucked out of the air and which we used for discussions on the Adoption and Children Bill, is the tip of the iceberg. We have tended to concentrate on the west African angle, and I have given examples of girls coming from Nigeria and Sierra Leone into Sussex, but I am sure that it is a problem in many other places.

The ''power to establish'' a registration scheme is in the Bill, but there is no guarantee that it will actually happen. It is a sop to mention the issue without any real inclination to do something about it. All it does is place an additional duty on local authorities to try to seek out private fostering arrangements, but the people who most need to be sought out are those most determined to remain hidden. They are the least likely to volunteer their identity for the reasons that the hon. Gentleman mentioned: they are not looking after the children well, or they are making money and not declaring it—we cannot ignore the revenue angle, let alone the problems of the child's rights.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

We all understand the issue that we are trying to address. As the hon. Gentleman previously promoted a private Member's Bill on this issue, could he tell me how he thinks a registration scheme would be better at pulling out those people who privately foster children and do not comply with their notification obligations in law?

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I think that it should be an offence. If someone does not declare that they are engaging in a private registration scheme, they should be subject to prosecution.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

My problem with that is that it is currently an offence for someone to fail to notify a local authority of their intent privately to foster a

child. That is prosecutable, and they would be subject to a fine of £5,000 or £10,000—I cannot remember exactly how much. I am not trying to catch the hon. Gentleman out, but I sincerely want to know how he thinks a registration scheme could provide the additional strength to uncover unseen private fostering, which concerns us all, and thereby better safeguard children.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

How many people have been prosecuted for a failure to notify?

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

In my speech, I will deal with how to improve the notification scheme.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

How many people have been prosecuted?

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

It is not very many, and I will deal later with why I think that the notification scheme is not working well. I wanted the hon. Gentleman to tell me why a registration scheme has any hope of working better. What does he believe is in a registration scheme that we cannot put into a notification scheme, in which there is already an array of powers and duties on local authorities and families, that would make it more likely to uncover privately fostered children, for whom we both have a concern?

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

The nub of the problem is that the law is not working. The penalties are not seen to work, or even to exist, so the situation is not being addressed. A registration scheme must be enshrined in law, and we must publicise it as widely as possible rather than relying on the stretched resources of local authorities to seek these people out. We must clamp down those who flout every opportunity to register with such a scheme. I said at the outset that these people will not volunteer their identity unless we begin not only to make it clear that failure to do so is unacceptable, but to back that up with prosecutions with serious penalties attached.

The Minister said that she thinks that few people have been prosecuted. I think that she is right, which means that the system is not working. We need to devise a system based on compulsory registration, tougher penalties and making people well aware of what will hit them if they do not comply. We might then start to get better compliance and clamp down on some of the graver abuses of the system.

I freely admit that the register is not easy, but I cannot understand why the Minister is happy for the situation to remain as it is. The Bill does not take us forward; it is a sop to an enormous lobby of people from across the political divide and from all the family and children-oriented bodies. The scheme is past its due date, but the Government still seem not to want to move on it, despite all the reports. Lord Utting knew what he was talking about, and other reports, commissioned by the Government, came to the same conclusion.

Aside from the penalty issue, there are attractions for parents in having a register to which they can refer. Hon. Members have touched on some of them.

Currently, parents may mistakenly think that a private foster carer who has not been prohibited from fostering has been positively approved. Parents who need to place their child with a private foster carer would be aided in their search for a suitable family by a register showing that the people on it have met basic standards.

We may be talking about people in distressed circumstances; for example, people who have suffered a bereavement. If, all of a sudden, the person who was caring for a child is not there, and no extended family members can fill their place, the family will need to look for someone whom they do not know. At the moment, there is no quality mark that can be relied on. There is enormous confusion and ignorance about the calibre of the private fostering arrangements available.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

The hon. Gentleman has moved on slightly, but he has put his finger on the distinction between a notification scheme and a registration scheme. The first considers the well-being of a particular child in a placement, while the second looks at the standards of the people offering the private fostering service. Those are two different things.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

What is being suggested is constructive, not just additional regulation. The amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole would leave it up to local authorities to devise their registration schemes, so we are not trying to impose a central model on them.

There also needs to be a method of linking local authorities. Just as we have highly mobile vulnerable children, we may have highly mobile duff foster carers. At the moment, many people are falling through the gap. Let us take the example of a foster carer who goes through the checks and is engaged by an authority in, for want of a better example, Stoke-on-Trent. If the carer then falls short of the standards expected and the authority decides no longer to use them, but their offence is not prosecutable or sufficient to put them on the Department for Education and Skills black list—list 99, I think—the authority needs a method of communicating that to other authorities, to prevent the carer touting for business in, for example, Brighton and Hove, and starting with a clean sheet.

I know that the mechanisms are supposed to be in place, but in many instances they are not working. Given that we have an acute shortage of foster carers—estimated to be at least 10,000—if a new foster carer turned up and contacted a local authority, it would in many cases be keen to take them. Perhaps the checks would not be carried out to the rigorous standard required because the authority was desperate to get another foster carer on the books. That is the current state of play in the foster care market.

I am the last one to want to be unduly intrusive into individual families or to impose yet more regulations on local authorities and professionals. However, our proposal would have advantages for them as well as placing burdens on them. I cannot see why the Government still resist this idea when all the professional advice is not only that it is right but that it should have happened some time ago. I have a deal

of sympathy with the amendment tabled by the hon. Lady and the points made by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

This is a difficult issue. I will take hon. Members through the arguments. I do not want anyone to think that we are not concerned about finding appropriate mechanisms to ensure that children at risk because they have been placed in an unsuitable private fostering environment, are identified and supported and, if necessary, removed from that environment.

Let me start with the support that the professional bodies give to the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole and supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). That professional support is not total. One reason is that people are not clear how best to tackle what is a very difficult problem. Let me give two examples.

Hon. Members have not referred to a joint statement by the two most important professional bodies: the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Social Services. They state:

''We do not support the argument that local authorities are unable, within present legislation, to prevent those private fostering arrangements which they feel are unsuitable, from happening. It is true that only rarely are proceedings initiated to prohibit such arrangements but the current legislation does make it possible for the local authority to intervene and there are significant sanctions which can be applied if a private foster carer ignores the prohibition order, including the potential for imprisonment.

So it can be argued that existing safeguarding arrangements have the potential, if applied, to be sufficiently robust. The problem is in their application (or lack of it) which in turn is a product of the failure of private foster carers or birth parents to notify local authorities of such arrangements. It is hard to see how a requirement to register will make people behave differently. Indeed it could equally be argued that a requirement to register might be a further deterrent.''

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Does the Minister think that people's behaviour may change if we see some high-profile prosecutions of people who have not complied with the law?

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

It may indeed. I want to come on to how we can better use the existing legislative framework without moving immediately into a new framework. Would legislation to establish a register be more effective than current arrangements, or would it provide an additional deterrent, as both the ADSS and the LGA—organisations that are not off the wall and which represent the professional cohort—believe? I am sure that their statement was sent to the hon. Gentleman, but I would be happy to share it with him.

The Social Care Institute for Excellence was established specifically to discover and spread best practice. In December 2002, it published a position paper on the effectiveness of child-minding registration and its implications for private fostering. It found that for some types of private fostering arrangements, registration might not be the most

appropriate or effective safeguard. I am merely drawing to hon. Members' attention the fact that although they passionately believe that the proposal is the best way of dealing with an intractable problem, we are receiving equally passionate and clear advice that some of the key professionals do not believe that it is the best way forward.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre claims that a registration scheme would ensure child safety. He said that it would ensure that Government policies could defeat the sexual and domestic exploitation. It might, but I am not sure that it would. My hon. Friend must accept that it could equally drive it underground. If we make better use of our existing legislative framework, which has not been properly used, we may not need a registration scheme. That is why the powers in the clause strengthen the legislative framework in which local authorities operate, giving us what is known as a sunset clause, so that if these final efforts to identify and protect privately fostered children do not work, we can attempt to introduce a registration scheme without having to return to Parliament with primary legislation. I am worried about introducing a registration scheme, but I accept that if we cannot make the other scheme work, we will have to do so.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, but the argument that registering something and trying to raise standards will drive the problem underground was used against the registration of child minders. We use the criminal law to deal with people who evade their responsibilities. I have great respect for the Association of Directors of Social Services, but I am not inclined to take lessons from it because it is part of the body that has failed on this matter. It is astounding that its officials say that the legislation enables them to run a scheme, when they have palpably not done so since the Children Act was introduced in 1989. I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend told me what she considers so wrong with a registration scheme that would address itself to the aptitudes, abilities and safety of people doing private fostering.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

First, on the analogy with child minders, there is a difference, partly because private fostering is a complex world, as we know. It involves not just the group about whom we are most concerned—the children of African families who come here—but many others. People usually become child minders to earn money, so they have an incentive to register. However, many private fostering arrangements are made without the exchange of money, so the incentive to register does not exist.

I shall now say something about the notification scheme and what we want it to do. The clause is in the Bill because we want to strengthen the scheme and give it one last chance to work. It is not wrong in theory, but it needs strength and power to ensure that it is implemented. First, we want to promote awareness by publicising it, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham suggested. I agree with him that we should publicise both the existing notification scheme

and some high-profile cases; that may bring about a culture of compliance, which is what we want. However, we do not need to change the law and create a registration scheme to do that—we will require local authorities to promote awareness of the scheme.

Secondly, we will require local authorities to monitor the operation of the scheme far more closely, and to provide information for us on how many registrations they achieve each year. They will monitor registration, and we will monitor their effectiveness. That will give us a tool to determine, over time, whether the notification scheme is working. We will then require the inspectorates, in the framework of inspection that we are developing for all children's services, to do their work, and we will require the local safeguarding boards to have regard to how well or otherwise private fostering arrangements are being implemented. We are putting in place several mechanisms that will support the scheme.

The hon. Gentleman gave the example of a suddenly bereaved family who might want to use a register. That is a dangerous route, and I ask him to think that matter through. Using the analogy of the world of child care in the home, the fostering system is similar to the light-touch registration scheme that we propose to implement in the new year for nannies and childminders.

In the system for notification, a simple, basic check is undertaken using the Criminal Records Bureau and the household itself. We try to ensure that there is safety for the child. We do not do the very thorough checks that are carried out for those who become foster carers of looked-after children. It would be an error to assume, from the basic checks that we undertake, that we can provide the same sort of comfort to parents who choose to use a particular private foster carer that we need when we are placing children who are looked-after.

There is a great danger in using the register to say, ''This person has been authorised; this person will be appropriate for dealing with your child.'' Through checking, all we will have done is to ensure that there is nothing—nothing in the ether—that makes a particular private foster carer unsuitable for working with children. One must always be careful with such regulatory frameworks, particularly those relating to the care of children, that one is not giving parents greater security and certainty than can actually be provided.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

The problem at present is that if someone has not been banned from being a private foster carer, the assumption is that they are okay, without there having been any checks at all. The key thing is to ensure that there are appropriate, balanced checks, which are not enormously burdensome in their rigour. Those checks would give a degree of comfort to someone that the person that they are selecting for a private fostering arrangement is at least secure and knows what they are doing for that particular job, just as local authorities must assess the private foster carers that they use for their looked-after children.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

Those basic checks that give some comfort exist in the notification scheme. I agree with all hon. Members that the notification scheme has not worked—there has not been compliance with the regulatory framework. Through the Bill, we are attempting to toughen up the regulatory framework so that local authorities take the task seriously, and will publicise, monitor and deliver in relation to the notification. Moreover, for the first time, we are adding a requirement that local authorities should be informed about a placement before it occurs. They will then have a duty to check out the place and the person before the child arrives. That is a new provision in the notification scheme, which we think will strengthen it.

Having said all that, we have concerns with a registration scheme and the reason why we have included a sunset clause is because I recognise that if those additional duties that we are giving to local authorities in our clause do not work—

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

Order. I ask the Minister if she could kindly address the Chair, because Hansard is having difficulty in picking up her words.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

My apologies, Dame Marion. The reason why we have placed a sunset clause in the Bill is because I accept what hon. Members say and, if this final attempt to get the notification scheme to work is not successful, we would have to examine an alternative, despite the many concerns that we have about the alternatives.

Private fostering is a complex area that covers many people. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said that through regulations we could limit the measure to that group of children about whom we are all most concerned, but the way in which she has framed her amendments would not enable us to do that. We would have to have a registration scheme that registered all those young people who went to language schools, who fell out with their families and spent some time on a friend's sofa, and who were placed with another relative because their mother went into hospital or was ill. A mental health illness would be a classic example.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

We would have to register young people only if they stayed away for more than 28 days. I have made the point previously. Of course young people clear off and sleep on friends' sofas, but 28 days is a long time. If we do not have a proper registration scheme, we are leaving a huge gap whereby children could be abused. I believe that language schools should be registered. Allowing young people to come to a foreign country without these schools being registered is incredible.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

We are not leaving a huge gap: we have the notification scheme. It has not been properly brought into effect, but we hope that it will prove more effective with the amendments that we are making to it. Our fear remains that, under a formal registration scheme, there is no incentive in the circumstances about which we have most concerns—a young child being privately fostered—for anyone to come forward and be properly registered. In fact, there might well be

a disincentive, because there would be the issue of costs, who pays and so on. When I was a child and my mother was very ill, I was placed with distant relatives for about three months. The idea that they would have had to register to help my mother out would have been completely potty.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

And look what happened.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I know—it damaged me for life.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

She used to be a conservative.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

It brought me to my senses then.

I think that we have now been around the houses. The only other issue that I want to cover is the barring system, to which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham referred. He will appreciate that we are reflecting on Sir Michael Bichard's report on what went wrong at Soham. Clearly, arising out of that, we will have to see how we can develop a system whereby information on those who are unsuitable for work with children is taken over local authority boundaries. We take that issue seriously, but it is not totally pertinent to this set of amendments.

I have sympathy with the spirit of the amendments, but I am extremely sceptical about the confidence with which hon. Members claim that a registration scheme would change the world in the direction in which they and I wish to travel. I hope that they will support what we have proposed, which is to strengthen the current notification scheme. However, in understanding exactly where all hon. Members are coming from on this issue, we are taking the powers in the sunset clause, so that if we fail in our endeavours to make the notification scheme work, we will not need to return to the House with primary legislation and we will implement the registration scheme, despite our concerns about whether it will work as well as everyone would like it to.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thank all hon. Members who contributed to the debate. It has been useful, but to my mind the Minister's arguments have not won the day over the other points that have been made. She mentioned the Social Care Institute for Excellence. I understand that the executive summary of the report to which she referred makes an argument for the registration of some private fostering arrangements based on balance and proportionality. It certainly does not dismiss them out of hand.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I have that executive summary in my hands. I was surprised to hear the Minister pray in aid a report that supported the principle of a private registration scheme and said how successful the child minding registration scheme had been. To quote one line:

''Registration of childminders has proved a prerequisite for professionalisation, leading to self-regulation in terms of both standards of care and notification of unregistered childminders.''

The same applies to fostering.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

Read on.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I do not think I have time in this intervention to read on. I would be happy to read out the entire report if the Committee would tolerate it, but I think it probably would not.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

There is clearly a debate to be had on that subject, but I did not want to let that point pass. There are various questions to be asked. As well as the subject of stricter requirement for notification there is the issue of potential enforcement and I would like to raise the question of fines being increased.

The Minister suggested that the current drafting of the amendment would not stand up to the regulations that I envisaged to make the system workable in consultation with all parties. I am sure that if we display the strength of feeling for the amendment now, there is ample time for the Minister to come up with a suitable amendment on Report. There have been many Government amendments during this Committee, and although I thought that they would be exhausted by Report, this is a situation in which one would be acceptable.

The serious point is that nobody feels that now is the time to delay working on a registration scheme. It would not be possible to implement it overnight and time is passing. We live in a slightly different world now and the number of unaccompanied children coming into the country is more of an issue—as we have said, we are not even able to quantify it. The scheme would apply to residents of this country as well as children coming into the country, but the latter is a new development since the Minister was in that situation.

I wish to press the amendment to a vote because it is important for us to convey the strength of feeling on the issue. Having listened to the overwhelming arguments and given that the Minister is prepared to introduce the system in a few years' time, the question is why not introduce it now. We have not had an answer.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 10.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I beg to move amendment No. 152, in

clause 38, page 29, line 26, leave out 'six months' and insert

'51 weeks (or, in the case of an offence committed before the commencement of section 281(5) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (c.44), not exceeding six months)'.

I intend to deal with the amendment quickly, to give time for debate on other amendments. The amendment brings the length of the prison sentence in line with the Criminal Justice Act 2003. If hon. Members wish to debate the amendment, I shall give greater detail.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 38, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 39 to 41 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 4 - Child minding and day care

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I beg to move amendment No. 162, in

schedule 4, page 44, line 7, at end insert—

'Hotels etc

In Schedule 9A, after paragraph 2 insert—

''2A (1) Part XA does not apply to provision of day care in a hotel, guest house or other similar establishment for children staying in that establishment where—

(a) the provision takes place only between 6 pm and 2 am; and

(b) the person providing the care is doing so for no more than two different clients at the same time.

(2) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (1)(b), a ''client'' is a person at whose request (or persons at whose joint request) day care is provided for a child.''.'.

Again, this is a small amendment to deal with an anomaly that we have uncovered. If babysitting is provided in a hotel, it needs to be registered. We are making the necessary changes so that if children are looked after or babysat in a hotel, Ofsted registration is not required.

Amendment agreed to.

Schedule 4, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 42 - Intervention

Clause 43 - Inspection of local education authorities

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I beg to move amendment No. 155, in

clause 43, page 31, leave out lines 7 to 13 and insert—

' ''(2) An inspection of a local education authority in England under this section shall consist of a review of the way in which the authority are performing any function conferred on them in their capacity as a local education authority, other than a function falling within the remit of the Adult Learning Inspectorate under section 53 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000 (c.21).

(2A) An inspection of a local education authority in Wales under this section shall consist of a review of the way in which the authority are performing—

(a) any function conferred on them in their capacity as a local education authority; and

(b) the functions conferred on them under sections 21 and (children and young people's plans: Wales) so far as relating to education, training or youth support services (within the meaning of section 123 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000 (c.21)).'''

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendment No. 156 and clause stand part.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

The amendment will ensure that the new duties in the Bill can be inspected in Wales. Also, because of what we hope to achieve in that respect, we have to modify the provisions for England.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment made: No. 156, in

clause 43, page 31, line 14, leave out subsection (2).—[Margaret Hodge.]

Clause 43, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 44 - Duty of local authorities to promote educational achievement

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 47, in

clause 44, page 31, line 21, at end add—

'( ) The duty requires local authorities to request schools to set out their admission policies with particular regard to looked after children and for schools to notify their arrangements for addressing the particular needs of looked-after children.'

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 230, in

clause 44, page 31, line 21, at end add—

'( ) For the purpose of satisfying the duty imposed upon it by this section a local authority shall have the power to secure from the governing body or other appropriate authority of any school within its area information about the admission policies applicable in that school with particular regard to looked after children and about arrangements applicable in that school for addressing the needs of looked after children.'.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

We have just made a lot of progress.

I hope that we all agree on the need to improve the educational achievement of looked-after children. That is not at issue, but what is at issue is the way that is currently achieved—or not—and how the wording of the clause will affect that. I raised some of my worries on Second Reading, which led to the tabling of two Opposition amendments. We are offering multiple choice; the amendments would achieve the same result, but one is based on a more expert legalese than the other.

I expect that everyone will agree that the educational achievement of looked-after children is a national disgrace. The figures make depressing reading; they are shameful. A report compiled by the Local Government Association states that 27 per cent. of looked-after children had statements of special educational needs, compared with only 3 per cent. of all school children in England. At key stage 1, as many as 53 per cent. of looked-after children achieved level 2, compared with 85 per cent. of all children. At key stage 2, 42 per cent. of looked-after children achieved level 4, compared with 78 per cent. of all children.

At key stage 3, the gap is even bigger: 23 per cent. of looked-after children achieved level 5, compared with 69 per cent. of all children. Fifty-three per cent. of looked-after children obtained at least one GCSE or GNVQ, compared with 95 per cent. of all children—almost double the number—and 9 per cent. of looked-after children obtained at least 5 GCSEs or equivalent at grades A* to C, compared with 53 of all children.

Those figures are pretty stark. The number of looked-after children going on to university is barely 1 per cent., compared with about 6 per cent. of all children. We desperately need to do something about that.

We must also consider the question of staying in full-time education post-16. Only 57 of looked-after children remained in full-time education post-16, compared with 72 per cent. of all children; and 22 per cent. of looked-after children were unemployed in the September after leaving school, compared with only 7 per cent. of all children. At virtually every stage, through secondary education, to higher education and on to employment, looked-after children are being seriously let down by the state; they are seriously disadvantaged.

Those figures reinforce what I and other hon. Members have said from the start. The state does not make a good parent. It fails looked-after children, particularly in the realm of education. We all agree that we need to do something about it. The problem is knowing what we should do. At the moment, schools are required to nominate teachers who can specialise in the needs of looked-after children. There are moves to apply that provision to governors; it certainly needs to happen, such is the scale of the problem.

In my experience as a school governor of schools that include looked-after children among their pupils, such children are not treated as a priority. They clearly need to be given greater priority. However, treating them as a priority on admission is fraught with problems. I said on Second Reading that if we read the clause as giving priority of admission at oversubscribed schools to looked-after children over those children that live with their birth parents, it will cause problems. Indeed, we debated that subject over the Dispatch Box with the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw).

We clearly want looked-after children to go to the most appropriate school. I have had a lot of dealings with local schools that are oversubscribed—as

constituency MPs, we see it all the time. We know that many constituents are unable to get their children into those schools because of oversubscription, even though the siblings are already at that school and even though they live in the catchment area. For the better schools, we are talking about large-scale oversubscription.

The implications of the clause may be that if a school is oversubscribed by 20 children, 10 of whom are looked after and 10 of whom are living with their birth parents, there will be automatic priority for the 10 looked-after children. That may be the best course of action for the 10 looked-after children—I do not deny that—but is it fair on the 10 children living with their birth parents, who may have a greater claim to go to the school because of the catchment area or siblings already going there?

My big fear is that if that process is encouraged by the clause—that may not be its intention, but it could be a by-product—there could be a backlash against those looked-after children, which is the last thing that we want. The prejudice against them may already be substantial, and we need to do everything that we can to ensure that they are integrated as fully as possible into mainstream schools and no stigma is attached to them. That is why we have tabled the amendments.

I suspect that certain schools are currently operating in a discriminatory manner against looked-after children. I can understand why they may want to do that. Looked-after children's educational achievement is less impressive on average, and they may bring down the achievement standards of the schools. As schools have been so intimidated by the Secretary of State and this Government—[Interruption.] The Minister missed that one. As they have been so intimidated into achievement, keeping to targets and featuring well in performance tables, the last thing that they want is to take on raw material, for want of a better word, in children who may bring the standards down. That is not acceptable.

Someone has written to me to say that, in a certain country,

''there are comprehensive schools who use cohort selection in order to admit high achieving pupils, and hence often discriminate against disadvantaged children. It can often be difficult to prove that cohort selection is going on, since headteachers are able to justify their pupil statistics as being the result of 'parental choice'.''

That is a problem, and the impact that being left out of those schools can have on looked-after children is considerable. Another letter said:

''a young person being told that a school 'doesn't want them' is extremely damaging to their self-esteem and morale'',

and that is to someone whose self-esteem and morale is likely already to have taken a big dent by being a looked-after child in care.

The problem is not easy to solve but, it needs to be addressed. We need to achieve a proper balance between ensuring that such children get into the most appropriate schools that give them the best opportunities and not causing detriment to other children, which could lead to a backlash against the looked-after children. The amendments would place a

greater clarity and transparency on individual schools' admissions policies with regard to looked-after children and ensure that they make much clearer their arrangements for looking after those children once they are in school. For example, are they serious about having a nominated teacher who can help execute the care plans within the school environment? Will they have a nominated governor who is not doing the job on Buggins's turn but is proactive in ensuring that the interests of looked-after children are stood up for?

The role of local authority is crucial in many respects. There is no excuse for the social worker or nominated person in the local authority not to turn up at a parents evening, just as any of us would expect our parents to turn up shamefully, ready to be told the bad news about our progress. We know about the great rapport between the Minister and you, Dame Marion, in your schooldays. I am sure that your parents and the Minister's parents showed up and that at least one set came away glowing with the reports that they received.

There is another important aspect. Considering the duty placed on the director of children's services, social services departments will have a greater responsibility

in moving children around the system. One of the greatest boosts to a child's educational achievement must surely be the stability of placement at a school, preferably the right school in the first place. However, time and again children in their teens, who are at a difficult, impressionable age, but a key age in terms of their character formation and their educational career, move from one foster family to another or to a children's home, where the last consideration is proximity to the school that the child attends. What is considered is what foster family is available that the local authority can afford, even if that placement is at the other end of the county, which in my constituency means 40 or 50 miles away. In such circumstances, the child clearly cannot keep his place at the school where he may just be finding his feet and making a go of things. We should give far greater responsibility to social services departments to consider the continuity of a child's education.

Amendments No. 47 and, the alternative, amendment No. 230 would provide greater transparency in admissions to schools, even if there cannot be an entirely level playing field in that respect. We need to do something about the matter, but it is fraught with problems. The National Union of Teachers, who warmed to amendment No. 230, assures me that it is written in a suitably watertight form, which may appeal to the parliamentary draftsmen who are so controlling in deciding whether Ministers are amenable to our proposals.

The amendments make a serious point: there is a deficiency in the present system. The Bill provides an opportunity to tackle it, and I hope that the Minister will support one of the amendments.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I agree with the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks. The way in which we corporately care for the most vulnerable children in the community—those who are looked after by the state—is a national disgrace. It would not be good enough for us, as parents.

James Clappison (Conservative, Hertsmere)

The Minister is very generous. It should be made clear that it is not a recent disgrace; it has been going on for a long time, under Governments of all descriptions.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

Yes, I agree. People often ask me about my new position in Government, my array of responsibilities and how I would want to be measured in terms of the success or otherwise of the endeavour of getting a step change in outcomes for children. We all have to prioritise our work, but for me, achieving better outcomes for looked-after children is the key priority on which, if I am given enough time in the job, I sincerely want to be judged. It is a do-able task; we are not talking about a huge cohort of children, but about 60,000 at any one time. The figure is rising—it goes up by about 1 to 2 per cent. per annum—not because more children are coming into the care system but because children have more complex needs and stay in the system for longer.

If every child is genuinely to matter in our society, our ability to ensure that they have the opportunity to achieve good results, not only in education but right through their life, must be central to the whole endeavour of a children's directorate within the Department for Education and Skills.

It might be worth reflecting a little on who these children are. They go into care for many reasons. Nearly half of them have been abused or neglected, 12 per cent. come from dysfunctional families, 10 per cent. have families who are suffering acute stress, and 6 per cent. have an absent parent. Only 7 per cent. go into care because of their own behaviour, and even then there may be underlying causes. These children, who have suffered or been let down by their family circumstances, go into care through no fault of their own, yet we, as corporate parents, fail them time and time again. We must do better.

I shall pick up on one point that we are considering very carefully as I think about how we can improve the outcomes for looked-after children. The key to ensuring better outcomes for them is stability, to which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham referred. All too often, local authorities are outrageously poor at planning and commissioning places for looked-after children. Someone comes into the local authority office on a Friday afternoon, there is no proper plan for the number of places needed, officials ring around in desperation and simply put the child wherever they can, probably in a terribly eccentric place right outside the borough and borough authority in which the child is located, thus tearing the child away from their family, their school, their friends and their entire network of support. That is why local authorities need to have the prime duty of care for the outcomes for looked-after children.

We believe that if we can improve stability, we can ensure that children who are brought into the care system are placed more quickly in a stable and loving environment. That will be the key to unlocking better educational attainment and higher educational achievement.

The statistics are terribly worrying. Some 16 per cent. of looked-after children move home at least three times a year. If those children then change school, how on earth can we begin to expect them to achieve high standards at school? We cannot. We have tabled amendments and new clauses on foster care, which we will discuss later in our consideration of the Bill. We are trying very hard to see how we can grow the foster care cohort, because that is another really important way of giving a good, appropriate, alternative, loving home environment in which a child can be supported. There are huge problems, some of which we will talk about later.

It is a question not only of increasing the number of foster carers, important though that is, but of ensuring that those carers are properly supported. They should receive training, support when they have to deal with a crisis, a little respite, and a telephone line that they can call. It is that panoply of support that makes a better foster carer.

One of the things that worries me when considering the cohort of children who are placed with foster carers is that 40 per cent. of foster carers have no qualifications. We know that there is a correlation between the qualifications of parents—and the supportive environment of the home—and the achievements of the child at school. I am not saying that foster carers are not wonderful, loving people, but there is something that we need to unlock between that worrying statistic and the educational achievement of young children.

Chris Mole (Labour, Ipswich)

Would the Minister applaud those local authorities that have begun to develop the concept of super foster carers? She spoke of the increasingly complex needs of many of the young people coming into the looked-after system. Not every foster parent is equipped to cope with all of those needs. It is appropriate to identify the foster parents who have had particular experience or developed more skills. In some circumstances, the local authorities are considering providing higher rewards for those taking on more difficult children.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I thank my hon. Friend. I agree with him. One of the things that we are trying to do is to create what amounts to a career structure for foster carers, placing greater value on the foster care work force. Some local authorities are developing very innovative practices both for training to support children with exceedingly complex needs and for rewarding people. One of the initiatives that I have taken since I have had this job has been to instigate a national awards scheme. I hope that it will be in operation by next year so that we can give national recognition to foster carers for their extremely important contribution to the lives of the children in their care.

I have seen some very good projects as I have gone round the country and spoken to people who are looking for carers. There is one in Wandsworth, a Conservative authority, run by the Shaftesbury

Society. It is not a foster home but a children's home, and the scheme is not rocket science but common sense. It has a simple system: it employs a number of women who work part time. Many of them are graduates, many qualified teachers. Each adult works with about five children and makes sure that the children get up in the morning and go to school, use personal computers to access the necessary information to complete their assignments, and get their work in on time. They go and talk to the teachers at parents' evenings, as many of us have done for our own children. Miracle of miracles, if we look at the GCSE results in that environment with that additional support, the children are at national average—52 per cent. pass five GCSEs at grade A to C, rather than the horrifically poor figure to which my hon. Friend alluded. There are other issues—

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I raised on Second Reading the fact that funding for computers for foster homes had been stopped. I have now received a written reply on the matter, and it is clear that that scheme has come to an end. As the Minister is rightly saying that we have to improve educational standards within foster carers' homes, can she look into that cut in budget? I shall be happy with a written answer. I apologise for that, but it fitted well in to the discussion.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I shall certainly look into that—how could I resist the temptation?—and I shall write to the hon. Lady about what is happening with regard to computers for looked-after children in foster care homes, and what steps we can take to give support. This is a complicated issue. It is partly about the growth of foster care and partly about an issue that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham raised, which was that nearly a third of looked-after children are placed outside their authority. As he knows from experience, there may not be good communication between the two local authorities.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

The Minister makes a good point. I was looking at the figures last night and was alarmed to see that the vast majority of London boroughs place the vast majority of looked-after children—either in foster care or private children's homes—outside their boroughs. In one case, 88 per cent. of a borough's children are placed outside the authority.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

That is alarming. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased that we are working with a number of authorities that receive and export children, to examine commissioning arrangements, so that fewer children are placed outside the borough, and to establish better working protocols, if they are placed outside the borough, to ensure that children's interests are protected and promoted.

I should put these discussions into context: a lot has improved. The number of adoptions has risen hugely since our enormous efforts and the review of the procedure. There has been a 30 per cent. increase in the number of children adopted from care over the past three years. That is important because if more children are adopted, they are provided with a stable

environment in a warm and loving home, which is the precondition of ensuring that they are able to do well at school.

The social exclusion unit report examined educational outcomes of looked-after children on behalf of the Government, and this clause emerged from that. It is worth reflecting on a number of its findings before we view a duty on schools as the solution to this complex problem. First, it found that young people in care spend too much time out of school—they either do not have a school place, are excluded or do not attend. I hope that many of our reforms, which will build professional services around the needs of the child with a lead professional, will support looked-after children better so that those factors do not emerge and lead to poor results.

I say to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that in my constituency almost all looked-after children attend the same school. That is not a good situation, which is why we have introduced our admissions code. It may interest the hon. Gentleman to know that that school, which has always had more places available than any other in the borough and therefore takes in not only looked-after children but asylum-seeking children, has miraculously had the highest increase in results of any secondary school in the borough. When trying to explain that, we obviously take it as read that there is a brilliant head and brilliant staff. However, another factor is that the asylum-seeking children are very motivated and high attaining, and once they master the language, they add huge value to the outcomes of the school.

The second reason that the social exclusion unit found for children not doing well was stability, which we have talked about. The third reason was that they do not get sufficient help with their education if they fall behind. In that context, we should consider the scheme that the Shaftesbury Society has implemented. It is expensive: there are 60,000 looked-after children so one adult working with five children would be a big investment. We will later consider foster care allowances, so we must think about our priorities on where our investment gets the most effective outcome for looked-after children..

The SEU's fourth finding was that primary carers are not expected or equipped to provide sufficient support and encouragement. Again, I have dealt with that issue a little in talking about the qualification levels of foster carers and the failure of many social services departments to put sufficient energy behind the foster care work force, and to invest in and support it properly, particularly through the difficult times such as the teenage years. If one cannot keep people locked in the system in their teenage years, one is bound to fail.

The fifth reason given in the SEU report for the poor results was that children have unmet emotional, mental and physical health needs that have an impact on their education. Again, there are some shocking statistics. I was shocked when I first got this job to discover that one in 10 children between the ages of five and 15 has a mental health condition that requires some sort of professional intervention. Looked-after

children are five times more likely than any of their peer group to require some support because of mental illness. That is linked to our failure corporately to parent them in a loving way and to provide an environment in which they feel emotionally well and therefore emotionally equipped to support their education.

That is what the SEU found to be wrong. It then made a series of recommendations that it thought we should undertake. It talked about better management and leadership. It talked about a new proposed duty on local authorities to promote educational achievement. Taking on that recommendation led to the clause in the Bill to ensure that local authorities—the corporate parent, the new director of children's service and his cohort—take responsibility for that. Round the country one sees the best outcomes for looked-after children where they are owned at leadership level in local authorities. Ealing council came in to see me recently. The leader of Ealing council sits monthly at a committee overseeing the care of the council's looked-after children. That commitment and leadership at the top results in far better outcomes for those children than we have seen elsewhere.

The second recommendation was to support the front line more effectively by improving training on child development. Our entire change for children programme implies that we should focus much more on training those people who work with looked-after children, particularly on supporting foster carers. The third recommendation was to improve the understanding and attitude towards those in care by developing a communications strategy to promote understanding and positive images of care.

Here I have to say, and I think that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham would agree, that the work that the BBC did last year in that series of programmes was a powerful demonstration that tried to ensure that our values for children in care were challenged. The hon. Gentleman talked of the backlash that exists against looked-after children and I hear about how that is handled day in and day out when I talk to them of their experience at school.

The recommendations also concerned the number of school changes, reducing the out-of-authority placements, improving the regional commissioning of specialist services and ensuring that work force national standards take full account of the priority that the Government place on the education of children in care. We are doing that. Another recommendation concerned prioritising children in care in policy development. I have given assurances to the Committee that I intend to do that. Another was to make better use of information research and priorities in looked-after children inspection arrangements. We have taken on board all those recommendations from this thorough bit of work by the SEU.

We have come specifically to the issue of whether we should put a duty on schools. We think that that misses the point. It misses the point of stability. If we can get stability in children's lives, a lot of things will flow from it. The proposal passes the buck for

responsibility for the corporate parent away from the director of children's services and to the schools. That is unfair. We already overload schools. Schools have to be a partner and to co-operate, but they should not have prime responsibility.

The new school admissions code of practice, however, makes it clear that admission authorities should give top priority to looked-after children in their admission arrangements. All admission authorities, whether they are LEAs, foundation schools, voluntary aided schools or academies, are required to have regard to that advice. Admission arrangements are consulted on and published each year. The governing bodies of schools that are their own admission authority are required to provide LEAs with information about their admission arrangements, so that the LEA can publish them in its composite prospectus. If a school's admission arrangements do not give looked-after children top priority, the LEA or other schools can raise an objection with the adjudicator. Our experience, even in the short time that such arrangements have been in place, is that the adjudicators have consistently upheld such objections.

The new admissions forums also have an important role. They have been asked to agree protocols to ensure that looked-after children can access suitable schools outside the normal admission arrangements in an effective and timely fashion.

I accept that the school admission system has not worked in favour of looked-after children in the past, but I hope that the new arrangements that we are putting in place will ensure that it does so now. We need to see how the arrangements work in practice before we think about any further action. However, I am happy to assure the Committee that our forthcoming guidance for local authorities on their new duty under the clause will include the importance of securing an appropriate school place.

The amendments also seek to ensure that schools publicise their arrangements for addressing the needs of looked-after children more generally. We have already taken steps to ensure that schools play a key part in supporting the education of looked-after children. We published a guidance document, ''The Education of Children and Young People in Public Care'', in 2000, which recommended that schools should designate a teacher to act as a resource and advocate for children and young people in care. That guidance says that LEAs and social service departments should co-ordinate suitable training for designated teachers and maintain an up-to-date list of designated teachers in schools in their area.

As for publicising a school's arrangements, we are actively considering how best to ensure that schools, through the proposed new school profile, should be encouraged to demonstrate to parents, carers and others how they serve the full range of their pupils, including looked-after children. I am not in favour of requiring schools, through legislation, to report on their provision for specific groups of vulnerable

children. That might lead to the problems to which the hon. Gentleman alluded. If we made such provision for one group, we would be asked to do so for others.

I am happy, however, to assure the Committee that we will think carefully about what our forthcoming guidance for local authorities on the new duty under clause 42 should say about the issue. I would ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment and accept that the framework that we are putting in place is the best way forward.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am grateful to the Minister for her lengthy response to the amendments and for taking them in the spirit in which they were meant. I concur with a number of her points. The BBC's ''Taking Care'' season was an excellent innovation and I was pleased to sponsor an early-day motion in support of it.

I was slightly surprised by the Minister's figures on adoption, because, from memory—she recently replied to a parliamentary question of mine—I think that the number of adopted children stands at about 3,500. That is certainly an increase, but the Minister said that there had been an increase of about one third. When we considered the Adoption and Children Act 2002, I think that the figure was a little short of 3,000. There are signs that things are improving and one would hope that they are improving for the right reasons. Clearly, there are still problems for children in particularly complex cases who are not seeing that uplift, but I am not sure that the improvement is as good as the Minister made out.

It is interesting to hear the figures on out-of-area placements, which, as the Minister knows, is a bugbear of mine. In her area, Barking and Dagenham, 59 per cent. of foster placements are out of area, and 41 per cent. in area. In Camden, 78 per cent. of foster placements are made outside the local authority area, and in Brent 100 per cent. of placements in private children's homes are made outside the authority's area.

That is a real problem in London boroughs in particular. The majority of boroughs place the majority of their children in children's homes or in foster care outside the borough, in many cases very far away. We have seen many such cases in my constituency, with the problems that I have already outlined. Out of sight can mean out of mind. However many of the innovations of which the right hon. Lady is speaking come to pass, if the authority does not have control over the child's education, and if we are dealing with a placing authority far removed from a host authority, gaps will appear, and they will need to be addressed.

I think that the Minister made more of the amendments than I intended, saying that they could be construed as passing the buck to schools. I made it clear that there is a joint responsibility between the schools and the authority, whether that is the LEA or the social services department. We all have a joint—now a joined-up—responsibility, which I hope will be addressed.

The Minister has again trotted out the argument in which I never have great confidence: ''If we single out one group of people . . . ''This is a very special group to single out. That is why we have the Bill before us and why she has mentioned the clause. It is not prejudicial and we would not cause prejudice against non-looked-after children, against which I cautioned earlier, by getting schools to lay out clearly what their policy is, and whether they are fulfilling the undertakings that they should be fulfilling anyway. If there is greater transparency of information, there will be fewer grounds for infringement.

I appreciate the point that the Minister made in response. I am not convinced that the amendments are not required, and we may wish to return to the matter on Report to see whether she can give us any further assurances as to why they should not be accepted. In the interests of moving on, as we still have much of the Bill to debate, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I beg to move amendment No. 97, in

clause 44, page 31, line 21, at end add—

'(2) In section 562(1) of the Education Act 1996 (amending 1944 Education Act), at end of paragraph insert, ''which includes a duty to promote the child's educational achievement''.'.

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment No. 201, in

clause 44, page 31, line 21, at end add—

'( ) The governing body of a maintained school shall ensure that the school promotes the educational achievement of any pupil of the school that is looked after by the local authority.'.

New clause 16—Duty of school governing body in relation to pupils in public care—

'The governing body of a community, foundation or voluntary school or a maintained nursery school shall designate a teacher to act as a resource and advocate for children and young people in public care.'.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I am a little uncertain as to how I should proceed, because the Minister has addressed these points. I shall translate my uncertainty into brevity, and I will not require a long answer from the Minister.

I had some concerns about the previous amendments, which is why I kept quiet. I was worried about the publication of an admissions policy that singled out looked-after children, even though I agreed with most of the points made by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. While we are talking about admissions policies, may I mention in passing adopted children? They land suddenly in their new homes and their arrival might not fit in with the deadlines for applying to schools. If those schools are in an over-subscribed area, it will not help them; they are the very children who need to go to a local school to get to know people. In considering looked-after children, we should not forget about the next stage, adopted children. There was a tragic case in my area.

These amendments are partly along the lines of the previous ones in trying to put a duty upon the governing body. The Minister has given her answer. I

do not agree with her; I see it as a dual responsibility. However, we do not need to go through the arguments again.

I draw attention, which is probably rather foolhardy, to new clause 16, which was a thought of my own. In all the lobbying that we received on this issue, the point was made over and over that although the DFES guidance says that there should be a designated teacher, the actual designation of teachers throughout the country is very patchy. It therefore occurred to me that it would be better to attempt to put that on the statute book. The point is that there might be a teacher with a title, but in some schools there is an issue with having enough hours to do the necessary liaison.

Chris Mole (Labour, Ipswich)

We have talked about the fact that looked-after children have complex needs, yet our special education needs legislation requires that all schools have an SEN co-ordinator, usually abbreviated to SENCO. It would be astounding if a school with children with special education needs such as behavioural problems was not picking up on a looked-after child with special education needs but was fulfilling the role which the hon. Lady suggests the new clause seeks to achieve. It therefore seems to me that such a new clause is probably superfluous to existing arrangements, which, so far as I can see from my experience as a school governor and a local councillor, are clearly working.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

That is probably the point; the provision is patchy. Again, I can think of an example along the lines that we discussed earlier in which a child can be placed with a different foster carer at fairly short notice, but because of the shortage of suitable foster carers and the complexity of the child's needs, that carer can be some distance away. If no teacher has been given enough hours to liaise with the local authority, it is quite possible that the case might not be put strongly enough that the best interests of the child lie in their staying at the school if at all possible.

That is why I tabled the new clause. The wording is more or less exactly as it is in the guidance. I am simply picking up on the point that the measure is not being implemented. This may be something that we need to flag up for the inspection system, and the new clause is a way of doing that. My amendments are probing, and I do not expect a very long answer from the Minister.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

Any Member of Parliament can meet and talk with looked-after young people, and those who have been looked after, on the third Wednesday of every month at 5 pm, which is the usual meeting time of the all-party group for children and young people in care. If hon. Members attend those meetings, they will be challenged enormously by highly intelligent, extremely able, very articulate and extraordinarily resilient young people who have been through experiences that would have floored anyone here. Some of them are achieving extraordinary things.

Last February, my right hon. Friend the Minister presented certificates to achieving young people in care from all over the country. Many of them had achieved things such as settling down, being a little happier and

getting into school. Some of them were training to be barristers and doctors. Several of them were poets, and one of them was an extraordinary singer and musician.

There is nothing wrong with children and young people who are looked after. It is the local authorities—the corporate parents—who have comprehensively failed them at every turn. We will get no further forward until we provide stability, and until everyone working for any local authority, not only those who work in social services or education, takes seriously and enjoys their corporate parenting responsibilities towards these children and young people.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: it should not be beyond the ability of people of good will at all levels in Government, local authorities and elsewhere to sort out the problem of 60,000 looked-after children, and it should be sorted out.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The awards that he mentioned were made to children and young people who, against the odds, throughout their childhood and into adulthood, achieved a tremendous amount. I have no doubt that they will make an enormous contribution to society as adults. What is astonishing is finding out from those individuals how often they changed homes and were rejected or bullied at school, but they survived everything, which shows how strong they had to be. That is why we should have great confidence in them, and why the BBC programme on the subject last year was so welcome.

I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole that children who are adopted find it difficult to gain admission to schools, especially when they move into an area. Anyone who moves into an area with a popular, over-subscribed school knows that that is difficult. I am sure that the hon. Lady's surgery is, like mine, full of people who say, ''I moved into the area because I thought I could get my kid into that school,'' but who found that the school was over-subscribed and that the purpose of their move had failed. It is a difficult problem and we have to balance rights and interests. I could not agree more that the interests of looked-after children should be at the top of our list.

I was slightly puzzled earlier because we took the amendments, especially amendment No. 97, to refer to securing the education of looked-after children in custody, which the hon. Lady clearly did not intend. There was a disagreement about the interpretation of the amendment. Children in custody are the responsibility of the Prison Service, which has a statutory duty to ensure that they participate in education and training courses for at least 15 hours in a normal working week. I am pleased to tell the Committee that children in prison have on average 24 hours a week of education and training.

When I visit children in prison I am aware that the problem is largely about stability. Children in youth offending institutions and other such establishments stay for about two weeks, and given that instability it

is difficult to ensure that they are properly looked after. We are developing a specification with the Youth Justice Board and the Learning and Skills Council to put into place enhanced arrangements for looked-after children.

I sympathise with the intentions behind amendment No. 201 and new clause 16. Schools have a crucial role in the lives of looked-after children, but the amendments are unnecessary and inappropriate, as they would place a duty on local authority governing bodies. The local authority is the corporate parent that holds the key to improving young people's educational achievements.

On new clause 16, our guidance document recommended that schools designate a teacher to act as a resource and advocate for children and young people in care. The evidence that we have got back suggests that most schools now have a designated teacher in place. It is usually the head teacher, which is to be welcomed, the deputy head or, in some cases, the inclusion co-ordinator. I would not want to call the hon. Lady a Stalinist, but placing on every school a formal statutory duty to have a designated teacher, so that even the smallest rural primary school had to have one, would be an unnecessary, inappropriate and somewhat bureaucratic step, and I think that she shares our desire to lift as much of the bureaucratic burden from schools as we can.

I am happy to repeat the assurance given by my noble Friend Baroness Ashton in the House of Lords that the guidance that we shall publish in due course—to ensure that local authorities are clear about what the duty placed on them will mean in practice—will reinforce the importance of the designated teacher's role. We also made it clear in earlier debates that our guidance on inter-agency co-operation to improve the well-being of children will make it clear that front-line providers such as schools should be closely involved in the arrangements.

In light of those arguments, I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw her amendment.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thank the Minister for reminding me that I intended to pursue an amendment about education in prisons, but I do not want to debate it at this time, because it is worthy of greater attention. Interestingly, the Select Committee on Education and Skills is considering prison education, and the all-party parliamentary group also seems to have been doing important work in that regard. I shall probably return to that issue. I am happy not to pursue the amendments at this stage. All in all, over these last two groups, we have had some useful discussions, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 44 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 45 - Ascertaining children's wishes

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 48, in

clause 45, page 31, line 29, after 'wishes', insert 'and feelings'.

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

With this we may discuss the following amendments:

No. 49, in

clause 45, page 31, line 32, after 'wishes', insert 'and feelings'.

No. 115, in

clause 45, page 31, line 33, at end insert—

'( ) In section 47 of the Children Act 1989 (local authority's duty to investigate) after subsection 4(b) insert—

''(c) to ascertain the child's wishes and feelings.''.

( ) In section 47 of the Children Act 1989 (local authority's duty to investigate) after subsection 8 insert—

''(8A) Where, as a result of complying with this section, a local authority conclude that they should take action to safeguard or promote the child's welfare they shall give due consideration, having regard to his age and understanding, to such wishes and feelings of the child as they have been able to ascertain.''

( ) In section 47 of the Children Act 1989 (local authority's duty to investigate) after subsection 12 insert—

''(13) The Secretary of State may make regulations requiring local authorities safeguarding or promoting the child's welfare under this section to record such wishes and feelings of the child as they have been able to ascertain.''.'.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

We are getting there. Clause 45 deals with ascertaining children's wishes, to which we wish to add feelings. Our arguments are not new; they were well rehearsed in another place and have great support from the Children's Society, in particular.

I think that we all welcomed the amendments that the Government introduced on Report in the House of Lords to place a statutory duty on local authorities to ascertain the children's wishes when providing services to ''children in need'' under section 17 of the Children Act 1989. Amendments Nos. 48 and 49 form a partnership with amendment No. 115, in the name of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre. They would amend the clause to require local authorities, as far as is reasonably practicable, to give due consideration to children's feelings, as well as their wishes, in proceedings under section 17.

That is particularly important for younger children and those living in adverse circumstances. Children might not know what they do or do not want to happen, but they will always know how they feel. Ascertaining whether a child is scared, anxious or confused is critical to providing them with appropriate services and protections.

In the House of Lords, Baroness Ashton was concerned about consistency with the current legislation and, in particular, the discrepancy that might be created between sections 17 and 20 of the 1989 Act. Only one aspect of that child care legislation refers to wishes without feelings. That is section 20(6), relating to the provision of accommodation, which does not require local authorities to ascertain the children's feelings. However, those children are covered under section 22(4) as looked-after children, the definition of whom includes a child who is being provided with accommodation under section 20, and

therefore their feelings must be given due consideration. Unless the Bill is amended, children being provided with services under section 17 will be the only children whose feelings do not have to be given due consideration under the statutory provisions.

The amendment would especially improve the situation of disabled children and young children, the two groups who are least likely to be included in decision making. Nearly all high-profile child death inquiries have concerned children under the age of 10. One of the most consistent themes in inquiry reports is the complete invisibility of the child's wishes and feelings.

It is clear that, with regard to the arguments that were taken on board in the House of Lords, the Children's Society has worked to provide the assurances as to why the process can now be completed, and feelings be added to wishes in clause 45. Surely now it is time for the law to put children's wishes and feelings where they belong—at the heart of all our efforts to protect them and help them to lead happy, fulfilled lives.

This is a pretty innocuous amendment for the Government to accept. No doubt I will be told that it is not framed in parliamentary language. However, the intent is clear and I would hope that, at the very least, the Minister will offer to take it away and come back with it redrafted by her phalanx of parliamentary draftsmen so that it can be included for consideration in later proceedings on the Bill.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

Amendment No. 115, in my name and those of others, aims to go beyond the Government's intentions in clause 45, and to extend the consideration of the child's wishes and feelings to child protection investigations under section 47 of the 1989 Act. There is an obvious practical difficulty: we have discussed the fact that social workers sometimes have to take emergency or urgent action. However, we have also spoken about investigations that require the utmost sensitivity and consideration, the most careful listening to children, and a high awareness of the child's perspective on what is happening to them. In such a case, ''what is happening to them'' would involve an allegation that they were suffering significant harm. This is an important amendment and we palpably do not have enough time to do it justice. However, I hope that my right hon. Friend is able to respond positively.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I can give the assurance that hon. Members seek. We will get the experts drafting, so that we can have the required consistency in the legislation. If the Committee will allow me to do so, I will table the relevant amendments on Report.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

That is a bit of a result. With seven minutes to go, we might have scored a hit. I am delighted that the Minister has taken the matter on board, and I look forward enormously to being able to vote with her, or even to not having to force a vote,

when we come to these sensible amendments on Report. With a certain chuffedness, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

On a point of order, Dame Marion. I understand that all the new clauses will be taken together at the end of the sitting. While there is still time, I want to register my objection to new clause 27, as I will not have the opportunity to vote on it separately.

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

The hon. Lady is right; the new clauses cannot be taken separately.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Nick Palmer (Labour, Broxtowe)

I very much welcome clause 45. We have come to feel that people who draw on social services or benefits are customers rather than people to whom we do things. In the same way, we need to recognise that work with children is likely to succeed only if children feel part of the process. We have all seen examples of that in our local communities, and certainly with teenagers; efforts to help them work only if they feel part of the effort. It is surprising how eloquent and definite are children's feelings, even at a younger age.

What is the significance of the phrase

''and consistent with the child's welfare''?

It suggests that there could be circumstances in which it would be practicable to ascertain a child's wishes, but that it would not be consistent with the child's welfare. I have great difficulty in imagining what those circumstances would be. If it is practicable, we should ascertain the child's welfare. I have not tabled an amendment, but I hope that the Minister can clarify that point.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

I am racking my brains. One difficulty that comes to mind is that of a child who is abused by the parents but still wants to remain with them. The issue is incredibly complex and difficult. In such situations, the wishes of the child may be at odds with safeguarding its welfare. I am told that although it is important to ascertain and take account of a child's wishes, we should not be driven by it. The child may not know what it wants—what is best for them—and that can cause difficulties.

Nick Palmer (Labour, Broxtowe)

What the Minister said does not relate to the phrase

''and consistent with the child's welfare''.

She said that we might choose to disregard the child's wishes because they are not really in its interests. The question is whether it would be inconsistent with the child's welfare even to ask the child what are its wishes.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

Again, my hon. Friend is correct. It might be distressing in some circumstances to ask the child about its wishes. In some instances, it may be difficult to ascertain the child's wishes yet protect its welfare.

Marion Roe (Conservative, Broxbourne)

I believe that the Minister wishes to raise a point of order.

Margaret Hodge (Labour, Barking)

On a point of order, Dame Marion. I am looking at the time: the sitting is drawing to an end. Although I know that hon. Members want to debate other issues, they will be able to do so on Report.

I express my thanks, Dame Marion, to you and your co-Chairman, Mr. Benton, for chairing the Committee in such an admirable way. You have both been fair and shown an interest in the proceedings, yet at times you must have thought that we were droning on and on. We are extremely grateful.

I thank my hon. Friends on the Back Benches, who have sat patiently through our sittings and given me huge support. I thank my fellow Ministers; I know that they lead busy lives. I thank the Opposition—both Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members—and, although he is not in his seat, I also thank the Member who represents the Welsh Nationalists.

I also thank Hansard for listening so carefully; the Clerks and the other officials of the House; my officials, who have done a stunning job; and the police officers who ensured that we were able to carry out our work effectively.

The Bill is crucial; it is the legislative spine for the transformation of services. I thank hon. Members for all that they have done.

It being Five o'clock, The Chairman proceeded, pursuant to Sessional Order D [6 November 2003] and the Order of the Committee [12 October], as amended, to put forthwith the Questions necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at that time.

Clause 45 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 46 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 47 - Miscellaneous amendments for Parts 2 and 3

Clause 52 - Interpretation

Clause 53 - Regulations and orders

Clause 54 - Commencement

Clause 55 - Extent

Clause 56 - Short title

New Clause 20 - Children and young people's plans: England

New Clause 21 - Children and young people's plans: Wales

New Clause 22 - Inspection

New Clause 23 - Social services committees

New Clause 24 - Publication of material relating to legal proceedings

New Clause 25 Disclosure of information by Inland Revenue - Disclosure of information by Inland Revenue

New Clause 26 - Repeals

New Clause 27 - Functions of Commissioner in Wales

New Clause 28 - Functions of Commissioner in Scotland

New Clause 29 - Functions of Commissioner in Northern Ireland

New Clause 30 - Annual reports

New Clause 31 - Care leavers and young persons with learning disabilities

'Repeals Plans

Child minding and daycare - Inspection of local education authorities - Social services committees and departments

Reasonable punishment - Child safety orders