Twenty-seventh Report
Instrument Reported
The Committee has considered the following instrument
and has determined that the special attention of the House should
be drawn to it on the ground specified.
Draft Children Act 2004 Information Database (England)
Regulations 2007
Summary: We are in no doubt about the importance
of these Regulations. They set out the details of the "ContactPoint"
database which will hold basic identifying information on all
11 million children in England under the age of 18, and which
will be accessible to over 300,000 users. The Government have
shown a thoroughgoing commitment to preparing for the national
operation of the scheme, through large-scale expenditure and wide-ranging
engagement with all interested parties. However, the Government
have not in our view conclusively demonstrated that a universal
database is a proportionate response to the problem being addressed.
While the Government have taken the need for security seriously,
the scale and importance of the scheme increase the risk that
any accidental or inadvertent breach of security, or any deliberate
misuse of the data, would be likely to bring the whole scheme
into disrepute.
These Regulations are drawn to the special attention
of the House on the ground that they give rise to issues of public
policy likely to be of interest to the House.
1. The Department for Children, Schools and Families
(DCSF, successor to the Department for Education and Skills) have
laid these Regulations under section 12 of the Children Act 2004
("the 2004 Act"). An Explanatory Memorandum (EM) and
Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) have been provided.
2. We took evidence on the Regulations from DCSF
officials; a transcript is published as Appendix 2. Before the
evidence session, DCSF offered the Committee an additional memorandum
on communications, stakeholder engagement, and implementation,
which is reproduced at Appendix 1. In response to questions at
the evidence session, the Department have also provided a supplementary
memorandum, which is reproduced in the appendix; and they have
placed in the Libraries of both Houses copies of extracts from
an internal DCSF report on "Children with Complex Needs and
Their Families", and of a report on "Learning From Information
Sharing and Assessment Trailblazers".
3. We invited a number of organisations to offer
us written comments on the Regulations, and received comments
from other organisations and individuals. Their comments are also
reproduced at Appendix 1.
THE 2007 REGULATIONS - "CONTACTPOINT"
4. The EM states that the Regulations provide
for the establishment and operation of a database (previously
described as the Information Sharing Index, now designated as
"ContactPoint") under section 12 of the 2004 Act. They
place a requirement on local authorities to participate in the
operation of the database; specify what information will be held,
who must or can provide it, and how long it can be retained; who
can be granted access; and how accuracy will be maintained.
5. The EM also states that ContactPoint is "a
key element of the Government's Every Child Matters programme
to transform children's services, by supporting more effective
prevention and early intervention [so as] to ensure that children
get the additional services they need as early as possible. The
goal is to improve the five outcomes for children set out in the
document 'Every Child Matters: Change for Children' (DfES December
2004): being healthy; staying safe; enjoying and achieving; making
a positive contribution; and achieving economic well-being. ContactPoint
aims to improve the experience of public services for all children,
young people and families. It will enable practitioners across
education, health, social care, youth justice and the voluntary
sector to find out who else is working with a child or young person
so that they can, where appropriate, work together to deliver
better coordinated support."
6. ContactPoint will hold basic identifying information
on all children in England until they reach 18: contact details
for their parent(s) or carer(s), together with names and contact
details for those providing education, the GP Practice and practitioners
providing specialist and targeted services to a child. In addition,
names and contact details of practitioners providing sensitive
services (sexual health, mental health and substance abuse) may
be added to ContactPoint only with the informed and explicit consent
of the child, young person or, where appropriate, their parent.
There will be no substantive information (e.g., case notes) in
the database about a child's family, social, educational or clinical
situation or needs.
7. When fully operational, ContactPoint is intended
to hold information on 11 million children. DCFS estimate that
it will be available to some 330,000 users, including practitioners
from education, health, social care, Connexions,[1]
the voluntary sector, youth justice and the police.
THE 2006 REGULATIONS
8. The Regulations revoke the Information Sharing
Index (England) Regulations 2006 (SI 2006/983), which were brought
into force in April 2006, and which provided for data-matching
trials to take place as preparation for the development and implementation
of ContactPoint. The Committee drew the 2006 Regulations to the
special attention of the House,[2]
when we commented that the earlier Regulations paved the way for
the eventual implementation of an Information Sharing Index covering
all children in England. We stressed the concern expressed by
some commentators about whether a database covering all children
in England was a justified and proportionate response to the need
to improve communication among professionals in relation to the
smaller (though significant) number of children in need of specialist
help.
IMPLEMENTATION PLANS
9. DCFS are planning implementation on a schedule
which foresees that ContactPoint will be available in all 150
local authorities and to all "National Partners" (organisations
listed in Schedule 2 to the Regulations) by the end of 2008. They
have identified the following key milestones for implementation:
- summer / autumn 2007: initial records created
from national data suppliers;
- April 2008: system deployed to 17 "early
adopter" local authorities in the North West;
- end-2008: operational system deployed to all
local authorities.
VIEWS OF INTERESTED PARTIES
10. It is clear, both from DCSF's own summary
of responses to their consultation on the Regulations carried
out from September to December 2006,[3]
and from written evidence submitted to the Committee, that views
on the desirability and efficacy of ContactPoint vary widely.
11. DCSF's summary states that there were 256
responses to the consultation and explains that: "approximately
one-third of the formal responses came directly from young people
and parents. The majority of responses from this group expressed
their opposition to the establishment of ContactPoint, raising
concerns about the impact on their privacy" (page 3 of summary).
12. Amongst those who commented directly to the
Committee:
- Barnardo's voiced clear support for the scheme,
which it described as "a challenging project, but worthwhile
in that it harnesses the technologies of the 21st century in support
of those who work with children in the interests of the children
themselves";
- NCB (the National Children's Bureau) acknowledged
the scheme's potential "to underpin effective information
sharing and joint working which is vital for ensuring children
and young people receive the help and support they need as early
as possible", while also identifying a number of practical
concerns;
- the NSPCC also set out several issues which,
in its view, needed to be resolved by DCSF to ensure ContactPoint's
effectiveness;
- the British Association for Adoption and Fostering
(BAAF), in a joint submission with the Family Rights Group, the
Family Welfare Association, and Parentline Plus, voiced a range
of objections to the current proposals, and suggested that the
scheme might in fact "deter families who mistrust officialdom
from accessing services because they may well have their anxieties
heightened at the idea that their details are to be recorded on
a universal database".
13. We know that there is considerable interest
in the House in this scheme. On 21 June 2007, speaking in a debate
on public sector IT projects, Baroness Walmsley set out a number
of concerns about ContactPoint that had been voiced during the
passage of the 2004 Act and subsequently.[4]
In our consideration of the Regulations, we also had the benefit
of a memorandum from the Earl of Northesk (printed at Appendix
1 to this Report).
EVIDENCE FROM DCSF
14. In taking evidence from DCSF officials, we
sought to elucidate the following main issues:
- the scope of ContactPoint, and the justification
for a universal database;
- the security of the scheme, and safeguards against
abuse;
- the attitude of children, young people and their
families towards ContactPoint; and
- the feasibility of DCSF's current plans, which
foresee deployment of the scheme across England by the end of
2008.
SCOPE OF CONTACTPOINT
15. We were told by DCSF officials that, although
there was a need for professional intervention only in the case
of half (or fewer) of all children, they saw a clear case for
including all children in ContactPoint, because this would ensure
that the system contained basic information to facilitate speedier
co-operation between professionals in any case when the need for
intervention arose. "It is principally about supporting early
intervention for children who at some point in their lives will
need additional support. At any point in time that is around,
as you quite rightly said, 30 per cent, but up to about 50 per
cent of children at some point in their life will need additional
services. Children will move in and out of this spectrum. It is
not possible to predict when children will become in need of additional
services. We believe a universal service is much less stigmatising
as it removes the need for creating thresholds. We would then
have to make subjective judgments about which side of that particular
threshold a child fell at any particular point in time in their
life." (Q3)
16. The RIA states that the total cost of ContactPoint
will be £224 million for set-up, and £41 million per
annum for operation; and that the total annual benefit at maturity
will be £88 million. We commented that, in view of concern
on the part of some stakeholders that the money spent on the scheme
could be better directed at frontline interventions, DCSF needed
to set out more clearly how the projected annual benefit would
be translated into service delivery. We were told that DCSF have
recently done research with almost 3,000 practitioners about current
working methods without the ContactPoint facility: "... they
have told us that on average they seek to identify other practitioners
about 107 times a year and on average the time it takes them to
do that is four hours. So that is an indication of the amount
of time practitioners are spending trying to trawl around and
find out who else is working with the child." (Q3)
17. The Regulations provide that all information
about individual children will become "archived material"
on the date they reach 18 and will remain in an archive for 6
years. We asked whether the individual concerned would be given
an opportunity to say whether the archived information was correct,
and were assured that "they have that right under the Data
Protection Act and we will make sure they know they have that
right." (Q40). We also pressed DCSF on the rationale for
retaining archived information. We were told that this was common
practice: "... indeed in many cases it is insisted upon by
audit and others that information should be retained beyond the
point at which its natural purpose is completed purely to support
investigations and complaints and it is for this purpose that
our archive is intended. It is put in a place that is beyond use.
It is not there to be used in relation to the individual child."
(Q36) The House may wish to consider whether this is sufficient
justification for retaining information for six years after it
ceases to be needed for the purposes for which it was obtained.
SECURITY
18. We referred to concerns about the security
of the database which had been raised by several of those who
offered comments to us. We received a full explanation of the
security features to be built into the scheme, including arrangements
to monitor access to the database by authorised users. "Ensuring
that only authorised users access the system requires what we
call 'defence in depth'. It is a bit like the medieval castles
had a mote and a bailey and a keep, so we have multiple provisions
for security ... [In addition] we are going to be actively monitoring
every single access to ContactPoint. Every single update will
be recorded securely in an audit log and that audit log will be
scanned automatically looking for patterns of unusual or potentially
suspicious behaviour which will be reported to a user manager
responsible for each user, and we will be monitoring the user
managers to make sure that they are monitoring the users' activity
reports as well." (Q63)
19. We questioned DCSF's representatives about
the proposals for protecting the records of children considered
to be at increased risk. DCSF made it clear that no child would
be completely excluded from the database: "... we have taken
the approach that we proceed on a case-by-case basis. Certainly
in those cases that you mentioned [i.e., where there is a risk
of kidnapping] the records of those children would be shielded
and there would be nothing visible to practitioners that would
indicate that child's whereabouts. The only information that would
be visible to practitioners would be the child's name, date of
birth, their gender and their unique identifier and that is simply
so that practitioners know that a record exists for that child
and they do not create another." (Q14)
ATTITUDE OF YOUNG PEOPLE TOWARDS CONTACTPOINT
20. DCSF's work in presenting their plans for
ContactPoint to children and young people had clearly produced
very mixed responses; we had in particular seen those from the
Young NCB which revealed strong suspicion. We asked about the
further efforts that would be undertaken to communicate the case
for ContactPoint, and in particular to persuade those children
most likely to need specialist professional help that the benefits
of the scheme were significantly greater than the fears they might
have about a potential loss of privacy. DCSF told us that they
had "definitely consulted some of those children because
the Commission for Social Care Inspection of course deals with
children who are in care who are quite vulnerable and who have
often multiple services working with them ... I hope by explaining
the nature of the data that is held and [that] the purpose of
the database is ... to ensure that the services they receive are
better co-ordinated, that we can go some way to assuring them
that it is not a database of information about them so people
can tittle-tattle about them ... [Barnardo's] are very supportive
of the way in which we have consulted with more vulnerable children,
in particular disabled and handicapped children, which Barnardo's
have helped to expose us to, to get that additional view."
(Q79)
FEASIBILITY
21. We asked DCSF about the achievability of
their target for national implementation of the scheme at the
end of 2008, given that comments submitted on behalf of Sheffield
City Council (a "Trailblazer" authority) had voiced
doubts that the necessary training of users would be completed
in good time. We were given a full explanation of plans to deliver
the necessary training, at two levels: "Level one is basically
training the local authorities and the national implementation
partners to actually manage the ContactPoint system and then to
train the end users of ContactPoint. There are about 1,300 people
who actually need that level of training throughout the country
... it is a smaller number of people, we are already fairly confident
that we can do that. We have allocated seven months to do that
... With regards to level two, which is the majority of the users
that make up the 300,000-plus users, the training for that needs
is basically identifying and training people to use web-based
screens which users themselves have actually designed to make
sure that they are user-friendly ... We are not expecting everybody
to be trained within those seven months for those users. We are
allocating at least a year for the high priority people that need
training and then there will be continued rollout after that."
(Q81) This is an ambitious schedule, and the House may wish to
ask whether there are contingency plans in case of unforeseen
difficulties and delays.
CONCLUSIONS
22. We are in no doubt about the importance of
ContactPoint, and of these Regulations which set out the details
of the scheme's operation. We have seen ample evidence of the
Government's thoroughgoing commitment to preparing for the national
operation of the scheme: on the one hand, the considerable cost
of setting up the scheme and of the operating expenditure which
it will support; on the other, a wide-ranging engagement with
those in local authorities and elsewhere who will make the scheme
work, as well as with others, such as young people and their families,
about whom data will be held in ContactPoint. We also acknowledge
the readiness of DCSF officials to respond, in person and in writing,
to our questions about the scheme.
23. While we are equally clear about the desirability
of improving communication between professionals involved in the
provision of services to children, we are not yet persuaded that
the scheme provided by these Regulations is an entirely appropriate
approach to that objective. Of course, no-one can predict whether,
and when, any child may find itself in circumstances which mean
that it needs specialist professional help. However, DCSF state
that perhaps half of all children will need additional services
at some point in their life, and we conclude therefore that the
information collected and stored in ContactPoint for at least
50% of the 11 million children in England will not be required
for the central purposes of the scheme. We do not consider that
the Government have demonstrated conclusively that a universal
database is a proportionate response to the problem being addressed,
or that the additional benefits of a universal approach justify
the additional costs and risks, as compared with a selective approach
which would not include a child in the database unless or until
the child's needs for specialist or targeted services became apparent.
24. We recognise that DCSF have taken seriously
the need to design the scheme so as to maximise the security of
the information contained in it, and also to provide training
to all users which will reinforce the importance of proper handling
of ContactPoint data. The Department have gone to a great deal
of trouble to devise a scheme which is as nearly perfect as is
humanly possible. We are, however, mindful of the risks of human
error. On current estimates, ContactPoint will hold data on 11
million children, and there may be over 300,000 users of the scheme.
The enormous size of the database and the huge number of probable
users inevitably increase the risks of accidental or inadvertent
breaches of security, and of deliberate misuse of the data (e.g.
disclosure of an address with malign intent), which would be likely
to bring the whole scheme into disrepute.
1 Connexions is "a service to support young people
aged 13-19 in England in relation to their personal and learning
development to ensure a smooth transition to adulthood and working
life" (EM to Regulations). Back
2
Merits Committee, 27th Report of 2005-06 session (HL Paper 145). Back
3
See: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/downloadableDocs/ContactPoint%20Regulations%20Consultation%20-%20response%20summary.pdf
Back
4
HL Deb 21 June 2007 cols 377 to 380. Back
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