Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) Regulations 2007

My Lords, that is not the case. Even if the running cost figure is higher than £41 million, that does not of itself undermine the £88 million saving. Page 17 of the committee’s report, which prints the relevant memorandum, identifies the practitioner groups whose time will be saved by the availability of the database. I shall read out the list: school nurses, health visitors, social workers, educational administrators, Connexions workers and youth offending teams. Those are front-line practitioners; we are not just dealing with back-office staff and functions. The alternative before the House is not no scheme at all but a partial scheme, a register for those at risk, which the noble Baroness supports. If it is not to be a national scheme, local schemes will need to be maintained for identifying those at risk. All our advice is that the cost of a partial scheme simply identifying those at risk would be higher than that of having a universal scheme. The cost in terms of time of having to make constant decisions about the addition and subtraction of names on the list would be great, and we would need to support systems and staff engaged in the filtering of data input case by case to decide what was appropriate in respect of individuals. That is not the case with the universal scheme. The result would be a substantial increase in the implementation cost, adding £20 million to the existing £240 million cost, and a significant increase in the per capita cost of ContactPoint. The point made about Victoria Climbié was quite telling. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, quoted somebody who said that Victoria Climbié would not have been identified on the universal register, as she had been presented to some services as only being in England on a temporary basis. I am advised that she would have been on the register. It is important that we understand that, as a good deal of the concern that has motivated the development of this database was precisely that very harrowing case and what could happen in future if we did not safeguard against it. The aunt of Victoria Climbié was claiming child benefit and had registered Victoria with two GPs, so she would have been on the database if it had been available. In weighing up the costs, benefits and fine judgments that noble Lords have to make this evening, that is a factor to be considered. I conclude by quoting the memorandum submitted to the Merits Committee by Barnardo’s, an organisation respected in all parts of the House. Its final conclusion was as follows: "““Having ready access to the wider network of care around a child will mean that all practitioners are better informed about the range of services being provided, and any gaps that there might be, such that an early intervention can be effected if needed, rather than costly remediation once something has gone wrong. The system””—" that is the system that we are proposing— "““will support integrated delivery of services, help prevent duplication, and help practitioners in the wider ECM reforms””." Barnardo’s concluding judgement on the scheme that we are putting before the House was: "““This is a challenging project, but worthwhile in that it harnesses the technologies of the 21st century to the support of those who work with children in the interests of the children themselves””." That is the case that we put before the House this evening. I invite the House to approve the regulations.