Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 70: 70: After Clause 16, insert the following new Clause— ““Access to information for post-care adults After section 26A of the 1989 Act insert— ““26B Duty to keep records (1) It shall be the duty of every local authority and voluntary organisation that looks after or provides accommodation for a child to maintain such records as prescribed by regulations. (2) Regulations may provide for the transfer of records held by a voluntary organisation to another voluntary organisation or local authority. 26C Duty to provide access to records (1) A post-care adult has the right, at his request, to receive from the local authority or voluntary organisation holding his care records— (a) all the information relating to his personal history; (b) all relevant information relating to his family history. (2) Subsection (1) above does not apply to a request for information in circumstances where the local authority or voluntary organisation is authorised by regulations to withhold the information or any part of it. (3) Regulations may provide for local authorities and voluntary organisations to provide appropriate support, including information and advice, to post-care adults. (4) The regulations may provide for the circumstances in which the local authority or voluntary organisation holding the records may arrange for another local authority or voluntary organisation near the post-care adult’s home to provide access to the records and support. (5) In this section ““post-care adult”” means a person aged 18 and over who has at any time been in the care of, or looked after or accommodated by, a local authority or voluntary organisation.”””” The noble Baroness said: I have not troubled the Committee with my views until now, principally because I have been involved in other, more complex matters on a different Bill. I have followed the proceedings and read many of the arguments that have been put by noble Lords on all sides. They are about recognising the effects of care on people throughout their lives. This amendment falls squarely within the purpose of the Bill. I ask noble Lords to imagine three scenarios. The first is that you, as an adult, sit in a room at a desk opposite someone who has a file, in which they have information that you do not know. That information is your identity and they will not let you see it because they cannot, or they think that they cannot. The second scenario is that you, as an adult, have written to the authority that cared for you when you were a child and you receive in your post one day a letter that tells you something that you have never known before—the name of your mother. The letter says that it can tell you that because she is dead. The third scenario is that you go as an adult to see the voluntary organisation that looked after you when you were a child. You sit down with the people there and talk to them about the fact that you need to piece together various bits of information in order to understand your identity and what happened to you as a child. They say, ““I understand that. This is a very difficult issue for you. Here is someone who helps lots of people who are in your situation, and we will sit with you while you read through this file. We will talk to you now, and we will remain in contact with you in the future. You can talk to us at any time about how you feel about what you have learnt””. I did not invent any of those scenarios; they have all happened to people. That is why this amendment stands as it does. Requests from adults who were in care for information about records of their childhood are retained by local authorities and governed by the Data Protection Act. That Act is rather clumsy and difficult; it is frequently interpreted in vastly different ways, some of which I have just outlined, by different authorities. It presents particular difficulties for people who were in care, because it draws a distinction between what is regarded as personal information—data that relate directly to that person—and what it calls third-party information. Crucially for former care adults, third-party information is frequently deemed to include the names of the other people in their family—their parents and their siblings. That means that when former care adults apply to find out information about themselves, they can be given the barest information: You entered care on this date. You left care on the following date””. Crucially what it does not tell them, apart from their identity, is their family history—key things that people want to know, such as who they are, what their identity is and, principally, why they ended up in care and why this happened to them. There may be very good reasons why it happened, but the adult is not always allowed to know. A survey was carried out in 2005 by Professor Jim Goddard and Julia Feast, who works for BAAF. Their report, A Childhood on Paper: Accessing the Child-care Files of Former Looked After Children in the UK, shows the problems with the Data Protection Act and its different interpretations, which make it difficult for professionals to know what they are and are not allowed to say and for the former care adults themselves to get information that the rest of us would take for granted. For other people who have been in different types of care, legislation has long recognised this problem. People who are adopted can now find that personal information, as can people who are in permanent fostering arrangements. There is case law on this matter. A primary example is the Gaskin case, which went to the European Court of Human Rights. If anyone wishes to understand quite how gruesome the implementation of current policy can be, I recommend that they read the dreadful case of Graham Gaskin. That is the legislation to which the Government currently cling. I am glad to say that many of the charities now do not. Many of the charities that were the big providers of care have long since realised that they have an ongoing duty to the people for whom they cared often a very long time ago. They have a policy of giving people whole, open access, with support, to their care records. The problem is principally with local authorities. This is a subject that the Minister and I have discussed several times. We often come back to the fact that many of these records no longer exist. Local authorities’ children’s homes have been reorganised many times in the period to which we are referring. Records disappear. They get chucked out in filing cabinets. This amendment is not an attempt to conjure up information that no longer exists, but it asks for a standard of service to be provided by authorities, even in cases where information does not exist, whereby people who seek information are treated properly and with respect. People can come to terms with the fact that their records no longer exist, but they do so better if somebody sits them down and tries to explain to them how that came to be, rather than if they simply receive a letter to that effect in the post. This amendment would not require more resources, which is crucial in view of some of the discussions that we have had. It would not require authorities to hire anybody else or to set up any expensive new system. It would simply require them to have a policy of openness; it would place a duty on them not only to maintain their records but to make those records open to those who wish to inspect them. It would also bring all bodies up to the level of the best because it would allow voluntary organisations and statutory authorities to transfer information. Former care adults will often find that they were in care in different places at different times and a frequent stumbling block is that one organisation will tell them what happened to them and another will not or cannot. The amendment would give people the right to have information relating to them and to their family history. It contains a provision, similar to the one that pertains in adoption law, that if it would be dangerous to give that information to an individual, the body has the right to refuse. That is a form of protection that authorities need to have because some of the people whom we are talking about go on to lead very disturbed and chaotic lives. Revealing some of that information to them might lead them to seek some kind of vengeance. In that case, there is a power of discretion. The amendment does not specify how, but it would require authorities to carry out this service in a sensitive and meaningful way. It is not appropriate to give people letters containing the most important personal information. I hope that the Minister will look favourably, this time, on a small but highly significant matter to thousands of people, some of whom are now very old. I beg to move.