My Lords, one of the lessons we are taking from the increasing body of evidence on early years intervention is that you have to start early. Traditionally, it has been seen that preschool and nursery care was key, but we now understand much more about the situation. The way a child’s brain develops and its physical and emotional development begins to be shaped from the moment of birth and there is a crucial window between the ages of nought and three where development sets up a child for life.
This is why the previous Government set up the Sure Start programme. The aim was to provide a one-stop shop for families and young children to
access support and services. But, of course, the key to getting new young parents through the door is to make contact with them and encourage their participation. That is why we proposed in the Children and Families Bill that greater opportunities to register births at children’s centres would provide an excellent way to make the first introductions.
Our amendment concerns one aspect of data sharing: sharing information about live births. The amendment would require NHS trusts to share with local authorities details of live births to parents resident in their areas. We believe that this is an important requirement to provide greater safeguards for vulnerable babies as well as ensuring that local authorities can plan and provide appropriate family services in their areas. They need accurate information on the number of live births as well as the individual details to ensure that the services are targeted effectively. This would also enable children’s centres to improve their outreach work with new families who have not been in contact with them. Arguably, these are the families who are hardest to reach and most in need of support.
I understand that the national picture on this remains patchy. Some health trusts are willing to share this information while others have concerns about confidentiality. We need to address this reluctance to share this crucial information and our amendment provides the impetus to do this.
Obviously, it would be necessary to provide more detailed advice about the amount of detail to be provided and the legitimate uses to which it can be put, and it would clearly be necessary to ensure that the information did not fall into the wrong hands. However, this is a challenge about data sharing that the Government face in numerous aspects of their work. It has been overcome elsewhere and it can be overcome here. So I hope that the Minister can agree to take our amendment on board, recognising the great advantages for child safety and child development that would flow from it.
Also, when we raised these issues during the Children and Families Bill, it was reported that the department was already considering how best to improve this situation. The Minister subsequently wrote to update us on the work of Jean Gross’s task-and-finish group, which was exploring how to overcome these barriers. However, despite welcoming her report, it is not clear whether anything has really changed. There still appears to be reluctance on the part of health trusts and local authorities to facilitate this exchange of information. I would like to ask the Minister for an update from the department on its follow-up to the Gross report and what evidence it has of anything changing on the ground. Otherwise, I hope that he can support our amendment. I beg to move.