Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-03-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Norman Warner (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, Amendment 8 follows the slightly unsatisfactory debate at Second Reading on 6 February on the issue of a common identifier for children. As I said then, I welcome the provisions in the Bill for consistent identifiers for adults across health and social care, but I still cannot see why the same considerations do not apply in this Bill to children. Indeed, I would go even further and say that the absence of a common identifier for children poses even greater risk than that for adults I declare an interest as the Children’s Commissioner for Birmingham, appointed by the Secretary of State for Education. I do not intend to speak about my work there except to tell the House that Birmingham, like many other parts of the country, is experiencing huge rises in the numbers of children at risk and in need A key element of tackling this problem is all agencies speedily sharing information about individual children. To do this means a common identifier. It is not only me saying this. As far back as 2003 the noble Lord, Lord Laming, in his excellent report on the tragic case of Victoria Climbié, called for a common identifier database for all children under 16. This Government halted work on it. Nevertheless, professionals working in the area have battled on, trying to improve information sharing in order to reduce risks to children The child protection information sharing project is being implemented to allow—I emphasise "allow", not "require"—healthcare staff in unscheduled care settings to be alerted to the existence of a child protection plan. However, this is a long way short of using the NHS number, given to all individuals at birth and a lifelong identifier, to link data sets for the protection of children. All these professionals cannot understand why politicians across the parties—I am not making a party-political point—simply will not commit to doing the same for children as they do for adults on interagency information sharing and to making it easier to share information through a common identifier I am not going to detain the House today with various attempts to patch up children’s data sharing. I simply suggest that all Front Benches read the 2014-15 report on information sharing from the Children and Young People’s Health Outcomes Forum. This makes it clear why the NHS number should be used as the link identifier and provides a process map for doing so Amendment 8 attempts to build on all the hard work that I have mentioned by an army of committed professionals to improve the lot of vulnerable children. Instead of the almost endless bureaucratic dithering and squabbling by various public bodies both nationally and locally, we need to put children on the same basis as adults in terms of information sharing and linked identifiers. My amendment provides that a Secretary of State—frankly, I do not care which one, and anyway they may all have different functions after 7 May—should have the responsibility to make regulations to apply the provisions of Sections 2 and 3 of the Act to services for children that benefit their health and well-being and protect them from abuse. It is a deliberately broad remit, but I believe that it is within the scope of the Long Title of the Bill. If the Minister wants to argue that it is not within scope, I would like to hear the legal arguments for that. I have gone through the Long Title and I cannot see that it states anywhere that the Bill is limited to adults The amendment does not tie the hands of any Government in terms of detail or precise timing. Initially, it restricts the scope to children’s commissioners and providers in the health and social care sectors, but it provides for later extension where there is a body of evidence to show that doing so could improve the health and well-being of children—something which I suspect all noble Lords in the House support I recognise that my amendment will not have improved my popularity rating in government departments, among the Bill’s sponsors, and probably on the Front Benches as well at this stage of the electoral cycle. However, if people want this Bill speedily, I want to see some movement from the Front Benches—not just the Minister; this is also a matter for our Benches. I do not intend to press matters further today, but I would like to hear whether the Front Benches can demonstrate a willingness to commit to act on this issue at the earliest legislative opportunity if they are part of the next Government. I know that no one can commit the next Government, but it is possible for all the main parties to take a view on the issue going into an election. I hope that we can bring a bit more positivity to this issue and I beg to move.