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Dept for Education and Skills

Answer

Vera Baird: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how she plans to ensure that the information-sharing database in children's services flags cases of domestic violence or child abuse to ensure that domestic violence perpetrators cannot use their rights under the Data Protection Act 1998 to track down their children or ex-partner. [212089] Margaret Hodge: We recognise the importance of ensuring that children and families are protected from the perpetrators of domestic violence or child abuse. The details of how the information sharing databases or indexes will work will be set out in regulations and guidance. In framing the regulations and guidance we will take care to address the issue of protection from the perpetrators of domestic violence or abuse. This will include the facility for certain details, such as an address, to be blocked out or not to appear on the index at all where a parent has good cause to believe that the inclusion of such information may lead to a crime being committed. Where information on a child is held on the index, and a parent makes a request to access that information, their rights to access that information are balanced by the rights of the child. For children of sufficient maturity (which for the vast majority of children is taken to mean aged 12 or over), the right under the Data Protection Act to access data held about the child on the index will belong to the child rather than to the parent. So there will be no obligation on the person with responsibility for managing and operating the index (the data controller) to disclose information to a parent in such cases. For other children, where rights to access information held on a child may be exercised by a parent with parental responsibility, the data controller is under no obligation to disclose information if that would lead to harm. We will ensure that guidance to data controllers on handling such requests includes guidance on identifying cases of potential harm and procedures to avoid this, such as asking the other parent if they have any objection to the request or deciding that the other parent is the best person to exercise access right on behalf of the child.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

212089; 430 c658-9W

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Children Data protection Abuse Domestic abuse Protection

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk