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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

My Lords, I feel that I must support the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, simply because historically I sat on a committee that wrote the first set of guidance on access to social work records; that seems to be generations ago. It was quite clear at that stage that those who were the subject of records had every right to access them. There were, of course, complications in that you cannot have access to information about others. I remember supervising the dissection of records so that the correct information could be made available to those who had a right to access it while the other information that related to other members of the family was held back. What has happened in the intervening years bewilders me. I feel exasperated because I believe that the statute and the regulation exist to enable people to gain access to these records, if they are available. However, it is unforgivable that records should be lost because there are clear directions on how long the records of young people who have been in local authority care should be kept, particularly in relation to adoption cases, so those records should not have been lost. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and support the noble Baroness in her campaign to ensure that those who need to know about their records have a right to access them.