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Safeguarding Children

Last week saw the publication of another very critical report on child protection services, focusing on the work being done at Aberdeen city council. That suggests that the problems we face reach across the whole country, even outwith my right hon. Friend's jurisdiction. The death of children obviously hits the headlines, but we know that hundreds, if not thousands, of children are living in very dysfunctional families that most of us would not survive in. The difficulty for social workers lies in making the judgment when they stop working with the family and leaving the child with them and when they take the child out of that family. My question concerns the interpretation of the data protection legislation and whether that is acting as a hindrance to many people who raise concerns about a child but do not get any feedback from the authorities or statutory agencies because of data protection. That can also happen to MPs, who may find that they do not know whether their concern has been taken seriously or has disappeared into some kind of data protection black hole.