Lord Wei (Con)

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my name in this group, namely Amendments 148A, 148B, 148D, 148E, 153A, 155A, 161D and 174A. Together, they are concerned with one question: how information about children and families is collected, used, retained and acted on under the Bill. Again, I begin by recognising that the Government have shown restraint where Ministers have strengthened scrutiny, tightened procedures and limited the scope for open-ended regulation-making, and it deserves acknowledgement. My amendments in this group are animated by a single concern: if Parliament is minded to create a register, it must be tightly bounded, purpose-limited and structured so that it does not normalise suspicion or routine burden and data sought must be proportionate to serving a legitimate aim and narrowly tailored. It must not indirectly discriminate against or unduly burden parents who choose to home educate when compared with children attending recognised schools. Amendments 148A and 148B concern data use and data governance. The true risk of a register lies not only in what it collects but in what that information becomes over time. Data once shared rarely contracts. Once repurposed, it rarely remains confined to its original purpose. We are collecting quite a lot of data here on quite a lot of sensitive matters. Some have argued that this is really a kind of digital ID by the back door, which I do not think many of our citizens are very enamoured of right now. Amendment 148A would draw a clear statutory boundary. It would provide that information may be shared only where necessary and proportionate for the education or welfare of the individual child, and it must not be repurposed for population-level profiling, predictive modelling, automated risk scoring or speculative secondary uses. This is not hostility to safeguarding, it is respect for trust. Safeguarding will collapse when families believe that information given for one reason will be later used for another. Amendment 148B would complement this by making explicit that all regulations governing the register must comply with data protection law by requiring consultation with the Information Commissioner and representatives of affected families before regulations are made. This is not decorative, it is constitutional. When people cannot foresee how their data will be used, trust dissolves. Amendment 148D would introduce a deletion rule so that information must be removed after five years or earlier where the child is no longer within scope, unless there are recorded safeguarding grounds for attention. Childhood is not a permanent status, and our legal architecture should reflect that. Permanent records create permanent consequences. This amendment would prevent the register becoming a life history file for families who have done nothing wrong while preserving the ability to retain data where there is a genuine and ongoing safeguarding justification. Amendment 148E is equally important. It would place into statute the principle that Ministers have articulated today, namely, that education otherwise than at school is lawful and must not of itself be treated as a reasonable cause to suspect harm or educational failure. I know there was an assurance about this principle that home education is legitimate, but much of what we have seen in the Bill does not seem to suggest that that belief is held tightly by those who drafted it. Presumptions are powerful. Once a category is treated as suspicious, every interaction becomes shaped by that assumption. This amendment would ensure that the burden of justification remains where it belongs: with the state. Amendments 153A and 155A address burden and frequency. Amendment 153A would place a clear ceiling on routine requests for meetings, information or home access of no more than once in any 12-month period, unless there is reasonable cause to suspect significant harm, in which case more frequent engagement remains possible but is still bounded. It would make clear that a parent’s failure to comply with a routine request must not of itself be treated as evidence of unsuitable education and that a parent’s notice to home educate takes legal effect when given. This is about temporal proportionality. Frequency is not neutral. Repetition changes the character of a relationship. Rolling engagement becomes rolling surveillance. Amendment 155A would complement this by requiring that information demands must be reasonably required, proportionate and not of such volume or frequency that they materially damage the child’s education by diverting parental time and resources away from teaching. This is a real risk. Oversight that crowds out education defeats its purpose. I have also tabled Amendment 161D, which would require written reasons for decisions to provide families with a right to correct factual inaccuracies in the register. Large systems generate errors. If we are going to create records that shape how families are treated, those records must be contestable and correctable. I support the proposed cyber security Amendments 172 and 247A, which would prevent these provisions being commenced. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made a great point in Committee about reviewing the cyber security risks around storing this data, which is so important given that just recently we had a breach of government data. I should be clear about what I cannot support. I cannot support approaches that normalise routine monitoring or turn lawful difference into a reason for scrutiny, nor can I support amendments that increase admin burdens on families by default rather than in response to evidence of harm. The question before us is not whether the state may act where there is evidence of risk—it must—but what kind of system are we going to build? Is it going to be targeted, proportionate and trusted or one that drifts into routine suspicion and routine intrusion? I commend these amendments to the House.