Lord Crisp (CB)

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 135A in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Before doing so, I once again thank the Minister for having reduced the requirements in this section considerably—I am very pleased not to have to comment on whether Scouts, rugby clubs, cricket clubs or anything are included—and getting rid of the 15-day requirement to report. Those are significant improvements. In terms of process, I shall just pick up on one point, which I raised earlier, so I will not speak at length on it, about how this process of putting information on the register fits in with the annual reporting process that happens in an awful lot of authorities. That may be a local issue rather than a national one, but I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response on that. Amendment 135A from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is largely heading in the same direction as the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking. I think it is proportionate. I think it is important that proposed new subsection (3) states: “Nothing … prevents a local authority from requesting further information ��� where the authority has reasonable cause to believe that a child may not be receiving a suitable education”. In other words, it is a two-step process so that one does not automatically assume that the parents are guilty, as it were, because there would be a two-step process before the local authority asks for more information. I shall draw out one point that the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, made, which is that not all parents need to be recorded on the register, only those who are taking responsibility for the education of the child. That is entirely in keeping with where we are currently, in that to withdraw a child from registration to school, you need only one parent’s signature. It seems to me that, in putting them on the register in this way, you only need those parents who are taking responsibility. It is not necessary to involve other parents, including those who may be a danger to the other parent or to the child. I simply make those points. I have a lot of sympathy for the various amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, around the security of the use of information, not least because I believe I am right saying that we are talking not about one register but 150. This is not a national register, this is 150 registers. What chance do we think that somewhere in those 150 problems will occur in terms of security and of people getting access? I think these are real concerns, and I will be very interested to hear what the Minister says about the various amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Wei, has tabled.