FOIA request: DfES requests for data on "all" children to the DWP and Children Act Section 12 and 29 information databases
Our first request to the Department for Education and Skills. Confidential sources suggest that the DfES may have tried to grab data on all children in the UK and possibly all their parents and guardians from the Department for Work and Pensions, who, it would seem "did the right thing" and refused.
DfES has been granted massive powers und the Primary Legislation of the Children Act 2004 section 12 and 29, thereby being able to sidestep both the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act and specifically to force the breach of Common Law duty of Confidentiality for professional medical, educational, social worker etc. advisors with their clients.
"11) Regulations under subsection (5) may also provide that anything which may be done under regulations under subsection (6)(c) to (e) or (9) may be done notwithstanding any rule of common law which prohibits or restricts the disclosure of information."
Given that the relatively small scale Reducing Youth Offending Generic Solution (RYOGENS) project is seen to be a model for such national databases, we have also probed to see if similar requests for data on "all children" have been sent to the Police, the Probation Service or the National Health Service.
This is also an experiment to see if several similar requests can be bundled up as one, or if they need to be sent in individually.
Our first request to the Department for Education and Skills:
PUBLICATIONS SCHEME REQUEST
Public Enquiry Unit
Department for Education and Skills
Castle View House,
East Lane
Runcorn WA7 2GJCopy sent by email: info@dfes.gsi.gov.uk
Microsoft Word format attachment: dfes_foia_1.docSunday 23rd January 2005
PUBLICATIONS SCHEME REQUEST
Freedom of Information Act 2000
Formal Request for InformationDear Sir or Madam
Please provide me with the following information:
1. All emails, notes, business cases, project proposals, minutes of meetings and reports pertaining to the request to the Department for Work and Pensions for “all” data about children and/or their parents.
Apparently this request was rejected by the DWP, possibly sometime in 2004, as being disproportionate, as although it did include the 0.2% of “children at risk” it was disproportionate to request data on the 98.8% of children and their families who were not.2. All emails, notes, business cases, project proposals, minutes of meetings and reports pertaining to any similar request to the National Health Service for “all” data about children and/or their parents.
3. All emails, notes, business cases, project proposals, minutes of meetings and reports pertaining to any similar request to the Police for “all” data about children and/or their parents.
4. All emails, notes, business cases, project proposals, minutes of meetings and reports pertaining to any similar request to the Probation Service for “all” data about children and/or their parents.5. All emails, notes, business cases, project proposals, minutes of meetings and reports pertaining to any Regional, National or Centralised databases being set up under the Children Act 2004 Section 12 Information databases http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/40031--c.htm#12
6. All emails, notes, business cases, project proposals, minutes of meetings and reports pertaining to any Regional, National or Centralised databases being set up under the Children Act 2004 Section 29 Information databases: Wales http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/40031--d.htm#29
Please provide the information ideally by publishing it on your public world wide website, or alternatively by email.
In the unlikely event that this information is not already available in a standard electronic format, then please explain the reasons why, when you provide the information in another format.
If you are proposing to make a charge for providing the information requested, please provide full details in advance, together with an explanation of any proposed charge
If you decide to withhold any of the information requested you should clearly explain why you have done so in your response, by reference to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 legislation. If your decision to withhold is based upon an evaluation of the public interest, then you should clearly explain which public interests you have considered, and why you have decided that the public interest in maintaining the exception(s) outweighs the public interest in releasing the information.
I look forward to receiving the information requested as soon as possible and in any event within 20 working days of receipt. i.e. by Tuesday 15th February 2005
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
If you require any clarification of this request please contact me as soon as possible.
Yours sincerely
email:
mobile phone:
Comments
i guess that was a typo (or the other 1% covers other categories of children e.g. children about whom the DWP hold absolutely no data but whose existence is inferred by some statistical method).
Posted by: Phil Lanch | January 24, 2005 2:45 AM
Yes, looking back at my scribbled notes, It was a typo of course, and should have read 99.8%.
Our confidential informant might, of course have been using these figures merely to illustrate how disproprtionate the request was, but not in a statistically accurate way.
However we are talking about Government statistics which often seem to exist in a parallel universe of their own with different laws of mathematics.
Given that there are some 11 or 12 million children in the UK, so even 220,000 to 240,000 "children at risk" is a very large number indeed.
For comparison there are about 75,000 people in prison.
The task of looking after such children is obviously not an easy one, but it is not helped by wasting resources on rapacious and disproportionate invasions of privacy against the vast majority of children and their families, who are not deemed to be "at risk".
We look forward to the real figures and other details from the Department for Education and Skills.
Posted by: wtwu | January 24, 2005 3:05 AM
The DfES email system does seem to honour Read Receipts and our email seems to have been read today, Monday 24th January 2005.
Posted by: wtwu | January 24, 2005 12:04 PM