In September 2003, the Government published a Green Paper ‘Every Child Matters’ in which they set out what would be in the Children Bill. They said that this was a ‘response’ to the Inquiry by Lord Laming into the death of Victoria Climbie, which opened in May 2002. His report came out in January 2003.
In April 2002, a month before the Inquiry began, the Government’s Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) published a report entitled ‘Privacy and Data-Sharing: the way forward for public services’. This dealt with ways in which Government services can be put online as part of the drive towards e-government.
If you click here, you can see that there are several examples of ways in which information about different kinds of people – including children - could be shared. If you are familiar with the Green Paper ‘Every Child Matters’, you may notice a remarkable similarity in the language used.
Either the Government is clairvoyant, or we have misunderstood what ‘response’ means!
e-government
The PIU report was not primarily concerned with children or child protection. Their task was to explore ways in which the Government could deliver services electronically. It will become clear why this is important if you visit the website of the e-envoy
The Government envisages that information on everyone in the UK will be held centrally, and people will ‘interact’ with Government agencies via their computers or televisions. Here is their ‘vision’ of how it might work - although we thought it was a joke when we first read it!
e-europe
Moving up a level, the Government has assured the EU that all UK services will be online by 2005. Why the EU? Because all EU countries have to meet the targets set out in various ‘action plans’ that followed the Lisbon Strategy 2000. By 2010, it is hoped that e-government (joined-up electronic services) will be a reality throughout Europe.
Things are not going quite as fast as the Government hoped, though. We seem to be reaching the stage where thumbscrews are necessary. Forcing agencies to share information via the Children Bill will help, as will a National Identity Card database. And now, according to news from the European Commission’s e-Government Observatory (the IDA) an official report ‘could recommend compulsory use of e-government services in the UK’!
What’s the IDA? Let them tell you in their own words. It looks boring, but repays close scrutiny.
Ultimately it is suggested that each country’s ‘e-government’ could join seamlessly into an ‘e-europe’. A working paper launched by the IDA last year “… focuses on what is required to ensure that the back-office system of Europe's public administrations are sufficiently interoperable to allow seamless pan-European e-government services to be developed.”
OK, we’ve come rather a long way from ‘child protection’. We could move up another level and talk about the Lisbon Strategy or the knowledge economy, but we won’t. The links we have provided should give you a good start on exploring all this for yourself.
We’ve been accused by some of being ‘conspiracy theorists’ but are puzzled as to why anyone should think there is any conspiracy. The information is all there on UK and European Government websites for anyone who chooses to read it. Nobody is out to ‘get us’. These are clear policies, and it may even be that they are the only way that we survive economically.
As ever, though, at ARCH we would welcome open debate and factual information rather than the feeling that we are being manipulated. We would also prefer that our children were not used as the back-door means of introducing contentious policies.
return to top
to Children Bill menu
to ARCH commentary