On November 15th 2004, The Children’s Bill 2004 received the Royal Assent and became the Children’s Act 2004, having passed its third reading in the House of Lords by a mere 12 votes.

Reading what the DfES has to say about this Act it would seem benign enough -

The overall aim is to encourage integrated planning, commissioning and delivery of services as well as improve multi-disciplinary working, remove duplication, increase accountability and improve the coordination of individual and joint inspections in local authorities. The legislation is enabling rather than prescriptive and provides local authorities with a considerable amount of flexibility in the way they implement its provisions.

However, while mooching around the Information Commissoner’s website this morning - I was actually looking for his paper on the ID Cards Bill, but with no joy - I came across this ‘Memorandum to the Education and Skills Select Committee’ which proves, to my mind conclusively, that not only could function creep extend the use of the National Identity Register into areas which the Goverment has yet to reveal publicly, but that function creep will happen - and has already been planned for - and that provisions are already in place for new database systems which will ultimately be linked back to the National Identity Register.

What, you might think, has an Act which is supposed to improve children’s services, got to do with the National Identity Register?

Well, this -

In September 2003 the Green Paper Every Child Matters put forward Government proposals for local authorities to set up and maintain databases covering all children living in the local authority area. These databases were to contain basic identification and contact details for the child and their carers, contacts with the universal services of education and health, and contacts with other child care professionals who were dealing professionally with the child. It was also proposed that child care professionals would be able to put on an individual child’s record flags indicating that they had concerns about that child.

You’ll note that this proposal covers ALL CHILDREN, not just those about whom their may be good reason for official concern within Social Services, Schools or the NHS.

So what information will this new and largely unpublicised ‘universal’ Children’s Register contain?

Well, the current list is as follows…

a. Name, address and date of birth
b. An identification number
c. Name and contact details of anyone with parental responsibility or who has care of him at any time
d. Details of any education being received by him including the name and contact details of any educational establishment attended by him
e. The name and contact details of any person providing primary medical services
f. The name and contact details of any person providing him with services of such description as may be described in regulations
g. Information as to the existence of any cause for concern in relation to him
h. Information of such description as the SoS may specify by regulations.

Notice the similarities between this and the National Identity Register? Not only does it contain the minimum basic information necessary to generate a basic entry on the National Identity Register - in other words the ability to automatically register children once they turn 16 - but it also allows for the extension of ths information it holds by regulation, i.e. statutory instrument and on the authority of the Secretary of State for Education and Skills.

Sound familiar?

Moreover, one can see from the outset how this database may be linked to the NIR. Each child will have an identification number - which could be added to the NIR entry for their parent(s) or guardian(s), again on a regulatory extension to the Register made by statutory instrument.

Alternatively, such an obvious and overt linkage between the two registers may not be necessary as in allowing for the recording of “Name and contact details of anyone with parental responsibility or who has care of him at any time” it logically follows that such details - in the name of accuracy - will include the National Identity Registration Number of each individual recorded on the children’s register as a ‘carer’ - not just parents or guardians, but also childminders, teachers and who knows who else? This loose definition - ‘who has care of him at any time’ - could hypothetically encompass any family member who looks after your child in addition to a whole host of other people as well. What if your child attends a local scout group, sports club, playgroup or other out of school club or activity? Would all the people involved in ‘caring’ for you child while they attend those activities also need to be registered?

So what is stated purpose of this register, its justification and raison d’etre?

Well, in the Act itself, its purpose is loosely defined as being to “promote cooperation to improve wellbeing and to ensure that arrangements to safeguard and promote welfare are in place” - all very laudable.

Since then, this has been refined by the DfES into the following three purposes -

To help practitioners quickly identify a child they have contact with, and to check whether that child is getting the universal services (education, primary health care) to which she or he is entitled;

To be an important tool to encourage better communication and closer working between different professionals and practitioners.

If we ignore the utter banality of the final stated purpose, which is less a purpose and more ’stating the bleeding obvious’, then what we’re left with is, at its heart, a surveillance system which will monitor children - all children - irrespective of whether there is any good or valid reason to monitor them or not.

The Government’s justification for this is nothing more than…

“the universality of the databases was necessary because it was not possible to predict which of the 11 million children up to the age of 18 would need additional services. The Department cite the figure of 3 to 4 million children as being vulnerable, that is in having needs for additional services, at some time in their lives. In addition it was suggested that universality was required because all children have a right to universal services of education and health, and the databases would allow children not receiving those services to do so.”

In other words - “We need to watch them all on the off-chance they might need help at some point”.

This, as should be patently obvious, is about as nannying a justification as it is humanly possible to put forward and effectively a statement that the State does not trust parents to bring their kids up properly and therefore needs to watch over them all the time and at every stage in their development.

As you might expect, the Children’s Registers gives rise to many of the same concerns that are relevant to the National Identity Register, these having been identified by, amongst others, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Select Committee, and are outlined by the Information Commissioner as follows -

a. compliance with the ECHR,
b. the administrative burden from having to capture information on all children and the resources required to follow up concerns,
c. the cause for concern indicator and the danger of a “tick box� mentality,
d. the possible threat to a child’s privacy, and
e. the security of children’s information.

Unsurprisingly, to these concerns the Information Commissioner adds his own concerns about possible ‘function creep’ in the use of this register, noting that, as with the Identity Cards Bill, the primary legislation defines the purpose of the Children’s Register only in very loose terms and that creates distinct problems when dealing with questions arising from Article 8 of ECHR which covers the right to respect for private and family life.

As the Information Commissioner notes in his memorandum -

“It does appear therefore that the legislation has
being enacted before evidence has been collected to justify the proposals in general or to provide the detail as to how the databases are to be run. In support of this view the Joint Committee on Human Rights report states that Parliament was being asked to authorise in advance a major interference with Article 8 rights without the evidence demonstrating it is necessary”

Before noting also in relation to Article 8 that…

“a universal database covering 100% of children, not just those children about whom concerns have been expressed, sees difficult to justify as a proportionate response.”

This highlight the fundamental weakness of ECHR and the Human Rights Act, which encapsulates ECHR into UK law. Neither is a constitutional law or contains explcit provisions which serve to restrain Government from passing laws which impinge on or restrict our rights.

In the first instances, by defining the purpose of the Children’s Registers, and equally the National Identity Register, in such loose and unspecific terms it become possible to circumvent any explicit consideration of whether a Bill breaches the provisions of the ECHR simply on the basis that the Bill provides insufficient information to arrive at a judgement as to whether it may cause such a problem.

Second, as John Hemming found to his cost on both occasions he mounted challenges to the postal voting system, one can only, for the most part, challenge legislation on human rights grounds after the fact - after the legislation has become law - and then only if affected directly and personally by a breach of human rights arising from the law or its application. To argue, in advance, that a particular law may breach our human rights is virtually meaningless as the validity of that law may, in most cases, only be challenges after it has been used and given rise to an infringement of rights - and only then if that infringement has affected you personally.

And even if both these obstacle are overcome, the Government still has the option of seeking a derogation of part of ECHR - effectively an opt-out - as it has in place in relation to time it is permitted to detain suspected terrorists for questioning.

Or even a reservation of rights, as applies to the first protocol right to education and the right of parents to have thir children in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions, which is limited by the UK to circumstances where it is “compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and training, and the avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure.”

The Information Commissioner also notes this comment from the Joint Committee on Human Rights -

“We are concerned that, if the justification for information-sharing about children is that it is always proportionate where the purpose is to identify children who need child welfare services, there is no meaningful content left to a child’s Article 8 right to privacy and confidentiality in their personal information.”

In simple terms, what the committee is saying is that if one accepts the right of the State to monitor all children just in case they may need child welfare services then one also accepts that children have no right, whatsoever, to privacy as there is nothing left of substance which could be kept private.

Finally, on privacy, we come to one of the key issues that arises out of the information sharing capabilities which universal registers, such as the Children’s Register and, if it becomes law, the National Identity Register, make possible, that of the ‘need to know’ and how we define who needs to know and in what circumstances.

This is illustrated in the following passage in the Information Commissioner’s memorandum -

“Children do have a right to privacy and family life and interference with this right has to be justified. It is worth adding that privacy and family life are not just abstract concepts. For example should a teacher of a sixteen year old girl have access to the fact that the girl is in contact with a teenage pregnancy advice service? The teacher might be friends of the girl’s parents and tell them of this, before the girl tells her parents she is pregnant herself. The recent publicity about a woman seeking judicial review of Department of Health guidance stating that children might have abortions without their parents knowing illustrates the difficult balances between a child’s right to privacy, parental responsibility and the child’s welfare.”

There is much that we could, and should, learn from the way in which the proposed Children’s Registers has developed in the brief period since the legislation which permits its creation passed into law. Much that is pertinent to the direction that the National Identity Register could, and almost certainly will take should the Identity Cards Bill follow the Children’s Act in attaining Royal Assent.

First and foremost it is only now, more than six months on, that the full scope and extent of the Children’s Register is starting to take shape and that the detail of how far it will reach into our children’s lives is starting to become apparent. Without realising it, we have already surrendered our children’s right to privacy, and by inference, a substantial portion of our own, to the extent that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has noted that children will, one these databases become operational, will have no personal information left worth keeping private.

Second, we can see clearly how, given a ’sellable’ justification, the Government can easily appropriate as much personal information as it can possible obtain with barely a murmur of protest. Even on NO2ID, the Children’s Register has merited only a brief report in one of its newsletters - 2 or 3 paragraphs at most, while Liberty have managed only a single press release about these databases.

Why?

Because child welfare, the pretext under which these databases will come into being, is eminently sellable to the public. Because it is an emotive subject and something we see very much as being in the public interest, an area of life in which most of us would gladly surrender a freedom or two in the name of preventing a child being abused…

… and because to challege these registers would be interpreted - and spun - as being weak in our resolve to protect children and to be, by inference, giving aid to the abusers.

For these reasons there has been little or no public debate about the Children’s Registers nor about the extent to which we are surrendering the privacy of our children to the state. In fact, I doubt that most people are even aware of the Children’s Registers, let alone that their own children will soon be recorded on them in every possible detail, and that even if you did try to explain this to them, they would assume that only those children thought ‘at risk’ would be subject to such monitoring, that the Children’s Registers are something for keeping tabs on other kids in other families and not for monitoring their own.

From this one can also see not only how, with the National Identity Register in place, our freedoms and our privacy can quickly and quietly be taken away by Government. How we can be sold the loss of our civil liberties a piece at a time and always with a valid and seemingly supportable reason until, one day, we wake up in Phillip K Dick headfuck society in which everything you of consequence is recorded, tracked, srutinised, analysed, tagged, stored and filed away for future reference. Where any break in your usual humdrum routine start the monitors rolling.

Think it won’t happen?

Then you’ve never had the ignominy of having your credit or debit card declined because something you’ve bought, or tried to buy has caused your account to flagged automatically as showing ‘unusal activity’. I actually had this happen to me in a supermarket for no other reason than that I chose to get £20 cashback at the same time as I paid for my shopping to save me the bother of using the cashpoint outside to take out the cash I needed to pay for a taxi home. £20 cashback is real unusual, isn’t it?

We can also see clearly, from the development of the Children’s Registers, exactly how the practicalities of the National Identity Register will take shape should the Identity Cards Bill become law.

Where, when so much about the Children’s Registers was so loosely specified and couched in generalities, is the public consultation and public debate on the final shape of these registers and, especially, on the ‘need to know’ question. Even if we are to surrender a degree of personal privacy in the name of a better cause - child welfare - we surely have a right to a direct say in the question of how far that willing surrender goes. How much intrusion we will tolerate and accept in the name of giving our kids the best possible start in life.

But no. With the law passed, the public debate is over and the decisions as to how far these register’s go falls to functionaries, the policy makers and the professionals. The question is no longer about how much freedom we might give in the name of child welfare but of how much freedom the state feels it is justified in taking without either or knowledge or our express consent.

End of story. You’re out of the loop. Just trust the Government and trust the State because we know what’s best for you.

Anyone really believe things will develop differently with the National Identity Register? That we’ll be openly and publicly consulted each time the Government wishes to extend it a little further into our lives?

No. Of course not.

Don’t get me wrong here. I can both see and understand the case the these Children’s Registers and I can certainly see the potential benefits as well as the possible pitfalls…

…its just that as a responsible parent I believe I have an absolute fucking right to be asked just how far and on what terms I am prepared to see my kid’s - and my family’s - right to privacy abridged by the State in the name, even, of looking after the interests of children who are less fortunate than my own. Its a simple matter of courtesy and respect yet one which seems increasingly lost on some within this Government.

I’m not being unreasonable here, I just want the right to tell the Government in no certain terms that there are some things in my life and my kid’s lives which are, quite rightly, none of their fucking business!

—–

So we’ve defined the problem, but what’s the answer?

Even if we do succeed in defeating the Identity Cards Bill this time around.

Even if we fail to stop the Bill but the system collapses due to the expected cost overruns, technical failures, etc.

Even if it takes mass civil disobedience, poll tax style, to bring it down…

…then one way or another, somewhere down the line, it’ll be back - and it’ll be back not only with better and more reliable technology, with solutions to the problems that the current immaturity of biometric technology brings to the system, but with a Government, and not necessarily this one, who’ll have learned from our opposition this time around. Who’ll have had more time to get their story and their salespitch straight and the chance to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.

Nothing is forever, not least our ability to effectively oppose and maybe prevent the introduction of ID cards and creation of a national identity register in some form.

In the short-term, we can put forward alternatives to the Government’s current proposals, one which give them something of what they want - the ability to reliably verify an individual’s identity - but without compromising our freedom and our civil liberties to anything like the extent that the Government’s proposed Identity Register will make possible. Give a little in order to prevent the State from taking all.

This is still only a temporary solution. A stop-gap measure as, in the British political system and with few exceptions, what Parliament giveth, Parliament can for the most part taketh away.

What’s ultimately need is something more profound and far reaching than a merely less intrusive and more secure National Identity System.

What we need is a clear, unequivocal and inalienable definition of our rights and privileges as citizens. One that is free from derogations and reservations. One which is enacted by national plebiscite, which is voted on not by Parliament alone but by us all and which, therefore, cannot be modified or taken away from us without our express and explicit consent - not even by Parliament.

What we need is a full written constitution and bill of rights, enacted by the people - by referendum - and one which makes the primacy of Parliament subject to to that constitution and to an independent supreme court charged with the duty and responsibility to defend that constitution and our rights as citizens, even in face of the wishes of Parliament.

Why?

Because, ultimately, that is our only real defence, other than mass civil disobedience and disorder, against a Government who refuses to listen to or acknowledge the will of the people.

“We, the free People of England, to whom God hath given hearts, means and opportunity to effect the same, do with submission to his wisdom, in his name, and desiring the equity thereof may be to his praise and glory, agree to ascertain our Government to abolish all arbitrary Power, and to set bounds and limits both to our Supreme, and all Subordinate Authority, and remove all known Grievances.”
An Agreement of the People - May 1st 1649

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