Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 182, in

clause 17, page 9, line 6, leave out subsection (2).

Mr Joe Benton (Bootle, Labour)

With this we may discuss the following amendments: No. 183, in

clause 17, page 9, line 12, leave out from second 'the' to end of line 13 and insert

'collection of statistical information relating to child trust funds'.

No. 184, in

clause 17, page 9, line 22, after 'held', insert 'before April 2005'.

Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)

Fresh from my near victory on the previous set of amendments, we move to clause 17. Clause 15, which we have just debated, is about the power of the Inland Revenue to request information from individuals and providers. Clause 17 sets out the uses to which that information may be put.

Again, the amendments would restrict the Inland Revenue to what I think would be the necessary powers. Of course, Governments always tend to take to themselves wide-ranging powers to collect and use information. Clause 17 is a classic example. It starts by saying that information held by the Revenue

''may be used, or supplied to any person providing services to the Inland Revenue, for the purposes of, or for any purposes connected with, the exercise of''

functions relating to child trust funds. I fully accept those powers. I accept that it is sensible for the Revenue to have the power to pass information around to providers and, indeed, third parties of all sorts, such as the IT contractor, in connection with administering child trust funds.

However, subsection (2) jumped out at me when I was reading the Bill and devising amendments, because it seems to give the Inland Revenue powers to pass any information held for purposes relating to child trust funds to any person providing services or any third party in connection with the exercise of functions other than the administration of child trust funds. In other words, the Revenue—the Minister may correct me—may pass personal information about child trust funds, who holds them, where they live and how much is in the funds to any third party who is not connected with the administration of the funds in any way and does not need that information to do their job in the strict sense of administering child trust funds.

The power is incredibly wide. It gives Government a blank cheque and has enormous scope for abuse. Amendment No. 182 simply proposes to leave out the subsection. I do not believe that that would affect the administration of child trust funds in any way. It is up to the Government to justify why they need the power.

If the Government do not accept amendment No. 182, they might consider amendment No. 183. The explanatory notes to the Bill explain why they need the general power to pass on information about child trust funds. They state:

''This would allow the Inland Revenue to use information about the CTF for statistical purposes in assessing the success of savings policies.''

We all want the Inland Revenue to assess the success of savings policies, and the hon. Member for Yeovil has tabled various amendments that would require assessment of the success of savings policies—particularly the one that we are considering. Amendment No. 183 would merely provide a safeguard; the passing on to third parties of the information that the Inland Revenue will hold on all of us who will hold child trust funds in our children's names would be restricted. It would be possible to pass it on to third parties only for the collection of statistical information relating to child trust funds—that is, only for the activity that the Government have given as the reason why they need the power.

Amendment No. 184 offers another protection to the citizen against the ever-mighty Executive in relation to subsection (4). The explanatory notes state:

''Subsection (4) allows other government departments to provide information to the Inland Revenue or one of its contractors for purposes connected with the CTF. The Inland Revenue will need to use information provided by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) or the Northern Irish equivalent to assess the eligibility for supplementary contribution of children born after 31 August 2002 but before the launch of CTF accounts. This group will include children in households unable to claim child tax credit as this was not introduced until April 2003 and children whose parents are receiving other benefits and will only transfer to child tax credit in the tax year 2004-05.''

We have had debates in Committee about those groups, and, of course, given the fact that the Government have made the strange decision to administer the scheme through the Inland Revenue, it is sensible to obtain information from the Department for Work and Pensions. That was the subject of an early debate in this Committee.

Subsection (4), however, makes the power to take information from other Government Departments open-ended, although it deals with a specific and time-limited problem, concerning people born between 31 August 2002 and the end of the 2004 tax year. Therefore, amendment No. 184, which I tabled, would insert a safeguard into the subsection, by restricting the information that the other Departments could pass to the Inland Revenue to information held before April 2005. That would just be an extra guarantee for the citizen that the information that the Government will inevitably collect about people in relation to child trust funds would be used for a proper purpose—the efficient administration of child trust funds—and no other.

The amendments are in general probing amendments, but there is an important principle behind them. If we had been sitting in a Committee like this 100 or 200 years ago, the power of the Inland Revenue, the tax man and the excise man would have been the sort of thing that people rioted about. It is only fair that every time the Government try to extend the Inland Revenue's power and its ability to intervene in people's lives, collect information on them and pass

it round Whitehall—or even to third party contractors, these days—the Minister of the day should have to justify it.

Mr Hilton Dawson (Lancaster & Wyre, Labour)

I should like to make a couple of points about children in local authority care. It is important that we preserve young people's rights to confidentiality—especially the rights of young people approaching the age of 18, when they will leave care and gain access to their child trust fund. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will reassure me that those matters are being discussed with local authorities at the moment.

Plainly, it would be possible for someone—a residential worker, foster carer or social worker—who had worked with a child or young person throughout their time in care to know a great deal about what was in the child trust fund. They might be entirely properly working with them to build up that fund and helping them to learn the use of money and the value of saving.

At some point the statutory duties of local authorities, especially in relation to young people leaving care, would kick in. Some local authorities pay substantial grants to young people to help them to set up when they leave care as part of the statutory duties under the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000. A few local authorities also pay substantial maintenance to support young people going into higher education. In the spirit of earlier debates, I believe that it would be entirely inappropriate for local authorities to tailor their financial support for children to take account of young people's worthy efforts to build up their individual trust funds. It is also an important principle that the child's privacy in relation to what is in the trust fund should be respected. Therefore, neither they nor anyone who has worked with them or any other official who is connected with the trust fund should have any right or necessity to report the amount of money in the trust fund to anyone else in the local authority who is making decisions about the level of financial support or other forms of material support that could be made available to them.

Ms Ruth Kelly (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Bolton West, Labour)

I will consider the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) and respond to him in due course.

I hope that I can reassure the hon. Member for Tatton and other members of the Committee that there is nothing sinister about clause 17, which is simply to allow the Inland Revenue to do a good job in administering the child trust fund. The hon. Gentleman is labouring under a misapprehension about the third party who could potentially have access to the information. I can confirm that the person providing services referred to in the Bill is always the IT contractor and only the IT contractor. The information is not available to all and sundry who might have an interest in it.

The clause also enables other Government Departments to have the information, which would be necessary were we to decide to do something different

for disabled children for example, in which case information would have to be shared between the Inland Revenue and the Department for Work and Pensions. On those grounds, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reconsider his objection to the proposal.

To expand on my remarks, it is the intention that the Inland Revenue could use the information not just for statistical purposes but for evidence-based policy making, which is slightly broader. There would be public interest in our following a cohort of children—those who left school at the age of 16 or those who went into further education, for example—to see what use they made of the child trust funds. The clause allows us to develop our policy on the basis of evidence rather than the contrary. For those reasons, I hope that the hon. Member for Tatton will ask leave to withdraw the amendment, although as I said, I will consider further the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre.

Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)

I would be interested in any further consideration that the Minister gives to what the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre said. Perhaps we could return to the matter on Report in a broader debate about local authority care. However, that is not my decision.

I will not press amendment No. 184 to a Division if it will in any way jeopardise the progress made by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney in getting the Government to consider a scheme for disabled persons and their families. He would be devastated if he knew that I had sabotaged his progress. I would have to send two bunches of flowers rather than one.

Mr David Laws (Yeovil, Liberal Democrat)

It would be in The Daily Telegraph.

Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)

It has been in the papers, so that is even worse. Things that appear in the papers are generally true. I will not press the other two amendments either. I accept the Minister's assurance that when the Bill refers to

''any person providing services to the Inland Revenue''

that means the IT provider. It does not read like that but I will take her word for it. I accepted that there would be a need to use information for statistical purposes. The point of amendment No.183 was to restrict the Government's powers to do that. The Minister has repeated the assurance that is in the explanatory memorandum.

I look forward to the Inland Revenue's version of ''Seven Up'', the programme that followed people every seven years. I can just imagine interviews with 18-year-olds holidaying in Ibiza about what they did with their child trust fund. That will be a problem for the Government of the day. As the Liberal Democrats will doubtless still be in opposition they will be able to say, ''I told you so.'' We will wait for 18 years to see the

results of that. As I also want to see what happens to this money when people reach 18, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 17 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 18 ordered to stand part of the Bill.