Clause 17 - Use of information
Child Trust Funds Bill
10:15 am
Mr Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and 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.