Clause 35 - Applications for registration: early years childminders
Childcare Bill
9:00 am
Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Children and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)
I hope that I can satisfy the hon. Members for Bromsgrove (MissKirkbride) and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on the amendments. The hon. Member for Bromsgrove said that they were probing amendments, so I hope that I can convince hon. Members that they are not necessary. I shall do my best.
The first group of amendments—Nos. 19, 22, 31, 34, 44, and 47—would require the chief inspector to restrict the information that he seeks to that which relates directly to prescribed matters. They would mean that the chief inspector could reasonably require the applicant to give only information that relates directly to matters that are prescribed.
The hon. Lady will have noticed that information requests are already limited to those that are reasonable. “Reasonable” is a well-known concept in the law, even if there is occasionally debate about what on earth it means. It sets a boundary beyond which the chief inspector cannot go. The hon. Lady perhaps feared that the clause would allow a fishing expedition. My first point to her is that the word “reasonably” already restricts any sudden desire by the chief inspector to go on fishing expeditions for unnecessary and unreasonable information.