What progress has been made on the roll-out of the ContactPoint database; and if he will make a statement.

Excellent recent progress has been made on ContactPoint. On 6 November, we announced that ContactPoint was beginning to be rolled out nationally to local authorities and front-line practitioners. We also published a report on the initial phase of the ContactPoint roll-out entitled "Lessons Learned from the Early Adopter Phase", which shows how ContactPoint is already making a positive difference daily to the practitioners who use it.

Can the Minister explain why it is considered necessary to shield just some of the children's records on the ContactPoint database, when all children on the database could be at risk from some of the 400,000 people who can access it?

There will be no special treatment for particular groups. Any decisions based on shielding would be based on decisions about the welfare of the individual child. I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that that is absolutely the right basis on which to take any such decisions.

If ContactPoint is going to make such a significant contribution to child protection, can the Minister say why the Government think it necessary that parents attending their children's school carol concert should be officially vetted, that parents who teach their children at home must undergo criminal record checks and that even teenagers taking part in the Government's compulsory community service scheme will face criminal checks? Is this not just getting barmy?

Everything that the hon. Gentleman has just said is absolute rubbish. It constitutes the usual scaremongering and hyperbole from the Opposition, in an attempt to get headlines in the tabloid press, and it is not true. If he had bothered to ask a question about ContactPoint, I could have reminded him that it has the support of our national partners-including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Barnardo's, Action for Children, Kids, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and the Children's Society-and he ought to be supporting it.