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Information sharing proposals in the children’s green paper were written before the Victoria Climbie Inquiry even began, Community Care Live delegates heard today, writes Lauren Revans.

Terri Dowty, policy officer at children’s charity Action on Rights for Children, told Community Care Live that, rather than being a response to Lord Laming’s recommendations, the database proposals were part of pre-existing plans to move towards electronic service delivery – or e-government – within the UK.

She said that, 18 months before the children’s green paper was published, a report from the Cabinet Office’s Performance and Innovation Unit suggested that joined up electronic service delivery could assist in identifying children at risk of social exclusion and families in need of services, and in information sharing within the Sure Start scheme. It included no mention of child protection.

 “We are asked to believe a lot of things about the Children Bill, and quite frankly Alice in Wonderland’s six impossible things before breakfast springs to mind,” Dowty said. “We are expected to believe that Every Child Matters was a response to the Laming Inquiry, rather than a pre-existing government policy that was waiting for the right cover-story.”