Yvette Cooper under fire after raising prospect of resurrecting an ‘intrusive’ database scrapped by the Tories of every child in the country_Nhy
Yvette Cooper has raised the prospect of Labour resurrecting a database of every child in the country.
The Home Secretary highlighted ContactPoint as a way that police and social services could share information on young people, as she was challenged over who should be keeping tabs on dangerous teenagers such as the Southport killer.
The £225million system held records of all 11million children in England including their names, ages, addresses, parents and schools, giving each one a unique identifying number. It could be accessed by 300,000 officials.
Ms Cooper pointed out that ContactPoint was scrapped when Labour lost power 15 years ago, which led to weaknesses in the system the Government has inherited.
But she did not mention it had been introduced by her husband Ed Balls, in 2009 when he was Children’s Secretary, or that it suffered a series of security problems and been branded intrusive and disproportionate.
Pressed on which agency should have responsibility for monitoring individuals such as Southport killer Axel Rudakubana, Ms Cooper told the BBC: ‘It would depend on the nature of the threat.’
‘So, for some cases, actually it might need to be mental health that need to take the lead on an individual case.
‘In other cases, it may need to be the police who need to take the lead. In other cases, it may need to be children’s social services, in others, it may be Prevent.’
Yvette Cooper (pictured on Sunday) has raised the prospect of Labour resurrecting a database of every child in the country
The Home Secretary did not mention ContactPoint had been introduced by her husband Ed Balls (pictured), in 2009 when he was Children’s Secretary
She went on: ‘But at the moment, that system is not working. That is the system we’ve inherited.
‘If you go back 14, 15 years, there was a proposal to have a proper contact point system, so that those agencies properly shared information. That was ripped up and that was abolished.
‘So a lot of this is the system that we’ve inherited. My view is that this is not strong enough.’
Tim Loughton, who scrapped ContactPoint in 2010, said: ‘Expensive computer systems don’t protect vulnerable children – well-trained social workers and others allowed to get on with their jobs working with families at first-hand do.’
