In 2023 Tony Blair and William Hague co-signed a report called A New
National Purpose in which they reasoned: ‘With science and technology as
our new national purpose, we can innovate rather than stagnate in the
face of increasing technological change. This purpose must rise above
political differences to achieve a new cross-party consensus that can
survive any change of government.’
Now, just over a year into a
Starmer-led administration, it is striking how many of Labour’s Bills
are steroid-enhanced replicas of those proposed by previous Tory
governments. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Bridget Phillipson’s
inappropriately named Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
Alongside
some measures similar to Boris Johnson’s 2022 Schools Bill, its
pernicious Clause 4 enables much wider information-sharing through
‘consistent identifiers’ (CI) for every child. These will be assigned to
children from birth, and the Department for Education (DfE) is
presently trialling the use of their NHS number for this purpose.
Anyone
who cares about children’s rights and the wise use and protection of
personal data should be highly dubious of the kind of ‘wellbeing’ that
this Bill looks set to advance....<<<Read More>>>...
