Dangerous bills
And what we can do about them
AI powered surveillance, mass data sharing and more state intrusion will harm children
Stopping the dangerous Children’s Bill is even more vital now that the Data Use and Access legislation has been passed. This weakened data protection laws and allowed use of automated decision-making systems. Children’s rights to privacy must be protected.
Join us in demanding #supportNOTsurveillance for children.
Children’s ‘Wellbeing’ and Schools Bill
ACT NOW: Shocking last minute amendment to give Government power to ban children from any “internet services”.
Undemocratic last-minute powers: What is being added to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill?
Children and access to the internet and to other digital spaces is a complex issue. Banning children from any part of it requires identity verification for all which is the end of privacy online.
We need a real National Conversation about this. Children have a right to be heard and consulted meaningfully on measures that impact them.
Instead the Government is rushing it through, demanding that they are given the powers now and they will ask what we think AFTER it is law.
Use our template letter to tell your MP to speak out against this dangerous and undemocratic move.
To Ban Or Not To Ban? That Should Not Be the Question
Children’s Rights International Network and Defend Digital Me
Care about Digital ID? The government is already pushing through powers to create a national identifier for children. The Children’s Bill is massive and complicated and most families have no idea about the sweeping state powers being quietly introduced.
-NHS number – acknowledged as lifelong – planned to link information without permission across government, including police. No opt out.
– Duty to share information without consent under very broad grounds.
Leading experts in social work, child protection, human rights, data ethics have warned the government that these measures – claimed as safeguarding – are dangerous.
The Bill is low on detail, with minimal limits to state power. Powers override confidentiality, even with GPs. It includes Henry VIII powers handing massive powers to Secretary of State to fill in the details later.
“The surveillance capacities and risks of what is being proposed are considerably greater than anything ContactPoint could ever have enabled.”
Professor Val Gillies
Joint open letter from academics and organisations
Reclaim Rights for Children
Open letter to govt:
Experts warn CWS Bill
is dangerous
Take action
Contact MP
Tell them you do not consent!
Personalise the template – don’t forget to add your MPs name, your contact details, and any personal experience of your data being misused.
Don’t know who your MP is? You can use Write to Them
Shout about it!
Use your networks
Ask organisations who represent you to take action.
Print posters and flyers (files here)
Share content in groups you are part of. Use our graphics or create your own memes/graphics/stickers/posters to get across what is happening to people like you.
Reach out to influencers or content makers you follow
Sign petition
Included in the Children’s Bill
Universal: Powers to store and share data about all children and families
1) Duty to share information considered “relevant to safeguarding or welfare of the child” (very broad criteria which could include almost any information). Without consent and overrides confidentiality. This has huge implications.
2) Unique number (Proposal to use the NHS number – even though the Department of Health gave undertaking this would NEVER happen) to link children’s records across different areas of government and multiple databases. This power creates – in effect – one giant database of all children with everything known about them. This is a huge threat to privacy.
Concerns: The government have said they plan to use the NHS number and have acknowledged that this would be a lifelong identifier if so. The immediate uproar around Digital ID has shown that the public have significant concerns around privacy issues connected with this.
The government point to powers to link adult’s health and social care records using the NHS number. But looking at the Health and Care Act 2012 (HCA) only serves to highlight how much more permissive the CWSB powers are.
– The HCA specifies that the number is to be used for “the provision to the individual of health services or adult social care”. There is no such specification under the CWSB nor safeguards to limit usage to direct care of a child. It could potentially be used for a very broad range of information and purposes.
– THE HCA specifies that it should not be used if the individual does not consent or would be likely not to consent. Under the CWSB it is to be used without consent and indeed, even if a child or parent strongly objected.
– The HCA specifies that it does not override the “common law duty of care or confidence”. The CWSB explicitly overrides any “obligation of confidence”.
It should be noted that children’s NHS numbers are already used more widely than health, such as in the CH-IS and on some ECH plans. Children’s NHS numbers have also been used within a pilot in Wales, sharing the records of every single child registered with GPs within pilot area in order to identify children not registered at schools.
'Children not in school': Powers to store and share data about children and families
Even though the majority of home educated children and ‘children missing education’ are already on various databases what is new are the massive data sharing powers.
Local authorities can demand – and store and share – huge amounts of information about children and what they do with their time – including at weekends – from parents and education providers.
It places a duty on local authorities that “to the extent that the local authority has the information or can reasonably obtain it” the register “must include” information on a child’s protected characteristics plus any other information that the Secretary of State says is relevant.
It also writes a blank cheque for local authorities to store “any other information” they “consider appropriate”.
All of this valuable and highly sensitive data about individual named children can be shared with the government, and with others!
'Children not in school': Increased state powers
1) Local authorities instructed to consider the home and to see the child. Parents don’t legally have to let officials in but it is at the threat of a school attendance order and likely a social services investigation if they don’t.
Inspecting someone’s home is a deeply intrusive state intervention – and engages article 8 rights of privacy. It should not be used when there is no cause for concern that a child is at risk of significant harm.
There is extensive evidence of the harm and truama already caused by the overuse of these powers. Families who have asked for help – such as support they are entitled to for disabled children – report significant trauma and distress as a result.
Imagine knowing that at any point officials could turn up unannounced on your doorstep and insist on searching through your house and interviewing your child!
Information connected with speaking to the child or inspecting the home falls under the wider information sharing duties of the Bill and of the ‘children not in school’ register requirements. Accuracy of information and professional bias is of significant concern.
2) A fundamental part of being a parent or carer is deciding what is in the best interests of your child, including in education. This Bill removes this for some groups of children. Instead local authorities are to be granted powers to decide what is in their best interests for education, without any court oversight. This is a significant power grab by the state and will have far reaching consequences.
Read more: children trapped in unsuitable settings
“The data generated by schools, police, housing, health, work and pensions and so on can already be linked and merged to identify individuals. Databases have become largely irrelevant. It’s the consistent identifier that will be the ‘national database’. The child is the database and will be available nationally.”
Professor Ros Edwards
“As I sat during Christmas recess reading it, I was quite shocked; I questioned why this information was needed and what it was going to be used for.”
Rt Hon Munira Wilson MP (Liberal Democrat)
House of Commons: Public Bill Committee Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (23 Jan 2025)
Legal opinions on ‘children not in school powers’
There are four legal opinions from expert KCs on different aspects of the ‘children not in school’ powers. All four advise that the legislation is likely to be incompatible with the Convention.
Legal opinion from Aidan O’Neill KC for the Christian Institute. This legal opinion is hugely important. This is the legal team which won the 2016 Named Person Supreme Court Ruling reconfirming the threshold of ‘significant harm’ for coercive state intervention, including information sharing.
Data Use and Access Bill
Passed!
Exposes us to dangerous uses of ‘AI’
This Bill removes vital data protections making it easier for the mass processing of all of this information about us.
It also relaxes restrictions on automated decision-making systems – experts warn that these systems are dangerous, deeply unfair and there is growing evidence of the vast scale of harm they cause – and at the same time weakening our protection.
Allows dangerous uses of automated decision-making systems
Currently use of automated decision-making systems to make meaningful decisions about our lives are “broadly prohibited” . Desite this they are used more than is publicly known, with little transparency.
Clause 80 makes changes to article 22 of the UK GDPR to the effect that individuals would lose their right not to be subject to automated decision-making, unless such decision is taken on account of sensitive data.
Within these systems individuals are profiled and flagged for state intervention not because of something they have done but because of their characteristics, including use of public services.
Removes vital protections for children in processing of their data
1) Bill creates new category of ‘recognised legitimate interest’
Private organisations – delivering increasing amounts of state provision and carrying out increasing amounts of processing – will be able to share or process children’s (or others) data without carrying out a ‘balancing test’ to make sure it doesn’t harm ‘fundamental rights and freedoms’ if it falls under ‘national security, emergencies, crime or safeguarding’.
2) The Bill uses a definition of ‘safeguarding’ which is so wide that almost any information about a child could be included under this new unprotected basis.
3) A tiny tweak in wording around public task will mean “recognised legitimate interest” – and therefore processing without this balancing test protection – could be used more widely.
The new wording would be “processing is necessary for the performance of a task of the controller carried out in the public interest”. It cannot be the task of another controller. So those providing data for another controller, eg a local authority, presumably will not be able to use this and would therefore use the wider grounds of ‘recognised legitimate interest’.
Read our open letter to govt: experts say Data Use and Access Bill is dangerous
“The inclusion [of wellbeing] in the Bill widens the remit such that almost any information about a child could be shared.”
Professor Debbie Watson