The death of Victoria Climbié was a terrible case of neglect, but is a nanny state database the answer?

The report lists no fewer than 11 national and regional databases containing sometimes detailed information on children.

The newest of them, due to be introduced in 2008, is the Children's Index - a national database costing £224 million that will carry details of every child in England.

The index comes in the wake of the Victoria Climbi case, and is designed to ensure that never again will a child in need of protection be overlooked and left to the mercy of abusive adults.

It will include the name, address, age and sex of every child under 18 in England - as well as contacts for their GP, school and health or social workers. Health and social services professionals will be able to flag up on a child's entry if they think there is a cause for concern.

But the Information Commissioner's report, published yesterday, warns that the database could spark witch-hunts, shatter family privacy - and even put children at greater risk if information held on them leaked into the wrong hands.

The report comes amid much Government fanfare about employing an army of "supernannies" to help parents keep unruly children under control - and the threat of fines or parenting classes for parents of bullies.

So is the Big Brother nanny state going too far?

The former care child

MOTHER and grandmother Janet Jones spent most of her childhood in care in York.

She says she would have no problem with her children's details being held on a database.

"I think it would be an absolutely fantastic idea. Something like that would have made so much difference to me and the people I was in care with.

But Janet, of Helmsley, says there should be a limit as to what kind of information is held. And she worries the database would be difficult to properly police.

"Information could fall into the wrong hands, which would be a danger," she said.

The police representative

YET another database was the last thing that was needed, said Les Coverdale, secretary of the North Yorkshire Police Federation.

"Haven't we got enough already?"

Mr Coverdale said the proliferation of databases made it all too easy for mistaken information about children and families to spread.

And that raised a risk of another witch-hunt such as that which occurred in the Orkneys, when social workers convinced there was satanic abuse going on tore children away from their families.

The children were reunited with their parents and the social workers criticised after the case was thrown out of court.

"The allegations were totally unfounded, but something like that sticks with people," Mr Coverdale said.

The new database would also undermine family life, Mr Coverdale said - and there would inevitably be a risk that the information held on the database could fall into the wrong hands.

"Information could get to people with sinister intentions," Mr Coverdale said.

The educational psychologist

Angela Dracup, former educational psychologist turned author, says a database of the kind being considered could well lead to resentment among parents about the state intruding into their lives.

"I know when I was working as an educational psychologist a number of children we saw had been referred from schools, not from parents themselves, and parents were quite upset," said Angela, from Harrogate.

"There were all sorts of worries they had. Was their child going to be sent to a special school without their consent? Things like that.

"There was also the issue of going into somebody else's house and disturbing their family dynamic. I think a lot of parents would be resistant and hostile about this. This is going too far. It is the nanny state made real."

The community leader

ROSIE Wall believes a database could help protect children.

But it could also put them in danger, says the chairwoman of Chapelfields Residents' Association, in York.

As a parent, she would have reservations.

"It could be a good thing but there's the worry about the wrong people getting hold of information," she said.

"It should be discussed with parents too and it should be explained in normal language, not in jargon, so everybody could understand."

If parents didn't want their children to be included, they should be taken off, she says.

Rosie thinks more should be done to protect children, but isn't sure whether a database would work.

"There will always be people who slip through the net. I don't know what the way is to tackle that.

"The Government needs to look at other ways and maybe choose the best of three solutions."

The children's services boss

CAROL Runciman, executive member for education and children's services on City of York Council, is concerned about information leaking off the database into the wrong hands.

She had heard the Government might not want to include the children of celebrities on the Index database, she said - presumably for that reason.

Any such database that wanted to enable health, education and social workers to share information about children so as to pick up on any health or educational problems, or concerns about possible abuse, had to be properly managed, she said.

The council has its own "system to hold information about children", she said - so that, for example, if a child starting a new school had a particular health condition or learning requirement, the school would know about it.

But instead of recording sensitive information about a child, the database only had contact details for health or social workers. Information on a child could only be gained by professionals speaking directly to each other, Coun Runciman said. "There are no details on the database itself, no case notes, nothing sensitive."

The GP

YORK GP David Fair would have serious concerns about the security of the database.

He can see the potential benefits of encouraging more "joined-up thinking" between health, social and education workers, but thinks it needs more work.

"The consensus is that the software to ensure access is limited to individuals who need it isn't good enough to be safe," said Dr Fair.

"One of the keystones to healthcare is confidentiality.

"If patients thought their private details could be accessed by individuals who they didn't want to see them, or law courts, then it could open a huge can of worms."

There are already collaborations of children's records, he said, but few are computerised.

It could potentially make his job easier, but he doesn't support the idea yet.

"I think the test would be to speak to Tony Blair and see if he would be happy to have his children's medical records on there.

"If he was it would allay a lot of my fears."

Information that will be held on the new Children's Index

THE new index will be a "tool that will enable practitioners delivering services to children to identify and contact one another easily and quickly, so they can share relevant information about children who need services", according to the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).

Every child in England will be on the database. Information held will include:

• Name, address, sex and date of birth of the child
• Details of parents or carers
• School details
• GP and other health or social workers involved with the child
• Health or social workers will be able to indicate they wish to be contacted about the child because they have information to share, or are currently taking action.

A spokesman for the DfES said today the index was being developed "in response to recommendations following the tragic death of a child Victoria Climbi. The support, protection and safeguarding of children is our top priority but in fulfilling it we are conscious of the need to respect personal privacy."

What the Information Commissioner's report says...

"NEVER before has so much personal information been collected about children," says the report from the Information Commissioner's Office published yesterday. "And the volume is set to increase dramatically.

"Information about children, and those associated with them, is collected for the best of motives.

"We all wish to protect children from abuse and harm. We all wish to see every child fulfil their potential with the best possible education, healthcare and social and emotional development. We all wish to stop children drifting into crime and antisocial behaviour.

"But initiatives throw up real data protection and privacy issues which need to be addressed."

There are will soon be no fewer than 11 different schemes which collect and hold information about children, the report says.

They include:

• The new Children's Index (or Information Sharing Index) due to be introduced in 2008, which will contain basic details identifying all children in England, with contact details of health professionals, social workers and schools, and indicators of concern
• An electronic social care record being proposed to store and handle detailed information about children and their families being dealt with by social workers
• A national pupil database storing information about every child in state education in England
• An ASSET database of profiles of young offenders for the use of young offenders' teams and youth courts
• An ONSET database, now being piloted, to identify young people who have not been convicted but are thought most likely to get involved in criminal behaviour.

Many of these schemes will not be controversial in themselves, the Information Commissioner's Office report says. "But the overall picture and the increasing links between some schemes may surprise some people."

There are risks to having so many different databases, especially when the criteria for who can search them and what information can be shared are not always clear, the report says.

The risks include:

• Mistaken identity
• Inaccurate or out-of-date information about a child or family
• Poor quality data leading to "false alarms" - such as the child abuse witch-hunt in the Orkneys
• Poor quality data leading to cases of child abuse being missed, as in the Victoria Climbi case
• Incorrect conclusions being drawn about families and children because of ambiguous or misleading information.