Mr. Peter Tyndall:

I will try to do justice to them all but if I miss something, I am sure members will remind me. The issue of confidentiality sometimes arises in the work of an ombudsman because one is dealing with people in particularly difficult situations and the cases I had in mind were issues of child and adult protection where, for instance, foster parents might want to make a complaint but it is important that information damaging to the vulnerable people at the heart of the complaint should not come into the public domain, as it would not under any other circumstances, and it should not when an ombudsman is dealing with it. It arose in a context such as this in a discussion with a committee considering the issues around social care legislation that was going before the Welsh Assembly. I was concerned that protections should not be eroded and that was the purpose of my remarks. The particular matter that had been at the forefront of my mind was one of a failure in child protection and although the names of the individuals cannot be mentioned when trying to write a sensible report, people who know the family's circumstances can identify them even if it is child X and parent Y. It still becomes possible from the circumstance to identify the individuals and that is what had happened. This had to be to the detriment of vulnerable individuals and that was what informed a discussion with the committee. There was a formal request. It was a discussion with the committee about my concerns about protecting vulnerable individuals.

I was asked whether I would ask for this here. The answer is "No" because to a large extent the jurisdiction is different and those issues do not arise in the same way. Being able to look at------