Following yesterday’s post on the child surveillance tool ContactPoint, comes the news that a London borough are to encourage parents to keep their children’s details secret.

If the communications initiative by the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea catches on, the Government will come under serious pressure to abandon the costly and controversial database.

Merrick Cockell, the leader of the Conservative-run council, said: “We have a variety of concerns, starting with the fact that parents and carers really don’t know about ContactPoint. There’s also the fact that this Government’s record on data loss is phenomenally awful.

“This is a national database, starting with young children, but you can just see this building into something else.

“We think parents should be able to have a view on it and if they think their children should be shielded, we will take that very seriously.”

Barcode Nation will write to Birmingham City Council asking them to consider adopting a similar communications campaign.