Thank you very much, Sarah, for tabling this debate, which is indeed, as others have said, a very important thing that we need to consider, because, otherwise—. Technology is a wonderful thing in many respects; it can save lives. If somebody's gone into a coma with type 1 diabetes, they're not in a position to tell you what treatment they're going to need, but we absolutely have to apply the precautionary approach. But I think, at the same time, we shouldn't be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

In advance of this debate, I did consult one of the secondary schools in my constituency and asked about this, because I simply didn't know how much this was being used or what attitude I should be taking. So, it was very useful to hear that they indeed use biometric thumbprints in the canteen, because you won't be surprised to know that young people lose the cards on which they have the amount of credit they've got, and, therefore, they're not going to be losing their thumb. If you can imagine the speed at which young people have to be served during the lunch break, as well as the really important confidentiality that needs to be adhered to around who is in receipt of free school meals and who is not, a thumbprint doesn't tell you anything more, other than that this individual is wanting to apply to have whatever credit they've got on their account discounted by the amount of food that they are consuming. 

So, just to be a little bit more technical, this biometric thumbprint translates into a code—not a photograph, not a name. It's a series of numbers, which, to the rest of us, is a meaningless piece of information. But it tells the till operator, managing the money, what items need to be deducted that have been purchased by the individual. So, even if the school's account was hacked, the information that was held via the thumbprint wouldn't tell you about which individuals had had dinner that day and who hadn't. It is a stretch to think that a hacker would be hacking the school's account and the till manager's account at the same time. 

There are lots of benefits, therefore. There's confidentiality about who is in receipt of free school meals, which often doesn't get adhered to in other secondary schools where they are using cards, and where there's an exchange of information with the person managing the till, which is, sometimes, entirely inappropriate. And it's also about speed of throughput, because you're not having all the administration involved and the hassle of saying, 'I've lost my card', 'I've left it at home', and all the other issues that go wrong.

So, I think that this is really important, but I do sort of challenge that the motion is asking us to ensure that all schools and childcare settings are using non-biometric technologies for this sort of service, because what is the non-biometric service that's going to give us something as accurate and speedy as using a thumbprint? We all use a thumbprint, or in theory we do, to access our iPads, but I just need to understand what the worries are there. I absolutely agree with Jack and with Jane Dodds that we do need to proceed with caution on this, and we need to have all the data, but I do have some concerns about rushing into this and then throwing the baby out with the bathwater and not having the advantages of technology to manage important data in a confidential manner effectively. Thank you.