Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Baroness Featherstone and Baroness Primarolo

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

A taxi driver who worked with children would be eligible for an enhanced CRB check, which would show up any such convictions. I am going on to the ISA stuff—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am finding it difficult to understand the discussion on these points, given the exchanges that are being made across the Dispatch Box. The Minister does not have to give way if she does not want to; she can go on to make her points. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) can seek to intervene whenever she likes, as can any other Member. I would also appreciate it if interventions were a little briefer.

[Lynne Featherstone]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North could produce endless scenarios, but all I was going to say in response to the example of the taxi driver is that the law has not changed. Taxi drivers have been getting enhanced standard CRB checks. Taxi and private hire workers who work regularly with children are eligible for enhanced checks. Other drivers are eligible for standard checks, as the hon. Lady said, and that will reveal spent and unspent convictions, cautions and warnings. We are considering how best to ensure that vulnerable groups are protected, and officials have recently had productive discussions with relevant stakeholders on this issue.

I will come on to the crux of the argument made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), which was that some referrals to the ISA from employers, schools and so on involve information that never finds its way to the police and that would therefore not be revealed, even in an enhanced CRB check. I was saying that an employer could say, “I’m not giving you this job, because you are barred from a completely different area of work.” We think that that would be wrong. I want to make it clear that an enhanced CRB certificate will still be available to employers and volunteer organisations that employ people in certain work that involves children or vulnerable adults but that falls outside the scope of regulated activity. We will publish detailed proposals in good time on the implementation of the overall reforms to the disclosure and barring arrangements.

The parts that worry Labour Members, and that we have paid attention to, are the positions that were in regulated activity and that are now in unregulated activity and therefore not subject to the controls available to regulated activity.