Queen’s Speech

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, not everything that matters needs to be done by legislation. At this stage, the Government should be working just as hard on implementation as on new legislation. It is perverse to say in one breath that there is too much legislation and in the next to complain that there are not enough Bills in the Queen’s Speech. In taking that view, I agree totally with the closing words of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford.

I give noble Lords an example. One of the most important Liberal Democrat policies that was inserted into the coalition agreement was a properly funded pupil premium. The case was made and accepted. Research and practice in other countries had proved the worth of such a policy, so we put it in the previous Queen’s Speech. We legislated for it and did it. The funding was made available—small at first, but growing every year to £2.5 billion per year by 2015. The purpose of the premium is to narrow the gap between rich and poor, and help to achieve the Government’s other primary objective of improving social mobility. How can it be that in a modern, open society such as ours, and after 13 years of a Labour Government, a child’s destiny is still determined by their background?

Now we have to monitor what schools are doing with the premium because we are not telling them exactly how to spend the money. Teachers are professionals, after all. We need to research what works, look at how the best teachers are spending the money and getting results, and make sure that best practice becomes general practice. That is what we are doing and you do not need legislation for it. In his speech yesterday to the National Education Trust, Nick Clegg outlined a package of measures to make sure that this money achieves what children and the country need it to do. Bear in mind that this is linked directly to the Government’s first objective of getting this country back on its financial feet. Every child who does not fulfil his educational potential incurs cost and is a potential loss to our future productivity and GDP. None of this needs legislation but it follows up previous legislation and makes sure that it works properly.

Another initiative, most of which does not require legislation, is the new adoption plan that was published recently by the Minister of State, Mr Tim Loughton. We are told that an important measure in the children and families Bill will be to ensure that adoptions are not held up by officers looking for a perfect racial match. It horrifies me that children can wait an average of 22 months from going into care to moving in with an adoptive family. The measures that are being taken to speed things up are very welcome. However, I feel that more people would come forward as potential adoptive parents if there was more post-adoption support. There would also be fewer failed placements. It is bad enough when a foster placement fails, but when an adoption fails it is a catastrophe for the child and the adoptive family. Therefore, I ask the Minister: what measures are being taken to improve post-adoption support?

I should also like to ask about kinship adoption. I am familiar with this because it has happened in my own family when the child’s mother died, and I believe it has a very high rate of success. The reason for that is probably because it provides a baseline of family love and history on which to base the new relationship. Of course, love is a key ingredient in all these caring situations. Could the Minister say whether kinship adopters will be given the same level of support as other adopters, since the child will still have undergone considerable trauma in many cases and may need a lot of help to settle?

I also very much welcome the announcements in the gracious Speech about the new system of providing joined-up support for children with disabilities or special educational needs. My honourable friend Sarah Teather, the Minister for Children, can be congratulated on her very hard work in pulling together legislation and a pilot scheme—which is, I believe, the reason why the Bill will not be introduced just yet—that gives a child and his family an education, health and care plan that goes right up to the age of 25, and does not fall off the cliff at 16 as before. It should be a Lycra plan—seamless both horizontally and vertically. However, while I applaud the idea of giving parents a budget and a choice of how to spend it, I should like to know whether there is a mechanism in place to help them make good decisions. Bad decisions and bad placements will be bad for the child and a waste of that precious budget.

Finally, I welcome the strengthening of the remit of the Children’s Commissioner for England. It is very important that the commissioner has a new overall function to promote and protect children’s rights, as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is a fulfilment of something for which I campaigned—against strong resistance from the Labour Government—when the legislation to appoint the commissioner went though Parliament eight or so years ago and ever since. I also welcome the new powers to carry out assessments of the impact of new policies and legislation on children’s rights. However, I should like to know whether this is supposed to be the mechanism that will give effect to the promise made by the Children’s Minister in December 2011 that legislation would be scrutinised to ensure that it complied with the UNCRC. If so, the commissioner will need much more funding than she has now.

May I point out that the Committee on the Rights of the Child expects the commissioner to comply with the Paris principles? Therefore, she should be independent, properly funded and have the role of protecting children’s rights. She should also be accountable to children, the public and Parliament. In this regard, are the Government inclined to accept the idea that the Select Committee to which she should be accountable should, in future, be the Joint Committee on Human Rights? I believe that this was raised at a recent hearing and makes a lot of sense, since the commissioner’s powers cover so many different departments, not just the Department for Education, where the responsible Minister sits. Having said that, this is one of the most welcome and important measures announced in the gracious Speech.

Criminal Records Bureau

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

Obviously, the noble Baroness is a most tremendous risk to the public and to children and I hope that she will consider these matters very carefully. No—that is what we want to address and it is the point of some of the changes we are making as a result of the Protection of Freedoms Bill. It is why we will keep these matters under review and it is why my right honourable friend the Home Secretary launched her initial review into these matters last year. I go back to the supplementary question of my noble friend Lord Vinson when he talked about trust being important. We think it is vital that people take a common-sense approach in these matters.

[Baroness Walmsley]

When and in what way will the Government be communicating to the ISA and the police the statement that my noble friend made last week during the passage of the Protection of Freedoms Bill in response to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard: that the ISA can pass on to the police the information that has led to a discretionary bar so that the police can then use their discretion to release that information to a conscientious employer who requests it?

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Hereford]

My Lords, I welcome hugely the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. I particularly welcome them because I firmly believe that they need to be accepted as they would strengthen the Bill and make it a much safer document.

From the point of view of the churches, other faith groups and voluntary organisations, the amendments have the great advantage of making it possible for the first time within the Bill for there to be CRB checks for volunteers. To my mind, without these amendments, there is a serious omission in that regard. By broadening out that eligibility, the amendments would allow the churches to have CRB checks for Sunday school teachers, youth workers or perhaps organists who have the role of musical director for children’s choirs.

This is a complex area regarding how we within the churches, and therefore within the church communities, have been able to check using eligibility that has until now conferred by either the broad understanding of regulated activity as it has been hitherto, or having to use the concept of regulated positions from the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000. However, there has until now been no recognition in the Bill of the role of the volunteers; hence, my welcome for the two amendments in the group.

Amendment 5 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, specifically includes making those responsible for the employment and appointment of people who meet the definition eligible to make enhanced CRB checks and obtain suitable information, which we understand, and hope will be understood, to mean the vetting and barring information to which the noble Lord has made reference. However, I would make a slight qualification to what he said. He used the term “employer” throughout most of his speech, although his amendment does not do so. I want that term to be understood to include, say, a church that has volunteers, and for “employer” not necessarily to mean paid employees. Provided it is understood to include volunteers, we would be of one mind on this.

The amendment gives space, as we have been told and as the wording makes clear, for the Secretary of State to define what is meant by the phrase “regular and close contact”. Those words could be a little slippery. It is difficult for us within our churches to be specific as to what “regular” means, and we commend the approach used in Scotland, where the protection of vulnerable groups scheme also requires regular contact, but “regular” is defined there as a core part of the role rather than by a weekly or even monthly requirement. I ask noble Lords to picture a situation, perhaps in one of our village churches in our diocese of Hereford, where there might be only a monthly Sunday school or family service and where the key adults have regular but only monthly contact. Or, perhaps in one of our more urban situations, there might be a holiday play scheme whereby the adult workers, although they may regularly be involved each year, would be there for only four or five days a week in the summer holidays. However, in all those situations, the workers get to know the children well and, as the noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Bichard, said, the point is about access.

However, I would add a further dimension to what they said. This is also about the authority that we the church give if these workers are used, and known to be used, as volunteers within the life of the church. It makes the child think, “That is the nice Mr So-and-so who I know from church, so he is safe”. That is the assumption made. We are responsible for giving that authority, and that is part of what concerns me so strongly and why I welcome this amendment. It recognises that when such volunteers take a role, even if it is not frequent but is nevertheless regular, it is possible to build up authority and therefore trust, as well as access. That access is not about just the supervised range of the activity. The access exists outside; and that is the crucial part for me. We have been reminded that access is there within social networking, but it should be recognised, please, that access is available in lots of other ways. Half the population of the diocese of Hereford, which includes south Shropshire as well as Herefordshire, live in villages of 500 people or less. If you live in a village of 500 people, your family knows all the other families, and there is therefore trust and access. You are bound to see people at other times. It is inevitable, and that is the nature of community and village life. To say that because the regulated activity is safe, everything else is safe, is frankly not sufficient. We are responsible by giving authority and access. Therefore, it is crucial that we can also have the CRB checks.

I emphasise my strong welcome for the amendment; I would love it to be extended from just children and young people to vulnerable adults, because we could have had the same debate on the same issues there.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. It may be moderate and proportionate but has the potential to close a dangerous loophole in the Bill. Both he and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, have explained clearly the issues of secondary access, so, it being Third Reading, I do not intend to repeat them.

I do not support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey. As he hinted, it is intended to highlight the fact that it is impossible for any employer or organiser of volunteers, however conscientiously they supervise a person working with children, to supervise them when they are off the premises. That leads us to the point that we have to ensure that the people who are on the premises working with children are safe to do so.

I hope that my noble friend will be able to assure the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, that his amendment is unnecessary. I hope that he will give him 100 per cent assurance, not just 80 per cent assurance. By that I mean that barring information will be made available to conscientious volunteer organisers or employers of paid employees.

We should cast our minds back to when the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act was introduced. It was brought in because it was discovered that paedophiles were working in schools. At that time, the hapless Minister was made responsible. As a result, we set up an Act of Parliament to put in place a committee of experts to decide whether the information available made it possible to say whether that person was safe to work with children.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, pointed out, only 80 per cent of the people who have been decided by the expert panel to be unsafe are known to the police. I point out that the enhanced CRB check contains information about not just charges and convictions but other information only if the police, at their discretion, think it is relevant to release it.

That expert committee has barred one in five people not as a result of police information but because of other information that the police do not know and therefore could not release even if they wanted to. Those experts believe that the information passed to them is serious enough to bar that person from working with children. Given that you cannot supervise a person 100 per cent even on the premises, and you certainly cannot supervise a person off the premises, it is only right that conscientious employers who want to do the right thing for the young people in their charge should be able to have that information—not just the police information but the information from the expert committee, which we as a Parliament have set up, and which believes that that person is not safe to work with children.

That is particularly important given that we are taking away certain roles from regulated work. That means that organisations such as FE colleges cannot under the Bill get that information about some of their employees. That beats me. I cannot for the life of me figure out why the Government feel that it is appropriate to treat young people in colleges differently from those very same children when they go to a school for the rest of the week. However, that is beside the point, because the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, would allow employers in colleges to obtain the information that they are crying out for to enable them to protect young people in their charge. I hope that my noble friend will be able to give us a 100 per cent assurance that those risks and loopholes will be closed.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet on this matter. These are very well meaning amendments and I thoroughly approve of the sentiment behind them but I should like to strike a note of caution: I am not sure that they will necessarily work in the real world because rules do not protect people.

I think that we are going to get the same problem as arises with the Health and Safety Executive. I know that applying for CRB information is supposed to be voluntary but colleges will protect themselves defensively by automatically asking for checks on everyone. Such requests will become standard and we will be back where we were. The purpose of the Bill is partly to try to reduce the number of checks being carried out, as they have been blocking perfectly good and well known people working in situations where they might come into contact with children or whatever. We were going so far overboard that something had to be done to roll the situation back, and we have to be careful that we do not end up back where we were.

The other thing is that we must think about how effective all this checking is. We know that several thousand records are incorrect, with people having a black mark against their name because the name given is wrong or whatever, but the trouble is that we do not know who they are. They are being criminalised when they are not criminals at all and have never been in contact with children in any way. They are not even victims of hearsay.

The second problem is that 20 per cent of the people on the register, I am horrified to say, are there as a result of unverified hearsay. That may be perfectly all right, as I expect that a large proportion of those people will have done something wrong. However, what about those who cannot do anything about it because they do not know that someone—possibly for a thousand and one reasons—has given information which could be blocking them?

My final point is about keeping our eyes open. It has to be remembered that in many instances someone without a criminal record will just be someone who has not yet been caught. Therefore, just because they do not have a criminal record does not mean that they are okay, and that is why I think that we have to start keeping our eyes open. The trouble is that we trust too much in box-ticking, and that then also constrains the people who are trying to protect the children—the governors and teachers. My wife is a senior school governor and was recently involved in a case where she had to go to court because the school in question was trying to fire a teacher. This is an example of something happening off the premises. It involved a friend of the teacher who was behaving inappropriately towards the children. The teacher’s union defended the teacher’s right to continue to work at the school, despite the teacher having shown appalling judgment. The school was terrified of losing the case. My wife spent a huge amount of unpaid voluntary time in her busy day learning about the law and how to deal with the case in court and so on because she was going to have to attend the hearing. If she got it wrong, the teacher would be allowed to continue to be in close contact with the children. Therefore, you need to keep your eyes open.

We can often detect the bad eggs but the problem is that employment law does not let us do anything about it. I think that we need to look at how employment law restricts our ability to protect children, because you cannot say to someone, “You don’t fit in. Your face doesn’t fit—we think there’s something wrong about it”; you have to continue employing them. Although it may not be a matter for this Bill, I think that some effort should be made in that direction, rather than just trying to tick more boxes. The databases are inaccurate and, on their own, will not protect children.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Lords Chamber

will amount to, but I doubt whether those assurances can ever protect that trust. The only way that that can be achieved is by not drawing this distinction in this way but by accepting the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, has made some very good points. He asked whether in future people will ask why Parliament was happy that these measures were passed. I can say to the House that I am not happy that they go through unamended. I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said. Given that the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act has not been implemented, what is the evidence that the measures in it are, in fact, disproportionate? As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, suggested, there is evidence that this is not what parents want. There is no great clamour from parents to have these measures changed.

The main point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, was that the measures in the Bill take no account of secondary access. Young people develop a relationship of trust with all kinds of adults in the various settings that are covered by this Bill. Very often young people have the closest friendships not with the most senior people—the teachers, the heads—but with the technicians. In fact, in the school where I used to teach, the technician in the laboratory was the person who was most friendly with the pupils. People like this may not be covered by the Bill as it stands, and yet they have a very good opportunity to build up a relationship of trust with the children. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, has just quite rightly said, they are unlikely to misbehave on the premises, but rather build on that relationship of trust, on which they will rely in some other situation where the child is vulnerable. That is a risk that we cannot take.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. I want to concentrate on the people who are likely to abuse. I declare an interest as the vice-chair of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, of which I have been a trustee for some 20 years. It is the organisation that pioneered the work in grooming and understanding the nature of abusers.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said, there is no doubt that these individuals will see this as open season on children—and I choose my words carefully. I have probably been involved with more of these men than most—some women, but mostly men—and so I know just how deceitful, clever, manipulative and strategic they are. They have a long view. These individuals do not just move in, see a child and think they are going to abuse them; they plan their moves carefully. There has been talk about building trust, but when a teacher can systematically abuse a child in a classroom, as in a recent case, noble Lords should take that as an example of what these kind of individuals can do, and then recognise that there are others right across the country who are thinking at this moment, “Will there be another opening for me to reach a child?”.

I have also worked with victims of that abuse. Imagine it was your son or daughter who had been buggered or raped by one of these people, who had gained their trust. The child or young person involved believes that they are implicated—the trust means that they carry the guilt. This is why often these youngsters will not come forward early, but if you talk to rape crisis lines or the people who deal with adult abusers, time after time they will tell you how the guilt kept them from telling. Research may show that if you talk to young people there is less of it, but many youngsters will not say that it is happening to them because they have that guilt.

As far as supervised access is concerned, anyone who has recently been to any of the youth provision that is around will know how hectic it is—properly so, for young people enjoying themselves—and that “supervision” is a strange word. In fact, you are just about maintaining the peace in some of these organisations. It is very easy for these individuals to make contact with the young people. As has already been said, modern technology makes it even easier.

I can see the Minister sitting there thinking, “We have heard all this before; we have our position”. But I would say to him that if you really care about our nation’s children and what happens to them in their adulthood after these incidents have happened, when they are unable to make relationships, when their marriages break down, when they have problems with their own children, when they end up in mental hospitals or in prison—if you look at any of those cohorts you will find that a lot of these youngsters have been abused—then you will find a way to absolutely ensure that it is not as loose as this. Anyone who is likely to abuse a child must be able to be checked so that certainty can be held by a parent and indeed by the child—and in some ways by the individual themselves because the abuser’s life is destroyed as well if they are not helped to not go through all of this. I hope the Minister will do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked that I should take particular note of what the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said in moving his amendment. I can give him, the House and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, an assurance that I will do that. Our time goes back a long way to when I served with the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, in the former Department for Education and Employment and I hope that we both have a great deal of respect for each other.

I echo the introductory words of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, when he said—this is important—that we cannot completely eliminate risk. We understand that. He also made the point that we must be proportionate in how we manage these matters and accept that we must try to reduce bureaucracy as and where we can. I was grateful for the wise words of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, when she referred to the need to reduce the unnecessary CRB checks that were taking place.

It is important for us to remember that it is a question of balance. It is one that we can never get absolutely and completely right and we will probably have to go on arguing almost until the cows come home before we can resolve these matters. We should try to get it right, but the balance will be perceived differently between one individual and another.

By way of background, I reiterate that the Government believe, as do many outside bodies, that by scaling back the scope of regulated activity, and thus disclosure and the barring scheme, we can strike a better balance between the role of the state and that of employers or other organisations in protecting the vulnerable. Both have a role to play.

Clause 64 and the amendments to it provide that certain activity, which would be within the scope of regulated activity in relation to children when unsupervised, will not constitute regulated activity when it is subject to day-to-day supervision. An example was given to me—I think by my noble friend Lady Walmsley—of a technician in a school. He certainly would be covered. The amendments take us back to the wider scope of regulated activity as it existed under the previous Administration.

[Baroness Walmsley]

In a letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, of 1 February, the noble Lord suggested that an IT technician would not be regulated.

[Lord Henley]

The noble Baroness has caught me out and has got the letter that I wrote. I shall have to look again at the letter I sent to my noble friend and check that. I take back what I said but my understanding is that that is not the case. However, obviously I have got that wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

I am not going to give way to the noble Lord. I am going to get on with my speech. If the noble Lord will allow me to do so, I will continue.

These amendments seek to preserve what we believe is a disproportionate disclosure and barring scheme that covers the employees and volunteers far more than is actually necessary on this occasion for safeguarding purposes. In so doing, it subjects all the businesses, organisations and whatever to unnecessary red tape and discourages volunteering. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, also made the important point of whether it would still be open to schools, organisations and businesses to continue to check volunteers and others. Of course they can, and we will ensure that they are still able to request the enhanced CRB certificate when necessary. We want to emphasise the importance of good sense and judgment by the managers on the ground when they look at this issue. That is at the heart of our proposal and it is why we think we have got the balance right. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, is now looking somewhat quizzical but no doubt we can have further discussion about this between now and another stage.

The right thing is to get the correct balance in how one looks at these things. The noble Lord asked about schools and what they could do. This gives local managers the ability to determine these things flexibly and make extra checks. With the various interruptions I have had, I appreciate the slight muddle I got into earlier over the letter to my noble friend Lady Walmsley. There has been a degree of confusion here.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Will my noble friend give way?

[Lord Henley]

Can I just continue these matters? I hope that I have answered most of the points that the noble Lord put forward and that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I am grateful to my noble friend. Could he just clarify one point? The volunteers we are talking about here are the volunteers who see children on a regular basis. That is correct, is it not?

[Lord Henley]

Correct.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I have one second point before my noble friend rises to answer. I accept that people who are not regulated can still be CRB-checked but the employer cannot get barring information. Unless the person has committed a crime and got on the police records in that way, the employer who voluntarily carries out a CRB check still does not know if that person has been barred. I understand that Sir Roger Singleton claims that 20 per cent of the people on the barred list have never been in contact with the police. Could my noble friend clarify that?

[Lord Henley]

May I write to my noble friend on that final point to make sure that I get it right? I will make sure that I look at my letter with the greatest care before sending it off to make sure that I have got it right. No doubt we will come back to this at a later stage. Meanwhile, I hope that I have satisfied the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and that he is able to withdraw his amendment.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Erroll]

Thank you. I am sorry to have wasted the Committee’s time. In general, I think that a lot of these amendments are very useful, and they should be taken away and looked at hard by the Minister. We should be moving from an opt-in basis to an opt-out basis and avoiding adding costly burdens to the school system.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I support my noble friend Lady Hamwee on Amendment 91 and will make a few comments about other noble Lords’ comments.

Amendment 91 is necessary on the basis of children’s international convention rights: the privacy rights that a child has under Article 8 of the ECHR and Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In particular, Article 12 of the UNCRC says that a child has a right to be heard in decisions that affect them. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has made it very clear that, in order for a child to realise that right, it is necessary that,

“the child be informed about the matters, options and possible decisions to be taken and their consequences”.

Therefore, this amendment is very important especially since, under the proposals before us, the child has the right to refuse consent as well as the parents. It is important that the parents and the child are given the information that they need in order to make an informed decision.

Further to what the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, I think that the reason why the child should have a final veto is because we are talking about very specific information about the child’s body—the fingerprints, the retina, the face or whatever. The child’s body belongs not to the parents but to the child. Therefore, it is very important that appropriate information is provided. Most children are very compliant and they like to co-operate with people who are in authority over them—their parents, their teachers and so on—so it is important to let them know that they do not have to do so. There may well be very good reasons why they should agree to co-operate, but they should also have the right not to do so if they wish.

Let me make just one or two other points. I listened with interest when the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said that schools should know where every child is physically at all times of the day, and I quite agree. However, I think that that should rely on the attention of the teachers, rather than on the likes of CCTV or electronic cards passing through doors. There is a danger that, if there is too much of this sort of thing—electronic ID cards or CCTV—teachers will come to rely on it too much and the teacher’s vigilance will be reduced. We really have to ensure that the technology tail does not wag the human rights dog.

Going back to what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, said about letting people know every year, I agree that the information should be reworded if the system changes or is enhanced in any way, but otherwise I agree with my noble friend Lady Hamwee that it is not necessary to reword it every year. That can be done very easily, given that every school has a website or newsletter or something that gets sent out regularly to parents or to which the parents have access. As long as the school makes sure that, one way or another, the parents have that information in not too much gobbledegook or jargon, so that they can understand what the consequences of this system are, the school will have fulfilled its obligation under our amendment.

It is important to have the information in order to make an informed decision, and we all expect that. When we enter into any sales transaction or credit agreement or any kind of contract, we read the small print—or we need at least to be provided with the small print, so that we can tick the little box saying that we have read the terms and conditions, even when we have not done so. The point is that we have a right to have that information, and we really must be provided with it.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hamwee suggested that I should not talk about feed-in tariffs and solar panels, and I am tempted to follow her suggestion on that. I used to speak a great deal on those issues in my previous job, but I do not often do so now that I am in the Home Office. I am not sure that they are quite relevant to this debate. Possibly we ought to have a new award for relevance in amendments—we could call it the Lord Rosser award for relevance—and I could congratulate the noble Lord on winning the award on this occasion for bringing in feed-in tariffs and solar panels.

--- Later in debate ---

If the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, does not want to interrupt me further, I shall move on to the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lady Walmsley. I understand that Amendment 91 is prompted by a concern that children and parents should understand the important rights that are being afforded by these clauses, but I do not believe that it is necessary to include a specific provision that would place an additional burden on schools and colleges to notify parents and children every year of these rights. Parental consent given under Clause 26 must be fully informed and freely given. That means that schools and colleges should provide parents with all the relevant information to enable them to understand exactly what they are being asked to consent to. This will include notice that any consent given by the parent will extend for the duration of the child’s time at the school or college, unless, of course, consent is withdrawn—because it would be open to parents to change their mind and withdraw it—or the child subsequently indicates that he or she does not want to continue to use an automated biometric recognition system.

[Baroness Walmsley]

If the system is considerably enhanced, does the Minister accept that further information should be provided to parents?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I think this is what lawyers refer to as a question of fact and degree. If the system were, as my noble friend puts it, enhanced considerably and that involved a real change, then there would have to be further approval from the parents and children concerned. If it were a minor or technical change, I think that would not be the case. I shall leave it there, as it is a question of fact and degree as to whether there has been a proper change. I am in the hands of my noble friend Lord Lucas, but I hope that with those explanations of the various amendments he will feel able to withdraw his amendment. I think this debate has been very useful. We might not all agree totally but, as always, it is a question of getting the balance right on these matters, and I hope we have got it more or less right.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I support my noble friend. I believe that this is the first amendment that she has moved in this House, and I congratulate her on that. The idea for Amendment 62, which stands in my name, was taken from sport. As my noble friend has stated, it is very difficult to decide who is actually in charge of a particular part of a sporting activity when it comes to training. In certain sports—Rugby Union is a good example—the sub-coach may be in charge of a session that deals with an aspect of the activity. This is the driving force behind the amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, has pointed out that the Bill goes much wider, and I look forward to clarification from the Minister.

The importance of the amendment is that it points out that in a very big sector—sport is one of the most important sectors for volunteers and one of the biggest individual volunteering sectors—you do not really know, when you are taking part in this structure of coaching, exactly who is in charge at any time. People will be taken away for specific coaching—strength, speed, endurance or technical—and will be out of the supervision and control of the overall body and will be undertaking something that the overall coach may not be able to understand; that may be why they are there.

We have to get to a position where everyone with that degree of power and control has had a full check. That is really all that this is about. I do not criticise the main principle in the Bill, but the fact is that certain people will be removed from a position of power by having someone else in charge of the session, and that should not be the case. For certain types of athlete, a certain type of coach will be in a position of power and control and will dominate bits of their lives, and we have plenty of examples where that has gone horribly wrong and there has been an abuse of trust.

I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell us that our interpretation of what he is saying is wrong, and that the extension of this and other types of activity will be caught by the Bill. If not, we will have to change it, but I hope he will be able to give us some assurances that we are worrying unduly and give us examples of why that is the case.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, Amendments 63 and 66. Amendment 63 would provide a level playing field between schools and colleges in relation to the information that they receive to help them with safe recruitment. The effect of the Bill as it stands is that colleges will no longer be able to access barring information about any newly appointed non-teaching staff, whereas schools will still continue to be able to receive this information.

All children should be given the same protection under the law wherever they study, and therefore all educational institutions should have identical access to criminal records and barring information. The current proposal places further education colleges on the same basis as leisure centres or places of worship, which children attend only occasionally, rather than in the same category as schools, which, like colleges, children attend on a daily basis and where they meet the same staff, both teaching and non-teaching, day in and day out.

This is not a minor matter affecting small numbers of young people. There are nearly 900,000 16 to 18 year-olds studying in colleges, about double the number of the same group attending sixth-forms. This number will rise when the participation age goes up to 17 and then to 18. There are also 63,000 14 to 16 year-olds who spend at least one day per week in a college, and that number is likely to increase following implementation of the recommendations of Professor Alison Wolf.

Colleges are clear that they want the ability to check that the staff they employ do not pose a risk to their students aged under 18. All staff in educational establishments are seen by children as trusted adults. Colleges want to maintain a safe recruitment procedure. The key to this is to ensure that they are able to make informed decisions regarding the suitability of applicants by continuing to receive barring information in addition to the criminal record check. This amendment would remove the anomalous differences between schools and colleges in respect of young people of exactly the same age group. It surely must not be the Government’s intention that a 14 year-old should have the full protection of the vetting and barring system from Monday to Thursday when she is at school and not have such protection on Friday when she goes to college.

The idea for Amendment 66, which is in my name, came to me during a meeting with my noble friend the Minister and my honourable friend Lynne Featherstone, the Minister at the Home Office, for which I am grateful. I am also grateful to the Public Bill Office for assisting me with the wording of the amendment. Lynne Featherstone made it clear that she wants organisations that use volunteers to work with young people to take responsibility for their recruiting practices and not rely entirely on CRB checks. I quite agree, but that is exactly what the sports organisations that were at the meeting do all the time. Indeed, their presence at the meeting was a clear indication of their conscientious care for the safeguarding of the young people engaging in their sport. They conduct their own risk assessments every day on everyone who comes into contact with the children taking part.

However, these organisations, as we have heard, are very concerned about the wholesale removal of many potential volunteers from the scope of regulated activity. They and I are concerned about what is called secondary access. We recognise that much of the abuse does not take place during the activity itself but elsewhere or on another occasion when the abuser takes advantage of the relationship of trust that he has been able to build up with the child during the activity, even where it has been closely supervised. They and I are also very doubtful as to whether any official guidance, however carefully crafted, can adequately identify the level of day-to-day supervision necessary to ensure protection and roles in which the adult cannot build up this relationship of trust.

These organisations are also concerned that although a registered body can ask for an enhanced CRB check on someone in an unregulated role, they cannot get information on whether that person is barred or not. A person can be barred on the basis of important and significant information other than by involvement with the police. Unless the information is known to the police, the organisation taking them on as a volunteer cannot get hold of it and may unwittingly take on someone who is barred and absolutely unsuitable in an unregulated role.

I think I have the solution to this problem. The people best placed to specify which roles within their organisations would give an adult the opportunity to build up that relationship of trust are the management of the organisations themselves. That is what my amendment says. It perhaps picks up the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, about the difficulty of specifying the level of supervision required. These organisations understand the situation on the ground much better than any civil servant sitting in the department writing guidance.

This amendment does exactly what the Government have said they want organisations to do. This is what it says in a document on frequently asked questions that was recently circulated by the Minister:

“The purpose of the change to the scope of regulated activity is two-fold. Firstly, it is to provide greater flexibility to employers and to organisations in using volunteers and staff who are supervised by not requiring them to carry out the checks that apply to regulated activity, but for such employers to have some flexibility in determining the level of vetting that they decide is appropriate in relation to any work. Secondly, it is to place the responsibility for safeguarding children sensibly with those who are directly responsible for the provision of services to children and to encourage them to have in place proper supervision and other safeguards”.

With that in mind, and bearing in mind similar statements made by the Minister in another place, I am very optimistic that my noble friend the Minister will accept my amendment, since this responsibility, which the Government require in the hands of the registered bodies, should be placed in the Bill.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I support the amendment, which was very comprehensively moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Heyhoe Flint, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. I declare an interest as a board member of UK Athletics and the London Marathon and a trustee for the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation. I believe that the definitions are incredibly important. I, too, would like to have some greater understanding of what the supervisory role comprises. In the course of my research I spoke to my own governing body, UK Athletics. It has no evidence whatever to suggest that criminal record checks put off any coaches from being involved in sport. While I accept that the CRB does not solve every problem that we might have in sport, in the early years of CRB checks UK Athletics received many complaints every week, but in the past 12 months it has not received a single complaint about the CRB process. My concern is with the grooming process. Coaches are in an incredibly powerful position. They instruct young people not just on the training programmes but on how they dress, behave and where they go. They are in charge of whether the young people are selected for the team. That might be a club team but it can get people on the path to competing at a higher level.

In recent years, two cases within my own sport have become known to the public. A 77 year-old coach was barred from working with athletes for 15 months. He had been exposed by a local newspaper but was back in a club working in a supervisory role. The danger of coaches coming back into sport after such incidents poses too great a risk to young people. Further, a 43 year-old coach abused a 14 year-old girl. Neither of these incidents took place at a club or training ground but in the coaches’ own homes. The parents of the young people involved trusted the coaches. The latter case came to light when the girl at the age of 15 reportedly ended the affair. The coach in question was sentenced to 17 years in prison. That goes to show how powerful the relationship is between a coach and young person and how easy it is for some people to groom young athletes, whether that process takes place over weeks, months or years.

There have been three very high profile cases in the US. The most recent occurred last week at Pennsylvania State University, where an assistant coach who had been abusing young boys over a number of years was exposed. Although the matter had been reported to the head coach—he has since lost his job because of this matter—and at higher levels in the university, no action was taken. It is easy to say that different circumstances apply in that case as it occurred in a different country within a university system. However, it highlights the power wielded by assistant coaches, head coaches and all coaches over the individuals with whom they work.

I understand that we need to protect the 92 per cent of people who have no CRB record and we have to make the process easier if we are to encourage people to come into sport. I encourage portability and I would never want to stop somebody coaching who may have made a mistake in the past or those whose past actions would have no effect on the children with whom they are working. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, is absolutely right: proportionality is very important. However, governing bodies understand the nuances of clubs, coaches and volunteer structures and how they work. We could be making a big mistake by going too much the other way and exposing children and vulnerable adults to some very unsavoury individuals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I understand the concern, and I think it might be necessary for us to have further discussions on this outside the House. I think my noble friends understand the importance of proportionality—I use that word again. The example I was giving when my noble friend interrupted me was about a college that takes on half a dozen 17 year-olds being affected. It might be that if it was half a dozen 14 year-olds, things would be different. It is a question of balance which, again, we will have to look at. I was about to say that the amendment goes too far; my noble friends agree that it goes too far. They will not press it, but obviously there might be scope for further discussions in due course.

Amendment 66 could also be very wide-ranging in its effect. It sets out that a regulated activity provider may decide whether other activity that it carries out is analogous to regulated activity. It also creates a new duty on the Disclosure and Barring Service to provide information that would otherwise be provided only in respect of regulated activity for any such activity that the provider decides is similar to regulated activity. We have stated that we do not think it is right to provide barred list information for activity that is not regulated activity. We have set out in Clause 64 what activity should be defined as regulated activity in relation to children. This amendment would in effect give regulated activity providers the ability to define any activity as similar to regulated activity and request barred list information from the Disclosure and Barring Service; for example, they could designate someone who has merely the slightest contact with children in a sport or recreation setting, or an employee providing first aid as an ancillary part of their job.

We do not think that Amendment 66 does what it says on the label, as it were. Again, I might have misunderstood what my noble friend is getting at with that amendment. If she would like to have further discussions, I am prepared to do that, although the last time we had discussions it resulted in her bringing forward this amendment, so it does not necessarily always help.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Perhaps my noble friend the Minister will allow me to clarify my thoughts on this matter. The main point I am trying to make is that we are having very great difficulty defining what is meant by the level of supervision that the Government want to put outside regulated activity. The point I am trying to make is that the best people to decide the roles that should correctly be within regulated activity are the organisations themselves. They know whether those roles give the person the opportunity to develop that relationship of trust with the child, and no civil servant sitting in Whitehall can possibly do that. The very fact that we are having such difficulty defining the level of supervision that we mean is an indication that I am right about that.

[Lord Henley]

It may or may not be an indication that my noble friend is right, but I think that further discussions, even if they do result in further amendments, might be appropriate.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I, too, give a general welcome to this important Bill and intend to focus my remarks on Part 5. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Dean of Thornton-Le-Fylde, I feel that a little nuancing may be in order.

I welcome the Government’s intention to streamline the vetting and barring system and to right the wrong about legal gay sex. In particular, I welcome the portable CRB checks, for which there is clearly a need. I have heard many stories of people working in a number of schools, sports organisations or cadet forces who could almost paper a wall with their CRB reports. However, there is a danger of a two-tier system, one free and the other paid for. When the person shows his portable report to an employer, that employer will be able to check online that it is valid and up to date—so far, so good. But this database requires regular updating. Employers can check both the CRB report and whether the person is barred on two separate systems, for each of which they will have to pay a subscription. There will also be a cost to individuals for this portability. I fear that, if the portable check has a cost and the individual check is free, people may choose the latter, thereby frustrating the Government's intention to streamline the system.

We have been approached by a number of highly respected groups that have concerns about the changes to the vetting and barring system. The Sport and Recreation Alliance, which represents 320 governing bodies of sports that work with hundreds of thousands of young people and volunteers, believes that the proposed measures could undermine their effective and efficient centralised systems and transfer significant burdens to volunteers. The Association of Colleges points out that colleges employ 245,000 staff, of which 79,000 are non-teaching. More than 860,000 16 to 18 year-olds study at colleges, whereas only 434,000 of this age group study in schools, yet colleges are to be put under a different regime from schools. When the participation age is raised to 17 and then 18, the number at colleges will probably rise even further. Sixty-three thousand 14 to 16 year-olds currently attend a college at least one day per week, and this number is likely to rise as well, following the Wolf report. Colleges feel that all young people should be given the same protection wherever they study, and that means looking again at some of the proposals as the Bill goes through your Lordships' House.

The problem is that the Bill proposes reducing the amount of regulated activity, which would have the effect of reducing the number of people covered by the vetting and barring regime—all well and good. While this may be desirable for some groups, it must be done very carefully to avoid letting through the net people who would seek to harm children. These people are often very clever and plausible, so we need a system that is cleverer. The key to this is information, so that informed decisions can be made. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, said, the disclosure will no longer be sent directly to the organisation but to the person being screened, who then has to send it on.

There are a number of problems with this that have been raised with us by a number of children's organisations. I understand that the Government have decided to send the reports to the individual because there have, in the past, been some cases of wrong information going to the employer, which is highly undesirable. However, in 2010, only 0.06 per cent of certificates issued were found to have errors, so it would seem that the proposal is hugely disproportionate. Surely this problem could be catered for by sending it to the individual and giving them a period to correct anything that is wrong before sending it directly to the employer. To prevent employers getting timely information because of such a small percentage of errors is over the top.

Organisations raise a number of other problems besides cost. If the individual does not send in the report, the organisation has to spend time nagging them for it. They may want it passed on to a local volunteer, which would have an effect on the relationship between the two and put too much responsibility on that volunteer. The person would have to be suspended while the report was awaited, giving rise to sometimes quite unnecessary and unwarranted suspicion. As the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, said, the FA says that only 15 per cent of its disclosures have what is called “content”—in other words, material that needs looking at, yet that organisation may have to waste its time chasing up the other 85 per cent quite unnecessarily. So it and all the other 320 sports organisations in the alliance feel that Clause 79 as it stands makes their job of protecting young people more difficult and creates opportunities for determined predators to manipulate and frustrate the safeguarding process.

Another issue that has been raised is the extension of non-regulated activity to include work that has “day to day” supervision. The NSPCC, the Children’s Society, Children England, the Children’s Commissioner and others have raised this issue. First of all, we need to get the right definition of “supervised”—that is vital—but we should also bear in mind that even closely supervised people have the opportunity to develop a trusting relationship with young people that could be exploited at other times and in other places.

Another issue is that people will be placed on the barring list only if the ISA, or its successor, has reason to believe that the person is or might in the future want to work with children or vulnerable adults—the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to that. A survey has shown that nearly 97 per cent of the public believe that if a person has been convicted of an offence that is sufficient to bar them they should not be allowed anywhere near children in any capacity—here we are not talking about reputable doctors. It seems unnecessary for the ISA to have to spend its valuable time and expertise considering whether a person might or might not, at some time in the future, want to work in a regulated role.

This brings us to the information on the CRB certificate. Under the Government’s proposals, if employers choose to perform a CRB check on someone working with children outside of regulated activity, they will not be able to see whether that person is barred. Sir Roger Singleton, chair of the ISA, has estimated that one in five people who are barred by it have never been near the police, so their CRB disclosure would not show this. For this reason, I welcome the proposed merger of the ISA and the CRB.

None of us wants children to believe that all adults pose a threat to them—far from it. We all want a simple, no-fuss system that weeds out the bad guys without deterring the good guys who we want to encourage to work with our young people. We will work with the Minister as the Bill goes through this House in order to produce such a system that does just that: get the balance right. Currently, as I said, I believe that a little nuancing is required.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

As my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, I have an amendment in this group—Amendment 225ZA—which seeks to add to the list of threats to public safety specified in Clause 79 against which the police must devise a coherent strategy a threat to the welfare of children.

The important role that the police carry out in child protection processes was emphasised in the 2009 Laming review. On the second day in Committee on this Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, who is not in his place, spoke about the role of the police in relation to child protection. His comments highlight why my amendment is important. He said that,

“it is important that the standard of the child protection service is maintained. To achieve this will require determined leadership, and police constables should be left in no doubt that they have a continuing and prime responsibility to tackle the abuse, neglect and exploitation of vulnerable children”.—[Official Report, 18/5/11; col. 1421.]

A democratic process for electing police commissioners will not guarantee that the protection needs of the most vulnerable are considered. Many of the people, including all children, who rely on the police for protection will not be afforded the right to vote for the police commissioner. Including this short paragraph in the Bill would give those children a voice. Domestic abuse, rape, child abuse investigation, honour-based violence, the monitoring of travelling sex offenders, female genital mutilation and forced marriages are all areas of policing that are unlikely to be identified as local policing priorities by the general population who will be voting for the commissioner. However, they are vital. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to appear in the manifesto of anyone seeking election to the post of police commissioner. That is the reason why I would like to see this issue specified in the Bill.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, in supporting my noble friend’s amendment—my name is added to Amendment 225ZA—I remind the House that the Home Affairs Select Committee in its December 2010 report, Policing: Police and Crime Commissioners, stated that it saw,

“merit in the suggestion that there be a set of national priorities to which Police and Crime Commissioners should have regard when setting local goals”.

This amendment would help to ensure that child protection is prioritised by police and crime commissioners and would grant the Home Secretary powers through the strategic policing requirement to ensure that that was the case.

The NSPCC strongly supports this amendment and maintains that there should be a provision within the strategic policing requirement to promote the welfare of children as defined in the Children Act. While we are talking about the wider responsibilities that the police and crime commissioners will have and will need to take cognisance of, I should tell the House that I intend to bring forward an amendment on Report that will address the equally important matter of ensuring that victims of crime are properly considered. My noble friend Lady Hamwee has already spoken about victims and I want to reinforce her concerns. Yesterday, I met the Victims’ Commissioner, Louise Casey, and was deeply concerned to hear that victims of crime have absolutely nowhere to go if they wish to make a complaint or, indeed, ask for advice about what they should do. The police can, of course, ignore low-level crime. It is important that the PCC is properly apprised of the responsibility to look after victims of crime as well as the desperately vulnerable children whom this amendment addresses.

Drug Use and Possession: Royal Commission

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I support the call of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for a royal commission on the laws relating to drugs. I would like its remit to be as wide as possible. I agree with him that policy should be evidence-based, as existing drugs policy is an expensive failure and based on ignorance and prejudice. All evidence points to drugs being a health issue. Only bad policy has turned it into a criminal justice issue, a public safety issue and an economic issue.

As a Liberal, I believe that what an intelligent adult chooses to put into his own body should be up to him. However, I cannot imagine why people use drugs when they know the harm that they cause and, of course, we have a duty of care to the young and vulnerable. The matter is therefore no business of government unless, first, users commit crimes in order to feed their habit; secondly, they do harm to other people; thirdly, the market that they create leads to organised crime and violence; and, fourthly, their habit costs the taxpayer money. All those four things are clearly the Government’s business. We should address the matter by way of vigorous fact-finding and taking of independent professional advice.

I shall take the above four points in turn. First, I do not believe that possession for personal use should be a crime. However, stealing is, and should remain, a crime. Addicts steal to buy drugs because illegal drugs are expensive. It is a seller’s market because many drugs are illegal. If addicts could get legal, safe supplies, their habit would be cheaper and safer for them. Most drug deaths occur because the drugs are cut with other substances or their strength is unknown. There is an incentive for dealers to cut the drugs and make more profit. This is the wrong incentive to have in the system.

Secondly, addicts harm other people as well as themselves. Many of those who abuse alcohol get violent. They get into fights on the street and, when they get home, they abuse their wives and children. Their children are not properly cared for because of the money that the addict spends on alcohol. The same applies to the children of drug addicts. I can also imagine the money spent on cigarettes being better spent on food and clothes for children. Perhaps I may ask the Minister whether the remit for the royal commission could include a section on the effect of drugs of all kinds on the lives of the children of addicts. It always amazes me that when drunks and addicts come into contact with medical services no one thinks to ask whether they have children at home so as to get the social services to look into the effects on them.

Thirdly, the market for drugs is primarily responsible for the gun and knife crime on our streets and the enormous amounts of money that attract organised crime. That is very big business but it filters right down into the heart of our communities, including our schools. Children know where to get drugs, guns and knives. Many of those who carry knives say that they do it to protect themselves. They do not realise that carrying a knife makes them even more likely to suffer injury from one. In order to stop our children wasting their lives, we must set up a study to look dispassionately at the facts and international experience and to act on recommendations.

Finally, the cost to the taxpayer of the current bad policy is enormous. At a time when we are trying to pay down the deficit, we must look seriously at this cost and consider how we could get better outcomes for less money. There are wide implications for public policy suitable for consideration by a royal commission. My Government, who were elected with 60 per cent of the vote, should have the confidence to defy the tabloid newspapers. They should get the facts and act on them. We should not be afraid of ignorant, misleading and downright evil tabloid headlines. It is the right thing to do. Please let us do it.