Protection of Freedoms Bill

Baroness Heyhoe Flint Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Heyhoe Flint]

My Lords, at the risk of sounding like Little Miss Echo to my noble friend Lord Addington, my interest in the Bill centres on the impact it will have on the sports sector, particularly the work undertaken by national governing bodies of sport, NGBs, to ensure that all participants in sport are given a safe environment in which to play and administer, especially where a vast number of amateurs and volunteers are concerned.

First, I declare my interests as a board member of the England and Wales Cricket Board, an honorary life president of the Lady Taverners, who assist youngsters with special needs to give them a sporting chance, a vice president of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club—13th in the Premiership—and trustee of Wolves Community Charitable Trust.

NGBs such as the England and Wales Cricket Board and the Football Association have the duty to promote and regulate sporting activity in a structured environment. One of the duties they take extremely seriously is the welfare of those who participate in sport. We need to send out a message to parents that their children will be well looked after when they are involved at sports clubs or in other forms of leisure and sporting activity. I therefore support the Government’s work to safeguard vulnerable groups and the reforms set out in the Bill, such as the introduction of portable criminal record checks, which will make life easier for governing bodies which undertake a huge number of checks each year on their employees and volunteers.

I have two concerns, which I know are shared by many on all sides of this House, not least the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol. Concern number one is that Clause 79, on the disclosure of information, has the specific intent to remove the requirement that a person must send a copy of their CRB to a national governing body. Concern number two is that Clause 64, on the definition of regulated activity, aims to reduce the number of individuals who are regulated by excluding those who are subject to day-to-day supervision. The ECB, for example, currently processes vetting checks on all in cricket who work with children, whether these are individual coaches coming from overseas for the summer or long-term volunteers in their sporting community. More than 85,000 people have been checked by the ECB since 2003, when checks were first introduced. As the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, has noted, the Football Association does 35,000 checks a year.

Those who manage these vetting arrangements at the ECB and at other sporting bodies tell me that the changes proposed in the Bill increase the risk of dangerous individuals coming into contact with children. The proposed changes would therefore mean that registered bodies would be denied access to relevant information about all individuals who could pose a risk to children. Bodies such as the ECB currently manage disclosure content centrally with experienced and trained staff, ensuring consistency of decisions across the game. Obviously, the average club-level volunteer does not have such expertise. If, in future, an individual has to show their disclosure to their local sports club rather than to the governing body, there will be two problems. First, someone may have to show that they have a criminal record to their immediate peer group, undermining their privacy and possibly increasing the chances of collusion or of falsifying forms. Secondly, training will need to be provided to local club volunteers on how to handle disclosure content, which will increase burdens on volunteers at a local level and will mean extra costs to NGBs centrally to develop and run this training, thus creating a costly and time-consuming level of bureaucracy. All this would be unnecessary if the governing bodies received copies of the disclosure directly, which is what happens now.

The informal nature of volunteering in sport presents opportunities for individuals to withhold information. As a consequence, it is those types of individuals who pose the greatest risk to children and are likely to be manipulative in their behaviour, yet could still integrate into the club. It is surely not right that those who volunteer in sport, doing so no doubt because they love that sport, suddenly have a working responsibility to become experts on criminal record checking procedures.

Clause 64 amends the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 by narrowing the definition of regulated activity, as my noble friend Lady Walmsley mentioned. Crucially, this would exclude any role fulfilled while subject to the,

“day to day supervision of another person who is engaging in regulated activity relating to children”.

The proposed changes mean that an individual who has been barred would not be prevented from working with children in a supervised role—for example, as an assistant coach at a cricket club, provided that another supervising adult such as a head coach was present, because that assistant coach will no longer be liable to a full criminal record check.

With respect, the new arrangement fails to understand the way in which sports clubs are run. The House needs to note that, for example, many sports coaches, club minibus drivers and match organisers in a sports club could be considered as assistants if the club has a head coach, but unless the head coach were working alongside every volunteer assistant at every session it would be wrong to classify these people as assistants. I ask the Minister to consider how a sports club is to interpret the concept of supervision when on summer or winter evenings successful cricket clubs and junior football clubs may have hundreds of children being coached across a spread of sports fields and pitches. Does the head coach actually spread himself or herself to supervise every one of these sessions and all the volunteer assistants involved? That is an unfair burden to place on the sports club and one that may deter volunteering as well as reduce protection.

I hope that these concerns are well understood. My request at this stage of the Bill is that perhaps the Minister may agree to meet a delegation on this issue, including national governing bodies of sport, the Sport and Recreation Alliance and even Girl Guiding UK, which has also contacted me. I humbly suggest that just small amendments to the otherwise excellent Bill would uphold the protections that this House, the Government and all sports bodies and organisations want to see applied in order to safeguard potentially vulnerable groups of sport-loving youngsters.