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.