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.