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.