Volunteering Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Friday 10th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. My Bill is designed to find such a simple solution. Clause 1 would establish a fit and proper person certificate. If an organisation or individual wanted to take on a volunteer, instead of having to get a criminal record check, they would be able to accept a declaration from the volunteer that they do not have a criminal record or any convictions. In the case of somebody under the age of 18, such a statement would have to be countersigned by a parent or guardian. Such a statement would, by definition, be up to date. A person could provide one this week to volunteer for reading in London and another next week to work with a diving company or the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Criminal record checks do not necessarily identify someone who is weird at all, but just whether someone has a criminal record. Most of the people who wish to do harm are well under the radar because no one knows about them until suddenly they do something. I absolutely agree that criminal record checks are totally inappropriate in volunteering. We must get rid of this red tape so that people who want to help young people, for example, can do so almost instantly.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I remind hon. Members that when addressing the House, they are supposed to turn to address the Chair and not face backwards. That may seem odd, but it helps with the proceedings of the House.

[Bob Stewart]

I am very sorry.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. People want to be able to get on with volunteering very quickly and with the minimum bureaucracy. Even if there are criminal record checks, what does that prove?

In the last week, there was the most horrific account in one of the national newspapers of a worker at a nursery who filmed the rape of a toddler and was involved in countless other ghastly offences. The nursery had been inspected by Ofsted some five weeks before the individual was arrested. The inspection concluded that the nursery offered a “safe and secure” environment for children, with

“appropriate recruiting and vetting procedures”

for staff. When challenged about what had happened, the spokesman for Ofsted said, I thought rather wisely:

“Inspection can only ever provide a snapshot of a nursery on the day of inspection.”

It can provide only a snapshot of what the inspector is shown or sees. The spokesman emphasised:

“It is the nursery’s responsibility to ensure it takes the necessary action to keep children safe and well looked after.”

My Bill would give that responsibility fairly and squarely to the people who recruit and supervise the volunteers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart]

I am very much looking at the Chair, and I am not going to look behind me, Madam Deputy Speaker. In fact, I am going to keep my eyes permanently on you.

[David Wright (Telford) (Lab)]

Get on with it.

[Bob Stewart]

And I will get on with it. I am a 61-year-old father of young children, and I want to take my children from school to sports matches, but I am told by the school that I have to have a CRB check to take two or three people in my car. I am hoping that this sort of red tape can be done away with. I think that I am a fit and proper person.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

You’re a Tory MP.

[Bob Stewart]

I resent that remark from the hon. Gentleman. I hope that this sort of red tape will stop.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful once again for my hon. Friend’s support.

The Bill would reduce bureaucracy and costs, and promote volunteering. If for some reason—I am sure there may be all sorts of technical reasons—my hon. Friend the Minister cannot accept the Bill, perhaps because it is inadequately drafted, it would be possible to introduce new clauses on Report of the Protection of Freedoms Bill to deal adequately with these concerns. The Government have—this is the substance of my remarks—made some welcome statements pointing in the right direction of reducing the burden of bureaucracy, and have said on a number of occasions that they do not want people who volunteer to be viewed as suspects until proved otherwise, and that they want to encourage as much volunteering as possible.

Clause 2 makes some technical changes to ensure that those under 21 would not have to get criminal records checks in any circumstances and that the Police Act 1997 would not apply to volunteers, but only to paid employees.

Having said all that, and being grateful to all my hon. Friends who have shown support for the Bill, I move that it receive its Second Reading.