Disclosure and Barring Service

James Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for securing this debate. This is an important matter and something that we perhaps come across even more in London than elsewhere. I am a barrister and have dealt with a number of cases where the police have resisted challenges to DBS refusals. I have also gone through a DBS check myself as a school governor—I am pleased to say that the check was negative.

Like the hon. Lady, I have received correspondence about DBS checks in my postbag and inbox. Teachers, nursery workers, care providers, charity workers, taxi drivers and even members of the police and the security services have to go through these checks and have suffered delays. Some people, particularly those who have been offered short-term or temporary work, have had their offer of work disappear because they simply have not received their clean bill of health from the DBS quickly enough.

DBS checks and the DBS system are, of course, vital, as the hon. Lady recognises. There are two elements: the DBS has to issue the certificate, and the individual police force has to feed in the information for the DBS to assess. That leads to two potential areas where delay can creep in and, as she says, that is not acceptable for people who make such applications.

There were problems with the Metropolitan police when the hon. Lady and I were first elected, and the Government posted a statement on their website in October 2015 acknowledging that there were problems and that there was a backlog where the service standard of 60 days had not been met. Steps have been taken to reduce that backlog, and every application that went over the 60-day service standard is automatically escalated. I have seen a reduction in the number of cases that have come to me as a local MP, but the problem plainly has not gone away. The cases are still coming, just not in the same volume. I am sure the Minister will be able to update the House on the steps that have been taken.

A twin-track application process that allows for urgent applications where there is a job offer on the line or where someone is starting work early should be considered, but in most cases the guidance is that people should make their application well in advance, knowing that it will take a long time to process.

There are cases where individuals want to challenge a refusal by the DBS, and they will either make that challenge to the DBS via judicial review or they will try to challenge a police force for providing the information, which can sometimes slow down the process. Overall, this is an important area that police forces and the DBS have to get right because of the potential consequences for the vulnerable adults and children who use the services provided by employees who are required to have DBS checks. The checks are also important for employers of people who want to work in these sectors, and whom we need to work in these sectors, because we do not want people to be turned away by an overly onerous and lengthy process.

This issue has frequently come up in my postbag, and I commend the hon. Lady for bringing it to the House’s attention. I commend the Government for the steps they have taken to expedite the process, particularly with the Met police, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister what further steps can be taken and what options there might be for expediting the process, particularly where there is a time-sensitive application.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeff Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is an extremely stressful process for a person stuck in this limbo.

[James Berry]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important for the DBS to give an accurate estimate of the time the process will take, even if it is a very long period of time, so that people do not suffer the additional stress that the hon. Member for West Ham (Lynn Brown) just mentioned?

[Jeff Smith]

I agree absolutely that in principle we should be trying to do that. I appreciate that the DBS itself is not always the cause of the delay, because the backlog is often at the police checking stage, and that the DBS often cannot give a proper estimate of the delay with any real accuracy. Even for people who live in Manchester, the backlog is often down to delays from the Metropolitan police, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood pointed out. Constituents of mine who have lived in London have come to me with real problems with the Met’s performance. Let us face it: the Met does not have a good record on processing the system properly.

The Met backlog is a real problem. Government cuts to the police have left the Met unable to cope with the increase in demand; since 2010, it has lost 1,300 staff. That is not as many as the Greater Manchester police—we have lost more than 1,800 since 2010—but it is tough all the same. Those cuts have clearly affected the internal flexibility that the Met needs to deal with changing demands on the force. Ministers have said that the Government are training extra staff to cover the gaps, but there will be a significant time lag before we see quicker turnaround times. In the meantime, people across the country who rely on the Met to process DBS checks will suffer delays, leading to the problems I have outlined. Those problems have shown that cuts to police funding are a false economy because their consequences have been felt right across the public sector. It is not just about police forces; those police forces are struggling to complete the necessary checks on people whose job is to safeguard children and the vulnerable.

Care home associations have said that delays are forcing care homes to recruit expensive agency staff. The Royal College of Nursing has reported students turning down places because of the delays, as we heard earlier in the debate, or losing their bursaries for the academic year. We have all heard examples from schools, hospitals and childcare providers that show that the delays are making already difficult recruitment issues even more difficult. If there is a lesson to be learnt, it is that the Government cannot just cut police numbers without expecting problems down the line, not only for the police but across the public sector, for businesses and services, and most importantly for constituents such as Nazim and Angela who have experienced these problems through no fault of their own.

I ask the Minister to think about several things. First, will she give serious consideration to how to stop these delays? Secondly, we have not fully discussed how constituents can get redress for their difficult experiences; as I understand it, redress is available if the DBS is at fault for the delay, but if the police force is at fault, there is no redress or compensation for the people who suffer. Surely that situation needs to be rectified. Thirdly, I reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood about the possibility of a portable certificate; obviously it would need safeguards, but it would be a major contributing factor to a solution. Finally and most importantly, a process must be put in place to escalate cases in which jobs are at risk and to get them dealt with very quickly to ensure that our constituents around the country can access the jobs they need in a timely fashion. I thank Members for listening.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on securing this important debate and on her excellent speech on behalf of her constituents. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) for joining the debate and for again representing his constituents with such clarity and integrity.

As my own mailbag can attest, delays occurring in the Disclosure and Barring Service are making life exceptionally difficult for many workers in this country. Frankly, Minister, we need to sort that out. As we know, the DBS enables employers to make safer recruitment decisions by identifying candidates who may be unsuitable for certain types of job. The service plays a vital role in keeping our young people and vulnerable adults safe. Having access to DBS certificates is essential for people who want to pursue careers working with vulnerable people and groups, and for organisations such as hospitals and schools, which need to recruit staff.

One of my constituents, a qualified teacher working with children with special educational needs, informed me that her DBS check had been stuck with the Metropolitan Police Service for three months, despite the fact that it has a target of 18 days. Since her DBS expired in February, she has been offered a number of roles but has been unable to start work because of the delay. Without work, she is now in arrears with her rent, her car insurance and other monthly bills.

In May 2016, it was reported that 10% of the staff of one primary school in north London were unable to fulfil their roles because of the delays. The headteacher said:

“Under official guidelines you can do a risk assessment based on the DBS from someone’s previous job, but they have to be supervised at all times…In one case we had to wait four months for a check to come through. There’s already a teacher shortage in London so this is a headache we could do without.”

That is the real impact of the delays: schools with teacher shortages are unable to recruit staff, unemployed teachers are falling into debt and employees are left waiting anxiously for months. That is simply not good enough.

These delays cause real anxiety, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington attested. Employees are expecting to hear back within eight weeks, and as the weeks pass they become really anxious that the delays are the result of a complication with their check. The problem is made worse by the fact that application processing times seem to be entirely arbitrary. People in that situation understandably fear that their job offer will be withdrawn. I also know from my constituents that people from the same area who apply at the same time will sometimes get radically different response times.

[James Berry]

The hon. Lady will be probably aware that in some of these cases, the fact that an individual has moved a number of times and a number of different police forces have to be contacted can explain the longer delay, even if they have applied at the same time as another constituent. Six police forces having to do checks will involve a much longer process than just one.

[Lyn Brown]

I accept that point, but the hon. Gentleman must accept that that is a symptom of living in London. My constituents have not all lived in West Ham all their lives; they have travelled from all over the country, and yet they are still given an arbitrary response time. I would really like the Minister to explain whether there is a system for prioritising some checks over others—or does she have another explanation, as the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) does, for the vastly differing response times that constituents experience?

The DBS states that it aims to deal with 95% of applications within eight weeks. It is currently at 93.8%, which is below that target but not far off. However, that figure masks what is actually a deep problem in some parts of the country: the severe delays that kick in when some police forces get involved in the process. As we know, there are five stages to a DBS check. The majority of delays occur at stage 4, when individual police forces check their records to make sure that the potential matches are not missed.

Police forces have targets to process 85% of applications within 14 days and 90% within 18 days. In July 2016, the Metropolitan Police Service hit its 14-day target just 14% of the time. Things do not get much better for its 18-day target, which it met just 19% of the time. In April 2016, the then Home Office Minister, the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), revealed in a written answer that the Metropolitan Police Service took on average 85 days to carry out stage 4 of the DBS process.

Let us recap: the whole process from stage 1 to stage 5 should take eight weeks. However, the Metropolitan Police Service is taking an average of 85 days to do its part of the process—that is just over 12 weeks. In those circumstances, it is literally impossible for the DBS to meet its eight-week target because one of the five stages is taking longer than the total target time. No wonder I, as a London MP, receive so many complaints about the service from my constituents.

Having researched the details, it is of little surprise to me that the Metropolitan Police Service is struggling. Just look at what has happened to its support staff, which have been cut by a third since the Conservatives came to power: down from 14,179 in 2010 to 9,521 in 2016. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood rightly said, those cuts have had consequences. Under the strain of falling staff numbers, a substantial backlog of applications has emerged. All police forces have a target of having no more than 12 days’ worth of work on DBS checks at any one time, meaning that if no new applications were received, police forces would be able to deal with all existing applications within 12 days. The most recent figures available show that it would take the Metropolitan Police Service 60 days to complete the pile of DBS applications it is sitting on, and only if no more came in. That is five times the target.

This is not only a London issue. In Nottinghamshire, the 14-day target for stage 4 of the process is currently being met just 7% of the time, while in North Yorkshire the target for both 14 and 18 days is being met just 12% of the time. In fact, according to the Government’s July 2016 red, amber or green assessment, 17 of the 50 forces were judged to be providing a second-rate service or worse. Something has to be done to improve the situation, and fast. We cannot have potential employees and potential employers waiting for so long. I want to know what the Government will do about it. It is unfair on both sides and it is causing financial damage.

This is not a new phenomenon. Research by the House of Commons Library revealed that the Met has not hit its 14-day target since February 2008. That is more than eight years for which my constituents, and other people living and working in London, have had to put up with a substandard service. For six of those years, the Minister’s party has been in government. A Government press release from earlier this month stated that they have been

“working very closely with the Met to help improve performance and good progress is being made to reduce applications in progress.”

If that is true, it is very welcome, but I am yet to see any evidence that good progress is being made. The most recent figures show a service struggling to keep up with demand, and people having to wait far longer than they should to have their applications processed.

Will the Minister inform the House of precisely what steps the Government have taken in the short term to help police forces to clear their backlogs? Will she also tell us how long she anticipates it will take for the service to return to an acceptable level? Some undefined time in the future is simply not good enough when people’s livelihoods and careers depend on their being able to get these checks carried out promptly.

The police missing their time targets is not the only problem. The DBS has failed to meet its accuracy targets in each of the last three months as well. I am told that the failures are administrative, such as spelling a name wrong or placing an inaccurate date of birth on the form, but that is not clear from the DBS business plan, which explains the performance indicators, because an inaccurate check is not defined. I am not told that it is administrative; I am not told that it is a small issue; and I am not reassured that inappropriate people are not getting DBS certificates, or that people who should be given certificates are not being refused. Will the Minister assure us today that the accuracy failures are largely administrative? Can she give us a figure for them, or a percentage? Can she give us any reassurance whatever? Will she prove to the House that inappropriate people have not been receiving DBS certificates to which they are not entitled?

I do not want to downplay the importance of administrative failures. They need to be rectified because they really do have knock-on effects. Take another of my constituents, who contacted me earlier this year about her DBS check. She informed me that after waiting six months for her application to be processed, her certificate, when it finally arrived, was inaccurately filled in, as it failed to include a previous name. As a result of delays and inaccurate information, my constituent was unable to take up employment as a childminder and has lost significant earnings. These are legal documents and they need to be filled in as accurately as possible so that people can use them.

Will the Minister inform the House of the steps the Government have taken to make sure that the accuracy of barring decisions improves in future? I really would like to be reassured that she takes this matter seriously. My hon. Friends the Members for Dulwich and West Norwood and for Manchester, Withington asked a number of pertinent questions in the course of their contributions. They asked for detail, and I hope the Minister will be able to provide it today, but, if not, will she commit to answering us in writing within the next week or so?

Let us face it: the longer delays to DBS checks are the result of cuts to our police services. The Metropolitan Police Service and other struggling police services are simply overburdened with the number of applications they are receiving. They do not have the resources they need. We know that since 2010 the Met has seen police support staff cut by 33%, and today we have heard about the reality of those cuts: poorer services and people missing out on jobs. That is, I am afraid, the Government’s record on the DBS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Lady raises a couple of points. The data I am referring to are the most recent. We will get another tranche of data this month, so she will be able to see for herself what the information is.

On how the Metropolitan police or any other police force is funded, the fact is that the DBS funds police units to do police checks. Whether they have received adequate funding over a certain period of time is a fair question. I have been to Liverpool and had conversations with the DBS, and I am monitoring the situation on a weekly basis. I will go back to the DBS to make sure that all the recovery plans we have discussed are implemented. I can say no more to reassure the hon. Lady about how seriously I take this issue. I and my officials are focused on it, and I am regularly involved with the DBS to make sure we tackle it.

As I have said, I visited the Metropolitan police unit recently. The hon. Lady has acknowledged that significant extra resources and changes in leadership have been put in place, and the unit is processing 20% more applications than it receives. That gives me some confidence that it will reduce the backlog over time. If the unit was processing only the number of applications that it was receiving, we would not have any confidence that it was dealing with the backlog, but it is, and 20% is significant. I am therefore confident that it will make significant progress.

It is important that the DBS continues to work closely with the Metropolitan police and any other police forces that are having difficulties to make sure that they are given the necessary resources to do the job. I know that the Metropolitan police take the matter seriously. I have been to Sidcup and spent time with the team there, and they talked me through what they were doing about it. They know full well that I will be back again to personally check up on their progress.

I will go through the range of other questions that hon. Members asked me on issues from portability to escalation and redress.

[James Berry]

Although DBS checks are clearly a weak spot for the Metropolitan police, I am pleased to hear what my hon. Friend the Minister is doing personally to ensure improvements. It is important not to lose sight of the fact that, over the past six years, we have seen a sustained fall in crime in this country, largely due to the fantastic work of our police forces, particularly here in our capital, including in Kingston, which is now the safest borough in London.

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. Getting the checks right is an incredibly important crime prevention measure. The top priority is to deal with the possibility of people doing harm to vulnerable children and young people. Frustrating as delays can be, the safety of individual people must be uppermost, and it must have played its part in those cheering results showing a drop in crime.

To return to the questions that were put to me, employers and individuals are encouraged to use the update service. An online subscription service allows individuals to demonstrate that their DBS certificate is up to date. That would prevent their having to make multiple re-applications. With the applicant’s permission, organisations can check a certificate online, free of charge, which allows them to see whether any relevant information has been identified since the individual’s certificate was last issued. There are more than 800,000 subscribers to that service. I encourage the hon. Lady to ask constituents to register for the online service at the same time as they apply for DBS checks. If they move jobs, they will not have to go through repeated checks, because once they sign up for the service the employer, charity or wherever they were working could freely go online to see whether any information needed updating.

I may have got the wrong impression, but the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) seemed to be telling me that the certificate of one of her constituents had expired. It is simply not possible for certificates to expire because they do not have a set period of validity. If that constituent were signed up to the updating service they really would not be affected. It is important to set the record straight.

When there are delays, employers can, during the wait for DBS check results, consider whether it would be appropriate for an individual to begin work, with appropriate safeguards, depending on the nature of the role and the assessment of potential risk. For example, DBS Adult First can be used in cases where, exceptionally, and in accordance with the Department of Health terms, a person can be permitted to start work with adults before the certificate is obtained. There are appropriate ways of safeguarding while people are waiting so that they can avoid the dreadful situations that have been described today, where they cannot take up jobs, and where they incur financial hardship, and where organisations miss out on good employees.

Customers can track their application online and call the DBS helpline for support. There were questions about how the DBS prioritises applications. It does so in date order, but if an applicant can make the case that there will be undue hardship and they will suffer in some way, the DBS will do everything it can to expedite an application. It will contact a police force and do all it can to reduce the time.

I want to clarify the point about redress, which was mentioned. The DBS will consider cases. If there has been hardship and the DBS can be proved not to have acted appropriately, there is a system of redress. There is not a nationwide system for the police, but individual police forces can be held accountable. If they have not acted in a timely and appropriate way, redress can be considered.

I hope I have covered all the questions. I am not at all complacent. Getting the service right is central to protecting the most vulnerable people in society, and I am determined to do that. I understand that we need an efficient process to enable people to take up the sorts of jobs we need them to do. I shall continue to monitor what happens on a regular basis. As I have said, if any colleague wants to come into the Department and go through the matter with me in more detail, they are welcome to do so.