Disclosure and Barring Service

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on securing this debate on an important issue that probably affects many more people than today’s turnout suggests.

I have a few short remarks—I will not speak for long—about my constituents’ experience of the Disclosure and Barring Service over the past year, which has not been good. The delay in issuing DBS certificates is not just an administrative problem; it can cause people to turn down work or to lose an income on which they previously relied. It is vital that the delays in processing applications are brought under control.

Like other hon. Members, I have had many cases in Manchester, Withington of people who are ready to work but who are left waiting, sometimes for months, for their DBS certificate to be processed. These are people who have worked hard to find a job and have been successful at interview but who find themselves in an administrative limbo that means that, in the worst cases, they cannot take up the job. I will highlight a couple of cases that show the impact of such delays.

The first case is of Nazim Uddin, a taxi driver in my constituency who submitted his DBS renewal application on 4 June, well in advance of the September date when his hackney carriage licence expired. He eventually received his certificate on 28 September, 120 days after his application and after his licence had expired.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on securing this debate. My constituent had a 94-day wait. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) agree that that is an awfully long time to wait and could have a detrimental impact on this individual’s financial situation?

[Jeff Smith]

I absolutely agree. The case is similar to that of Nazim in my constituency. Despite my office raising the issue both with the DBS and with the Government, he became unable to work because his licence expired, which understandably caused him and his family a huge amount of stress and some financial hardship.

The second case is of Angela Gallagher, a constituent of mine who lost a job as an occupational therapist because her DBS certificate was so delayed. She spoke to me about her constant phone calls to the DBS for updates only to be told to be patient and that the DBS was working through the backlog. She could not understand why, after she had been offered a job, the system was putting such obstacles in her way. She described how it affected her family’s finances—at the time, she was forced to sign on to out-of-work benefits—and how her mental health was affected by the stress caused by the delay and by her inability to access the job.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point and an excellent speech. One of my constituents told me how, although she knew there was nothing in her background that could possibly come up, the stress of waiting made her worry that somebody had made something up about her that was going to come to light. Waiting for weeks and weeks for a resolution added to her mental ill health.

[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.