Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Maria Miller (Shadow Minister (Education), Education; Basingstoke, Conservative)
It is indeed a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Conway, as it will be to do so under Mr. Martlew.
The Opposition have a strong team to ensure, as the Minister put it, that we have a thorough review of the Bill, given its technicalities and complexities. I am particularly pleased to have on the Conservative Benches my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson), who with his experience and background in education will bring a great deal to the debate; my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), whose expertise in matters to do with children and health are well known to many in the Committee; and our Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett), who also has great experience that will add to our debate in the next few days. We will be joined this afternoon by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main), who is otherwise engaged this morning. Her background in local government will be of particular use.
No legislation can guarantee the safety of children or vulnerable adults. The Bill covers only one part of the 31 recommendations made by Bichard. That means that while examining it, we must consider how to engender a broader culture of vigilance and support. We must also ensure that we touch on other progress being made as a result of the Bichard report. I am sure that the Minister will want to ensure that the Committee is fully briefed, particularly on the police information systems so critical to ensuring that the Bichard recommendations are fully realised. Data and systems are not the answer; they are simply part of the answer, and we must keep that uppermost in our minds.
The Bill has benefited from a great deal of debate in the House of Lords, and the amendments passed there will be well known to Committee members. They relate to better read-across between the two lists and to malicious allegations. However, the Bill will benefit from further consideration. The focus of the amendments tabled by the official Opposition is the role of the independent barring board, its processes and practices and what we expect of it.
The other area critical to the Bill’s success concerns the need to ensure that there is clarity on the thresholds used when action is to be taken. We shall raise other issues, too, including the use of secondary legislation, which is extensive in the Bill, overseas workers, and exemptions for certain groups. A number of other issues will be drawn out from our amendments and dealt with in detail.
Many of the issues that we have raised through amendments were raised in two specific consultations: the post-Bichard consultation, held last year, and the Department for Education and Skills consultation, which reported in April. The Minister is relatively new to his post but, as he pointed out, he has been thrown in at the deep end and has already debated two Bills with us so far. I will perhaps challenge him on why more heed has not been paid to the feedback that he and his colleagues had from those consultation processes, because if we ask experts their opinion but choose not to take their advice, we risk undermining their trust, their interest and perhaps their help in future. I would be interested in the Minister’s thoughts on that.
I said on Second Reading that the systems that we have in place have too often been unreliable, and research suggests that that statement is correct. We are all aware of the Ofsted report that came out around the time of Second Reading, which found that 90 per cent. of schools were ignoring the scheme to stop paedophiles working as supply teachers. That is coupled with the Commission for Social Care Inspection report, which showed a widespread failure to use safe vetting procedures that are already in place; 40 per cent. of children’s homes were not using those procedures. It is our responsibility today to ensure that we weave out of the Bill the opaqueness that is in it and that we add clarity. We hope that we will succeed in doing so through the amendments tabled.