Schedule 2
Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Parmjit Dhanda (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Children, Young People and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Gloucester, Labour)
Hon. Members are right. This debate lasted for some hours in another place. This group of amendments seeks to provide a definition of harm to cover a range of circumstances in the Bill. They define the term for the purposes of referrals by employers, local authorities and regulatory and supervisory bodies to the IBB. The definition would also apply where the IBB was considering an individual for inclusion in a barred list. The meaning of the word “harm” is clearly central to many elements of this Bill. On that we are all agreed. With that in mind, I fully sympathise with the intentions of hon. Members in tabling the amendments, but they do not take us beyond the point that we have reached already with our proposals for the meaning of the term. I shall explain that in a moment, not least with reference to what the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said about elderly people and finance.
As the hon. Member for Basingstoke said, the definition used in these amendments is taken from section 31 of the Children Act 1989, as amended by the Adoption and Children Act 2002. I would argue that the definition of harm in that section serves a different purpose from the one that we are trying to achieve in the Bill. That section is about care and supervision orders and sets the conditions that must be satisfied before a court grants such an order. The threshold is deliberately defined in that definition as significant harm. We must ask ourselves whether that is what we want to put in the Bill today.
For the purposes of the Bill, however, we want employers, local authorities and others, to refer information to the IBB and the IBB itself to place an individual on the barred list when the conditions set out in the Bill are met. The Bill is concerned with referrals being made and individuals being barred in accordance with the specific thresholds that will underpin the effective functioning of the scheme.
For the IBB to include an individual on the barred list, it must think it appropriate to include them. In other words, the IBB will be required to decide whether an individual’s conduct, or the risk that they may harm a child or vulnerable adult is sufficiently serious for them to be included on the list. The conditions are central to defining the thresholds in a way that is appropriate for the purposes of the Bill, which are different from the purposes of the Children Act 1989.