Clause 62
Policing and Crime Bill
6:30 pm
Alan Campbell (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Tynemouth, Labour)
Thank you, Sir Nicholas. Welcome back to you, too.
This group of amendments is designed to improve the working of the planned new vetting and barring scheme provided for under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and, as indicated by amendment 307, the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups (Northern Ireland) Order 2007.
It aims to improve the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults, and builds on the outcome of a public consultation with stakeholders on the details of the scheme's operation. We propose four main changes.
In amendments 335 and 336 we propose to remove the redundant status of
“subject to monitoring and undergoing assessment”
from the online status check that will be available to employers who employ people in regulated activity with children or vulnerable adults. Undergoing assessment is too sensitive a status to appear in a publicly available IT system. In addition, when people first apply to be subject to monitoring by the scheme, they will inevitably be undergoing assessment for a while, so giving them that status will be meaningless.
Instead, guidance to employers will highlight that though new applications by members of the work force to be made subject to monitoring will be processed quickly, information may still be coming in to the CRB about those people until the associated enhanced disclosure is ready to issue a few weeks after the application. Until then, employers should apply appropriate safeguards in relation to all new applicants as neither they nor the ISA will yet have the full picture. Employers will have a true guide to a person's status through a CRB enhanced disclosure, which will say clearly if the person is under consideration for barring by the ISA.
New clauses 27 and 28 strengthen the notification of employers whose employees may pose a risk of harm to the vulnerable groups. The amendment provides that when the ISA has reached the advanced stage in its consideration and proposes to bar someone from working with children or vulnerable adults subject to their representations, it must notify any interested party who has registered for notification of any change in the person's status in the scheme—normally an employer in regulated activity with the vulnerable groups.
Also, if the ISA is satisfied that any other party has a legitimate interest in the person, it may notify that party that it proposes to bar the person. Such a party might be an employer of a person in regulated activity who has not yet had the opportunity to register his or her interest, because of the scheme's phasing-in period.
A person whom the ISA proposes to bar has eight weeks to make representation, and there might be a further period of time before the ISA is able to make its final decision. We do not believe that it is sustainable for the ISA to be aware of a risk posed by that person during that period but that the employer not be aware. It will be for employers to determine what action it is reasonable and appropriate for them to take in those circumstances, and guidance to employers will advise on what they might do if they receive such a notification.
For example, they might suspend the person or move him to work other than with the vulnerable groups. I stress again that the ISA is at an advanced stage in its process when it makes the notification. It has made a finding of fact and a judgment that it would be appropriate to bar, and has invited the individual to make representation about its decisions.
New clauses 29 and 30 give the ISA an explicit power to provide information to the police about people who come to its notice where that is necessary for the purposes of crime prevention, detection or investigation. Normally, the ISA will receive information from the police. However, there may be exceptional circumstances where the ISA receives information that is unavailable to a particular police force about a person, but the ISA knows that that force has an interest in them and can form a view that they pose a risk of harm. The ISA should then have the power to inform the police in order to prevent crime. The police might then notify any known employer, local children’s services or adult social services, who would be able to take appropriate action if necessary.
New clauses 31 and 32 change the way in which the scheme will process automatic barring. Certain criminal offences, which are set out in secondary legislation, will cause the offender to be barred automatically. Both the 2006 Act and the 2007 order envisaged the CRB finding such offences in the police national computer, and the ISA then simply being required to bar the offender. Practice has shown that life is not so simple, because, in some cases, the circumstances in which the offence was committed need to be checked. For example, in some cases the age of the offender, and, occasionally, the victim, need to be clarified before it can be confirmed whether the prescribed criteria have been met, so an automatic bar should be applied.
ISA case officers—rather than the CRB, whose function is data processing—will establish the details of the circumstances in which an offence was committed. Indeed, the ISA has already started that work under transitional arrangements that were approved by Parliament last November. We need to reflect such practical experience in permanent legislative provisions.