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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall be fairly brief. To speak last in a debate on such a complex Bill is not easy, particularly if one was planning to propose a rather heterodox approach, out of line with those which have been advanced by other noble Lords, with all of whom I agree. I wish simply to make an additional point, but I believe it to be important. Of course the Children Act 1989 says that the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration. Of course it should be the paramount consideration of all legislation to protect children. I fully support the principle enshrined in this Bill. We must protect children from abuse and from significant harm by those who work with them. I congratulate the Government on bringing the Bill forward, but we must also recognise that it is crucial to avoid frightening away adults from the caring professions looking after our children. We must also be fair to those adults. My concern is that if we are to protect the nation’s children, we need enough good staff to provide that care. I am not comfortable with this Bill. I find it confusingly drafted and uncertain in meaning. I shall be helped by the letter received—only a few hours ago, unfortunately—from the noble Lord about the appointment of the board. It has also been helpful to hear what other noble Lords have said about the Bill. I understand it better now than I did, but before I came into the debate I wrote that the Bill seems to give the Secretary of State, through regulations and through the powers he has to appoint the barring board and the tribunal, the power effectively to terminate the career of any adult working with children. That is on the basis not of a court decision, but of suspicion or allegations, which cannot necessarily be verified. I recognise the delicacy of the situation. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, made an extremely important intervention that touches upon the point that I am making. The decision that the board makes cannot be challenged in the courts except on a point of law. I made a note that that might be an abuse of human rights, but it is not human rights that I am concerned about. I am concerned that the threat of this bar could have an unintended consequence for the recruitment and retention of well motivated staff. There is already an acute shortage of good quality and well trained professionals in social services, the health-visiting profession and residential care, to mention but three. The Government have important plans to extend caring services, including thousands of new children centres and thousands of new extended schools. Brilliant. Those are excellent plans, but they will all need additional staffing. Human resources are going to be needed. If a career in those services becomes too risky, staff shortages could result. If they did, the last case might well be worse than the first. More danger and harm might be created for children. I do not want to delay the House, so I am only going to touch on some of the aspects of the Bill that seem to me to need attention. Some have already been touched on by others. I am not happy about the no claim for damages clause. Not even in cases of negligence, malice or malpractice? Also, Clause 41 seems to conflict with Clause 2(6). In Clause 4 is the issue of appeals, but why only appeals on a point of law? Surely the most important issue in most such cases is false accusations. Those are a matter of fact, not of law. It is on false accusations that there is a need for the possibility of an appeal to the courts. Nearly every noble Lord who has spoken has mentioned Schedule 2 and the problem of ““harm””, which is not defined. I agree that it probably should be the same definition as the interpretation of ““significant harm”” in the Children Act 1989. If it is, let us say so. Any certainty that we can get in the definition of what we are talking about will increase the confidence that professionals can have about what they are allowed and not allowed to do. It will increase the uniformity of judgment across the country and make the list a great deal fairer and more effective. What do the Government mean by,"““likely to endanger a child””" or ““risk of harm”” or ““relevant conduct”” in paragraph 4 to Schedule 2? These are dangerously vague concepts. That vagueness represents a threat to professionals. What is the threshold of risk? As some noble Lords have said, Barnardo’s and the NSPCC have drawn attention to the need for a much clearer definition of thresholds for barring. The NSPCC states:"““The criteria and threshold against which people are barred must be at the appropriate level—neither too high nor too low. We are concerned that this has not been specifically set out on the face of the legislation. We would like to see disqualifying factors clearly laid out””." I thoroughly endorse that comment. Finally, Clause 42 raises the important issue of families. We shall have to have another look at that. Perhaps I have read the measure wrongly, but it seems to me that a man who has, for example, sexually abused a child in the family could not be put on the list although it might be most appropriate that he should be. Without compromising the protection of children, what are the Government going to do to protect professional adults who work with them?