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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [HL]

I speak in support of Amendment No. 64A, which follows on nicely from the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. The amendment concerns moderators in chat rooms and other places in the virtual world where children meet. We are seeking to add to Schedule 3, which concerns regulated activity. It is very welcome that Schedule 3 already mentions the need for chat room moderators to be CRB checked as a minimum safeguard. As the noble Baroness has mentioned, in chat rooms and places on the internet where children congregate, moderators will inevitably have access to personal details about children and young people; they will have access to personal information that could make those children and young people very vulnerable. The problem that we face relates to the fact that the internet is a global medium. A company that provides chat rooms may well employ moderators who are CRB checked in the UK, but they may also employ moderators across the world—in the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, the Indian subcontinent and other European countries. The amendment does not say that such companies should not employ moderators from outside the UK; that may be going too far. However, we must recognise that it is entirely possible that the moderators may originate in countries where the framework that we have does not exist or where, even if it does exist, we would not have access to it anyway. So, the amendment would, at least, allow us to alert parents and users of the chat rooms and sites by stating on them that they are being moderated from outside the UK jurisdiction and that therefore the moderators may not be CRB checked.