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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 4:"Page 36, line 37, after ““if”” insert ““he has engaged in conduct which, in the expert opinion of an appropriate professional, indicates that””" The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 4, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 5, 8 and 9. The purpose of these two pairs of amendments is to clarify the issue relating to risk of harm. In Grand Committee, my noble friend Lady Walmsley argued that paragraph 5 in Schedule 2, relating to risk of harm, was unnecessary as,"““any assessment of risk of harm must be based on previous behaviour””," and would therefore be covered by the range of behaviour listed in paragraph 3. She continued:"““Conversely, any assessment of a future risk of harm not covered by paragraph 3 must be based on behaviour that has not endangered a child . . . To bar someone from working with children or vulnerable adults on the basis of something they might do in the future will inevitably raise concerns about inappropriate barring””.—[Official Report, 2/5/06; col. GC 183.]" The Minister countered by referring to the letter he had sent to a number of noble Lords on 14 April setting out clarification on the issue of discretionary barring and the risk of harm criterion. He quoted two examples. The first was that of a teacher who had downloaded pornography including within it photographs of fully clothed children in school uniform. When challenged by the police, the teacher admitted that he was sexually attracted by children. But he had of course committed no offence, and there was no evidence of his ever having attempted to involve a child in sexual behaviour. The second example quoted by the Minister was that of a teacher receiving psychiatric help who revealed under treatment that he had a sexual interest in children. In this case, the psychiatrist felt this sufficiently concerning to report it to the authorities under List 99. We would argue in the first case that the teacher’s behaviour in downloading pornography was sufficient to bring him before the IBB under paragraph 3. This picks up on the previous amendment proposed by my noble friend, which the Minister has been good enough to agree to look at quite seriously. We admit, however, that the second case is more problematic as there was no evidence of harmful behaviour of any sort. We assume that the fact that the psychiatrist in this case reported the behaviour under List 99 does not in any sense breach medical confidence; that such behaviour on the part of the psychiatrist is acceptable; and that we should expect psychiatrists in future, under the proposals in the Bill, to do exactly the same. We would be interested to further explore this with the Minister. I return to the issue of evidence of harmful behaviour. The same would be true if the individual concerned had had sexual fantasies involving children even though those had not been acted upon. As the Minister said in his letter:"““We would not wish the IBB to be in a position of having medical evidence in the form of a psychiatric report, for example, which indicates that the individual has a sexual interest in children and may be likely to act in future, but [the IBB would] not be able to consider a bar””." Given those circumstances and the fact that the Minister rejected our original amendment eliminating risk of harm, we have sought to be more helpful in this amendment—not by seeking to remove paragraph 5 but by spelling out the way in which someone can be found to be a risk. As the amendment makes clear, the individual concerned must indulge in behaviour which, in the eyes of a professional, indicates that he might in future be at risk of harming children or vulnerable adults. Amendments Nos. 5 and 9 would spell out what sort of professional that might be. The advantage of this formulation is that it is much more specific about how risk of harm should be interpreted. We remain of the opinion that the wording in the Bill is too loose and imprecise and risks being open to abuse. I beg to move.