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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, have substantial reservations about this list of exemptions because it encompasses precisely those areas where there is very real vulnerability. I personally am not a great fan of complementary and alternative therapies, though I believe many people are. What all these therapies are about, aside from the frequent requirement to lay hands on individuals as part of the treatment or to work with their minds, is that the person who has put their trust in such a therapist believes, first, in the therapy and, secondly, in the therapist. Not checking those individuals would leave an extraordinarily dangerous loophole. Subsection (1)(d) refers to,"““an organisation which provides recreational, social, sporting or educational activities””." When I was involved in local authority social services, some of the most difficult cases of individuals causing problems related to children and vulnerable adults arose in those areas. They are precisely the areas where checks of some sort are required. I understand the concern about the volume of work associated with this provision, and I appreciate some organisations’ concern that suddenly they will be required to comply with this. I have to say that I am not at all convinced by the second argument. Many such organisations provide services, particularly those for children, for which checks are already required. This would merely extend the range. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, referred to the position of the Church and the checks now made on Sunday school teachers. Organisations are now familiar with these processes. I do not believe that this would be a shocking new development with which organisations would have difficulty. I understand, too, the difficulties associated with suddenly placing an enormous new requirement on a system that may well be overstretched by all the other things we have talked about during our debates. The way to resolve that is not to produce a list of exemptions, but to recognise the difficulty and ensure that implementation is phased over a period long enough to allow the IBB to get under way and establish robust systems—I am sure that they will not be robust immediately—and to allow organisations for which this will be wholly new and uncharted territory to understand what is required of them. Although under Clause 14(4) the Secretary of State can amend the list, my concern is that if we simply have a list of exemptions as is contained here, an amendment to the list will happen only once there has been some appalling tragedy or some appalling series of incidents. I would much rather that we approached this, not operating on the basis of this list of exemptions until something goes awfully wrong, but on the understanding that, although this is the direction we need to go in, we should perhaps take a little time to get there. There should, therefore, be a major change to this list of exemptions, and, when setting an implementation timetable by order after the Bill has been passed, the Government should look very carefully at what is a feasible timetable, both for organisations that have to get used to a new system—I suspect it will not be quite as many as people fear—and for the IBB to get its systems strong enough to cope with what I accept could be a substantial number of incidents.