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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s obvious concern. The IMPACT programme is fully operational across all forces, enabling police services to communicate with one another and find out whether a known individual in one force is known by another police service. However, its capacity in relation to the storage of soft information and intelligence will involve a phased development. It will not be fully operational in terms of its full capacity until 2010. However, the police national computer is now able to hold some of that soft information, including information on acquittals, cautions and reprimands. So the vetting and barring scheme that we are discussing today will be able to draw on that information from the police national computer and progressively use the IMPACT scheme, as its capacity expands. But that has to be done in a managed way. Following the Secretary of State’s statement to the House on 19 January, we took immediate further steps to tighten the present vetting system in the run-up to the implementation of the Bill. Under regulations issued last month, Criminal Records Bureau checks have become mandatory for all newly appointed school employees. We intend to introduce further regulations to enter automatically on List 99 anyone who is convicted or cautioned for a sexual offence against a child or for a serious sexual offence against an adult. We have established a panel of independent experts, chaired by Sir Roger Singleton, to oversee the whole List 99 process. The Ofsted review of existing vetting practice in schools, which was announced on 19 January, will be published shortly. As I have said, we will respond immediately to its findings.