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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

The Bill makes no distinctions whatsoever in terms of the requirements for checking whether an applicant is a British or foreign national. However, we certainly have more to do in enabling employers, as far as we can, to access and check the criminal records of people in certain foreign countries. The Criminal Records Bureau already provides an information service—it is now an online service—for employers on how to do that. The CRB is working very closely with the countries that send the largest numbers of people to the education sector, and it is developing protocols where possible. The hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) is right, however, to suggest that if some countries outside the EU—and outside the 21 with which we are developing protocols—provided us with a criminal record, we would be unsure how robust it was compared with criminal records here. For example, in certain countries such information is provided only if the person in question has served a prison sentence. We therefore have to think more carefully about the advice that we give employers in those circumstances. We clearly cannot control the criminal record procedures in far-flung countries, but we can give advice to employers here on what their position should best be if they are not sure that the criminal record information from a foreign country is adequate or complete. We will do further work on that very issue.