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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

The hon. Lady makes a good point: we cannot force people to report those who may be committing offences against them. That is why it is imperative that there is a robust process to ensure that people working with vulnerable adults or children are vetted sufficiently in advance, and we shall be pressing further to make sure that that is the case. The Government are good at passing laws but not perhaps always as good at implementing them and looking at the details. In January, the then Secretary of State for Education and Skills was forced to issue emergency changes to procedures after it had been exposed that convicted sex offenders were being given permission to work in schools. She said that she could give the public an"““absolute assurance that the process is as robust as possible to ensure that the risk to children is minimised””.—[Official Report, 19 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 978.]" Yet we have heard today that the Government’s own research shows that 90 per cent. of schools ignore the scheme that the Government set up four years ago to help to stop paedophiles working as supply teachers. Indeed, last week, the Commission for Social Care Inspection exposed widespread failure to vet staff who work with some of our most vulnerable people: 43 per cent. of children’s homes fail to use safe vetting procedures for staff, as do 65 per cent. of adoption agencies and 49 per cent. of care homes for young adults with physical or mental health problems. Those figures show that the problem is widespread. The embargoed Ofsted report, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) referred in a point of order, identifies widespread confusion in schools about who has responsibility for vetting staff and others who may come into contact with children. Surely that will fuel further concerns that the vetting systems in our schools, as they stand, are wholly unreliable.