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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

I agree. Those are clearly difficult cases. I do not know all the details, but such circumstances would have to be taken fully into account when the lists are being drawn up and people are being fingered for things that they have done. It is an extremely difficult area. One source of expertise is the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre under the leadership of Jim Gamble, the former deputy director general of the National Crime Squad. There are sources of great expertise on how individuals are trapped both nationally and internationally, and it is important that the Ministers and agencies involved in the Bill make full use of that expertise. During the furore earlier this year, I was not sure that we had joined-up thinking between Departments—that the expertise available to the Home Office, which has done a great deal of work on the issue, was being accessed by the education service. I hope that as the Bill goes through, we will ensure that those issues are fully and properly taken into account. The second question that I want to raise is one that I am slightly curious about. I am not quite sure whether it is relevant to the Bill, but I have tabled some questions on the subject. I am not sure whether there are any procedures for monitoring candidates for public office who stand for membership of councils or of this House. Perhaps we should take account of finding out whether they are on the offenders register and whether they have been found guilty of any crime of child abuse. I have already raised that question, and perhaps Ministers could look into it. Finally, I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill—the Licensing of Child Location Services Bill. About half the sponsors of my Bill seem to have wandered in and out of the Chamber during this debate, so I thought that I should use the opportunity of the debate to plug that Bill. The Bill aims to introduce a licensing system for child tracking services, such as the teddy phone, which apparently give parents peace of mind because the child is given a lovely teddy bear and they can track them wherever that child is. There are meant to be all kinds of control on who is tracking the child, and who is able to give it the teddy phone. The danger is that paedophiles could easily get hold of those licensing systems. In the few weeks before I introduced my Bill, three journalists, separately, managed to put a trace on individuals when supposedly there were controls in place. There were rather anguished cries in my local newspaper from somebody who is meant to be a prominent child protection expert who is tied up with one of the companies to which I have referred. We hear that all the organisations are very responsible—but some organisations that undertake tracking services have told me, ““Yes, we want a licensing system.”” I raise that in the context of this Bill because I have read schedule 3, which sets out requirements for people who engage in moderating content on services or websites aimed at, or likely to be used by, children. Typically, these will be chatroom moderators, or people moderating an online discussion forum of some kind. The provisions in schedule 3 extend to people who control access to such services. Once the Bill becomes law, as I hope will happen, every UK-based person employed to do such work by UK-based companies will have to be CRB checked. Potentially they have access to sensitive data about children. At present, it is merely optional that such checks should be carried out. It occurred to me that if people who are moderating chat-rooms have access to sensitive and private information about children that should be passed on, exactly the same is true of those who are operating child location services. Part of what I am calling for is a licensing system for child location services to ensure that inappropriate people are not tracking children, and are not using such services to be able to trace children. It is essential that people who work for companies that provide child location services—they might easily be able to find the whereabouts of children, or to have mobile phone numbers for children who are being tracked—should have such information available to them. It is therefore essential that such people should be covered by the provisions that in future will cover the moderators of chatrooms. I urge the Minister to consider whether the provisions can be extended so that at least I can get a small part of the licensing system for which I am calling included in the Bill. There are several issues that I hope will be examined as the Bill is considered. Apart from that, I welcome the Bill and I wish it good speed in its passage through the House.