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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

May I join my hon. Friends in welcoming the Bill, particularly as the Government probably have a proud record of introducing more child protection legislation than any other Government, which is all to the good? I have a sense of déjà vu about much of the Bill. Indeed, it completes unfinished business, as I helped to steer the Protection of Children Act 1999 through the House with my friend and colleague, the former Member of Parliament, Debra Shipley. I remember our meetings with civil servants in the then Education and Social Security Departments, the Home Office and social services: simply getting those officials round the table was a task in itself, but we wished to highlight the need for joined-up thinking in child protection. In those discussions and our debates in Committee, many of the issues that we have discussed today were raised, including the need to join up disparate lists—that has been achieved by the Bill—and the need for joint working by Departments to ensure that child protection measures were consistent and effective. We highlighted the risk of inconsistencies between various agencies, such as the police, education authorities and schools, and the inconsistencies that might become apparent between police authorities in respect of police disclosures. Tragically, in 2004 Bichard highlighted some of the issues that we had identified in discussions about that Bill, and since then it has been proved that some of those issues could and should have been dealt with earlier. We are all best with the benefit of hindsight, but it is crucial that after all this time we get it right in this Bill. I will be looking to Ministers for assurances that there will be effective working between the Department for Education and Skills and the Home Office. A number of the child protection issues that have been raised in the debate must be dealt with across departmental boundaries. There is a huge amount to welcome in the Bill. I am particularly pleased about the provisions on employment agencies, which clause 28 refers to as ““personnel suppliers””. We discussed some of those issues in the context of the 1999 Act. We know that paedophiles are adept at moving swiftly between employers as soon as there is suspicion about their activities. It is therefore essential that a requirement on employment agencies ensures the disclosure and monitoring of their activities. I am pleased that the Bill requires school governors to be checked. I have never understood why there has been no formal requirement for all governors to undergo a Criminal Records Bureau check. It is true, of course, that most school governors do not have much unsupervised contact with children. Nevertheless, there are occasions when that happens, and governors have a duty of trust in relation to their role in schools, so they must set the highest standards of child protection. For that reason, we need CRB checks of all our school governors. I might have misread the clause, but it appears to say that no offence is committed regarding the appointment of a governor that takes effect before the commencement of the Bill. Why will we allow some governors to remain unchecked, but require new governors coming on to school governing bodies to be CRB checked? There seems to be no logical consistency in that.