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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran). I support the principle of the Bill, which I welcome as a parent and on behalf of other parents. We need as many measures as possible to help ensure greater protection for children and vulnerable adults, but, like many hon. Members who have spoken today, I am concerned about how we can make the system work. The Government have a history of introducing legislation to protect children and adults, which is laudable, but such legislation is too often not acted upon speedily or not robustly implemented—feet seem to drag. The Bill has been a long time coming. The then Home Secretary issued an urgent call for measures such as a single central register, which led to a 20-month wait—the supporting computer system is due to go online six years after that urgent call. I know that many members of the public are concerned about the workings of the computer industry. We rely on IT, but we have not demonstrated to the public that we can make the systems work. Quite properly, parents expect the highest standards from those who care for children at school. They expect assistants to be screened and teachers to be checked in order to weed out those who might wish to prey upon our children. I shall refer to clauses 8 to 17, which specify that it is an offence for a regulated provider—a school—to permit an individual to engage in regulated activities without first making an appropriate check or receiving written confirmation from a supply teacher agency. I want to focus on supply teacher agencies, because I am concerned how effective the checks will be. As my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) said, the Government recognised that schools must have confidence in the quality of staff whom they receive from agencies in 2002. Some time ago, I worked as a supply teacher and I welcome the checks that have been introduced since then, but too many such checks are not taken up as robustly as they should be. In recognition of the need for supply teachers to be regulated, the quality mark scheme was established. However, that scheme, which was designed to help to weed out poor agencies, is not being used properly by schools. It appears that many schools pay no attention to whether agencies supplying staff have signed up to it. The Ofsted report—it has been embargoed but we can refer to it—says:"““The exact number of teacher supply agencies is not known, but one official from the DfEs estimates the number to be 300 and another estimated it was 1,500; the DTI suggests ‘it is in the hundreds rather than thousands’.””" We do not even know how many agencies we have. That is another fundamental flaw. They must be properly regulated and we need clarification on that. It is also worrying that anyone can set up a supply agency as long as they comply with the legislation. A recent report commissioned by the Government showed that 90 per cent. of schools ignore the quality mark scheme designed to regulate supply agencies and said that only 8 per cent. of schools felt that the scheme was a ““very important factor””. I suggest that there is a marketing issue here. We have heard that information about the Bill must be made available. We also need to get everybody to buy into the need for proper regulation and checks. More than half of all primary and nursery schools and 80 per cent. of all secondary schools use agency supply staff, with 40,000 people a year working as supply teachers. Many work in schools in all our constituencies. Yet Margaret Morrissey of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations has said that she felt, as a parent and a PTA member, that it was ““unforgivable”” that supply teachers were working with children before checks were completed. A scheme with the best of intentions is not delivering the reassurances that parents deserve. We must ensure that any new schemes deliver a better service. On a different note, it appears prominently in the media today—as was mentioned by the hon. Member for Luton, South, who is no longer in her place—that under current legislation only three paedophiles have been banned from taking sex trips abroad. That law was hurriedly put in place three years ago following an outcry against people travelling to abuse in other countries and demands that we should stop people with those intentions. Christine Beddoe, director of ECPAT UK, a coalition of children’s charities, described that legislation as"““a cumbersome and unwieldy system””" and said that it does not work principally because there is not enough central intelligence and shared information across the police and the judiciary and between countries. People such as supply teachers are coming from abroad to work with our children, but if we cannot get information on, and let people know about, our own paedophiles travelling abroad, how can we have confidence that we will get all these things to fall into place when we want to be able to screen people coming to work with vulnerable adults? The NSPCC has criticised loopholes in the Bill on the lack of vetting for overseas teachers. I understand that the Minister accepts the existence of that loophole and is reviewing the process. However, like Christine Beddoe, I am worried that the central intelligence does not exist and hope that robust measures will be put in place to address the deficiencies. I should like an assurance from the Minister that if we support the Bill it will be robustly implemented and that information will be shared between agencies. We do not want any more cumbersome and unwieldy legislation. The public do not want another great idea or strong headline that in the end does not deliver what we all want, which is to protect our children. We all know that paedophiles will seize every opportunity to abuse children, so we need to deal with the detailed nitty-gritty that stops them from finding the casual camp that operates only for five days, or the Urdd Gobaith Cymru that operates for four days over the festival period of the Eisteddfod. Those are opportunities that paedophiles seize upon. Our children are precious. If the Bill is supposed to deliver robust and effective checks for their sakes, I ask the Government to ensure that that happens Michael Marsh in my constituency abused, was let out and then abused again, and now may well be let out in 2008. I need to know where such people are and whether they are working with my children and those of others. As has been proved by Age Concern, they may well stop abusing children and move on to work in the adult care industry and abuse elderly adults. I implore the Government to look carefully at the problems and loopholes that are highlighted in the Ofsted report, which many of us will read in full tomorrow having only glanced at it today. I hope that in Committee the loopholes mentioned by my Friend the Member for Basingstoke will be closed and the terminology tightened so that we do not have another unwieldy, cumbersome, useless, woolly piece of legislation.