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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

It is unfortunate that the Department for Education and Skills is unable to persuade Ofsted of the importance of that report to the Bill. It is extraordinary that it is to be released within three hours of the end of this debate. That is the point that we are making. We have had crocodile tears from Government Members, but they are hoist by their own petard when embargoed copies of reports not made available to Members go to the press instead. It is the press that has leaked them back to Members, who should have had them in the first place. I shall put down some benchmarks with respect to our scrutiny of the legislation in Committee. First, will the Bill work to keep paedophiles and abusers—potential and known—away from children and vulnerable adults? Secondly, will it maintain a fair balance between the rights of individuals to go about their business unless and until they are proven to be a risk and the safety of vulnerable children and adults? Essentially, is it workable? Thirdly, are the Government truly committed and on track to produce the structures that are essential to delivering such a vast enterprise? Enforcement is particularly relevant as is the workability of the sophisticated computer system required, which several hon. Members have mentioned? I was glad to hear the Minister mention the importance of the people on the ground who will be putting the Bill into effect. We should also bear in mind the Government’s track-record on delivering large-scale public service computer programs, as it is not exactly exemplary. I read in my local newspaper today that the Sussex police have revealed that the installation of a new computer system is running more than two years behind schedule for the £2.3 million crime and intelligent computer system called Project Nemesis. Time and again, such computer systems leave a lot to be desired, but this one is absolutely essential to the success of the project—[Interruption.] I note that the Secretary of State is shouting from a sedentary position about other computer programs, all of which pale into insignificance beside the £6 billion—or is it £12 billion?—spent on the national health service computer system, which is years behind schedule and is not guaranteed to work. It is the biggest single computer project that has happened to date, but it is not up and running and it has cost all our constituents as taxpayers an awful lot of money. It has not succeeded yet—[Interruption.] Before the Secretary of State gets too excited, he needs to put it all into perspective. Let us not forget that, however proficient a computer system, it will count for nothing unless the quality of data inputted is up to scratch and the resources and professionals in the field are in place to act effectively afterwards. Fourthly, will the Bill streamline the current chaos over who is responsible for monitoring which paedophile is where, and establish exactly what they are entitled to do? That problem gave rise to the Government’s belated urgency, when the worrying revelations about paedophiles working in positions of trust alongside children hit the headlines at the beginning of the year. It was at that point that the public at large started to hear about the POCA list set up in 2000. I understand that up to the end of last year, some 1,276 persons were listed. People heard about the POVA list set up under the Care Standards Act 2004 and list 99, which has more than 4,000 persons on it. They heard about the sex offenders register, which had grown from 18,513 in 2001 to 28,994 in 2004-05, and about assorted other lists and Criminal Records Bureau check lists and so forth. All that gave rise at the beginning of this year to rather more questions than the revelations answered. How could anyone listed on one of those lists get a job working in a school, for example? How is someone’s name entered on the list and how is it removed from it? To what extent is information shared between the lists? Who is entitled to access the lists in any case and what responsibilities do they then have for employing or sacking such a person? Given that a CRB check is effectively out of date the day after it has been processed, how is information on the lists kept up to date? What role do Ministers have in monitoring or overruling the decision to include or exclude someone from these lists and what discretion do they have to sanction employment in spite of a listing? At what stage is someone’s name added to one of the lists and what safeguards are there against vexatious allegations? What appeal mechanism exists for someone who has been wrongly accused and included on a list? To her credit, early this year, the previous Secretary of State got to grips urgently with the problems relating to persons employed in schools, but many of us were worried that the Government were neglecting problems in other sectors of public service, especially and not least in the health service. Our worries were compounded when a Health Minister, Lord Warner, admitted at the Dispatch Box in another place that he had no idea how many people cautioned or convicted of a sexual offence were working in the NHS, let alone those who came into regular contact with children. He seemed to lack any sense of urgency about finding out the possible level of the problem, let alone doing something to sort it out. Teachers and teaching assistants are obviously important—that was the main thrust of the complaints made at the beginning of the year—but the problem also involves private tutors, self-employed music teachers, 1.3 million people working in the NHS, doctors, nurses, dentists physiotherapists, social workers, foster carers and so on. We are relying heavily on the Bill to address all the questions and issues that arose at the beginning of the year and more. A lot is riding on it. We need a reliable system that can be more proactive, rather than reactive, to harmful behaviour. Some improvements were made to the Bill in another place, but a number of issues are still outstanding; we shall seek to raise them in Committee and they are shared by various children’s organisations in particular. Many hon. Members have mentioned those shortcomings. Too much of the detail is left to regulation, and given the length of time that the Government have had to think about the issue since the Bichard report, we want to tie them down to putting more of that detail into the Bill. Liberty has raised some serious, legitimate concerns about the scope for automatic inclusion on the barred list and the need to protect the innocent from ill-founded allegations and to respect people’s privacy and so on. We welcome this belated Bill. We will ask many questions in Committee about exactly what it will mean in practice. We want much more detail and reassurances about the balance of civil liberties against protection and proportionality. We want to instil a culture of vigilance, not to provoke an atmosphere of fear and freelance accusations; but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, and the Bill’s effectiveness will rely not just on new boards, new computer systems or new rulebooks, but on the people who are responsible for reporting information, gaining access to its findings and intervening and acting where appropriate. We will scrutinise the Bill constructively, and I hope that the Government will accept some of the constructive amendments that we want to make. We owe it to all those victims of abuse in the past—young and old—to ensure that the Bill works and is not just another headline.