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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

I welcome several of the new clauses and amendments, which, again, give us the mechanics of how the Bill will work. The lack of those details when we discussed the Bill on Second Reading and in Committee made it difficult to be sure that we had got to grips with the Government’s intentions. While we welcome their inclusion at this stage, many Conservative Members wish that they had come a little earlier in the process. I should like to focus my comments on our amendments Nos. 197, 198, 250, 3, 4 and 5, which address three key aspects that may not have been at the forefront of the Minister’s attention due to his preoccupation with putting some of the detail into the Bill—the quality of the data that the IBB will use, the communication of the implications for employers, and the important issue of overseas workers. I thank the Liberal Democrat Members who joined forces with us to support our amendment No. 3, which would establish as a core function of the independent barring board the need to implement a comprehensive communications programme. We examined that matter in detail in Committee. The Bill will affect some 10 million people, and, although we made some progress on the issue in Committee, we seem to have made no progress on getting the Government to address it thereafter. As a result of amendments passed in another place, the IBB will have to notify by recorded letter individuals who have been barred. A Government amendment that we shall consider today will place a duty on a court to inform people that they have been barred as a result of a court decision. Those are examples of good communication of information. Also, the Minister has made it clear that local authorities should inform those receiving direct payments of the existence of the monitoring scheme, so that they can make use of it if required. That, too, is an example of good communication taking place. However, nowhere in the Bill is there a requirement to ensure adequate communication to employers and employees on these important matters. Amendment No. 3 would place a duty on the IBB to implement a comprehensive communication plan. Given that the Bill makes it a criminal act to apply for a job while barred, if that job is monitored—as a large number will be—we believe that it will be imperative to communicate the implications of the Bill to all those involved. That should be provided for in the Bill. When we raised this matter in Committee, the Minister said that those communications would be made when the individual was barred. However, he has made it clear again today that he fully intends to increase the number of people and jobs being monitored. That will create a fluid situation that will change over time. Surely he must therefore understand the importance of adopting our amendment. On the matter of the quality of the data that the IBB will be using to reach its decisions, I was surprised that the Government had not decided to take on board the comments that we made in Committee, because they have taken on board many others. The Minister acknowledged that it was an important issue, and we had a lengthy debate on the problems that have been experienced in this area by the Criminal Records Bureau. He rightly pointed out that only a relatively small number of people—in percentage terms—have experienced problems gaining employment as a result of the CRB putting out incorrect information. In absolute terms, however, thousands of people are affected by the problem, and I am sure that the Minister is aware that there are continuing concerns about the quality of the data being received by the CRB, not least because of the problems that police authorities are having in sharing on a broader basis the information that they hold. To include in the Bill a fundamental role for the IBB to have regard to the quality of the data that it receives would safeguard not only employers and employees but the IBB itself, because its reputation would be undermined if people felt that it was not using data of a sufficiently high quality, or that it did not have the means to improve that data over time. We examined the issue of overseas workers at length in Committee. I am therefore surprised, as are a number of interest groups, that the Government have made no headway on this matter. In Committee, the Minister acknowledged the importance of this issue, and implied that it would be looked at again on Report. Indeed, he said that more needed to be done in that respect. However, I am not aware that the Government have tabled any amendments or new clauses to deal with the matter. In Committee, the Minister said that it was reasonable to raise the matter, but that it was perhaps not quite the right place to tackle the issue of foreign offences. In the spirit of being constructive, I went away to see whether we could table an amendment that could appropriately be included in the Bill—rather than something that was more to do with the offences of foreign nationals. In Committee, the Government quite rightly said that they have introduced measures so that those convicted of sex offences can sign the sexual offences register in the UK. Paragraph 20 of schedule 2 states that inclusion on the foreign barred list would lead to automatic barring in the UK. Those are welcome elements of the Bill, but is the Minister certain that he has full, open and unfettered access to all the relevant convictions held globally by individuals so that he can be satisfied that the measures that he has outlined so far are adequate? I am sure that the answer to that has to be no. We should return to that matter today, particularly given the issue of gaining accurate information from Asia and Africa. The amendments that we have tabled take on board the discussion in Committee. We are trying to find a solution to this problem—I think that the Minister has some sympathy with that—and to find a way in which we can highlight to employers that the data being supplied to them from the monitoring organisation may not give them a full picture of the record of the individual, because that individual has not continually resided in the UK. As I understand it, currently the system makes no reference to where an individual has lived and therefore an employer is not able to assess whether the information covers the entire working career of that person. The issue is important because, as the Minister knows from our debate in Committee, increasing numbers of people who work in our health service and areas that affect vulnerable adults come from overseas. That is to be welcomed because those people add greatly to the human resources that we have available in the sector, but we should not ignore the problems that that creates in terms of monitoring their history, in the same way that we monitor the history of people who are resident in the UK and have been throughout their career. I hope that the Minister will consider amendment No. 198, which increases the duties of the Secretary of State in respect of getting information about non-resident individuals. Importantly, amendment No. 197 makes disclosure of residency in the UK part of the monitoring process. As I am sure that the Minister is aware, we have a group of people working in our medical profession who do not reside in the UK, although they deliver services here. They are an important group who often offer GP or doctor services over weekend periods, when we might not be able to get adequate cover from people who reside in the UK. That opens up another problem. How do we make sure that our monitoring practices are working in the way that they are intended to work? I hope that the Minister is able to listen more to those points now that some of the basic issues in the Bill have been resolved. Perhaps he could think about how we can address that issue as we move forward.