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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. She implies that, contrary to the legal advice that we have received, the measures in the Bill are not appropriate for protecting vulnerable groups. I am surprised that she should come in at this stage of the debate, having missed most of it, and disregard our legal advice, the measures that we are taking and the stakeholder support, and imply that all the people involved are wrong. Perhaps in the course of our debate she might care to tell us how she would do things better herself. To get back to my point, we expect the independent barring board to engage with its stakeholders to identify and encourage best practice in the making of referrals, and to issue guidance if appropriate. We will set out what information is to be included in the referrals in regulations, so experience of operation of the scheme and of the IBB can be taken into account as we develop those requirements. It is intended that all referral information on which a barring decision is based will be provided to the person under consideration, as is the case at present. On the operation of the IBB, amendment No. 4 would require the IBB’s annual report to contain information on the quality of the data provided to the IBB by regulated activity providers and any person who holds records of convictions or cautions for the use of police forces. As I said in Committee, it would be odd to require the IBB to report on one specific matter without specifying a lot of other detailed IBB functions that are to be covered in the annual report. The IBB will be free to report on the quality of information, so explicit provisions to that effect are not necessary. The House might, in future, take a particular interest in one of the IBB’s functions. If so, it is highly likely that the Secretary of State will take an interest, too. The Secretary of State will have the power to direct the IBB to submit a report on any matter at any time. I foresee no difficulty in Ministers responding to any issues that hon. Members might raise. I hope that I have given the necessary assurances, and that hon. Members will not press their amendments. Amendment No. 5 would add four new functions to the IBB’s core functions. As I said in debate on a similar amendment in Committee, the core functions set out in the Bill are the IBB’s essential decision-making functions relating to barring. The IBB will be an expert body with a tight focus on taking independent, expert decisions, supported by the existing structures of the Criminal Records Bureau. The addition of extra functions would risk diluting the focus of the IBB. The CRB is well placed to undertake functions relating to monitoring and online access for employers. The Bill therefore gives the Secretary of State, in the form of the CRB, those functions. The CRB has access to the police national computer and was set up to handle large volumes of information. It would only confuse matters if we gave the IBB similar functions. Amendment No. 203 would place an obligation on the Secretary of State to report any breaches of the security of the barred lists or online checks in a statement to Parliament. It would be useful if I explained how the lists and the online checks will be made secure, and how we will avoid the problem, alluded to in Committee, of paedophiles being able to change information held about them online, as happened in America. First, and very importantly, the central barred lists will be securely protected from interference and will not be accessible to anyone outside the IBB and CRB. Information will be taken from those lists by the CRB and supplied to other bodies as appropriate, which means that the lists themselves are protected. We will take all appropriate security measures to ensure the integrity of those lists, and we will ensure that there are no opportunities to interfere with that data.