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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

The amendments help to ensure that the offences in the Bill are appropriately focused and that they strengthen the provisions relating to personnel suppliers and controlled activity. New clauses 15 and 16, and amendments Nos. 208 to 216, 229 to 231, 233 and 234 are technical amendments to ensure that the offences are appropriately focused. Amendments Nos. 208 to 210 ensure that the person or body with ultimate responsibility for regulated activity is responsible for checking individuals engaging in regulated activity. If no check is carried out, that person or body would be liable. In the case of an employee of a crèche within a high street store, the store would be the regulated activity provider. The amendments are important in ensuring organisations take their responsibilities seriously. New clauses 15 and 16 and related amendments clarify the way offences bite on employees, ensuring that any person, including employees of a regulated activity provider, such as a school administrator, commits an offence if he knows that someone is barred and he permits them to engage in regulated activity. A person who acts on behalf of a regulated activity provider or personnel supplier will commit an offence if he knowingly permits an individual who is not subject to monitoring to engage in regulated activity or if he supplies him for regulated activity. Those who act on behalf of a regulated activity provider or employment business are guilty of an offence if the failure of the regulated activity provider or employment business to check was due to their ““act or reckless default””. For example, an employee of a sports centre who fails to check on an individual who is being employed to teach children’s tennis lessons because he did not know it was a requirement to check would not have committed an offence. That goes back to what I was trying to explain earlier. Instead, the owner of the sports centre, or the sports centre if it is a company, would have committed the offence. However, if the centre manager asked someone to carry out the check and he deliberately did not, the individual would have committed the offence. That is both fair and appropriate as it ensures that all individuals in the children’s or vulnerable adult’s work force take seriously their responsibilities and take the necessary steps to ensure that individuals engaging in regulated activity are subject to monitoring. It will increase the protection the scheme provides. The amendments also allow us to take a similar approach to controlled activity. We have made important amendments to the requirements to check. Clause 15 provides an easement from the requirement to check when an individual works in more than one NHS position at the same time—for example, a permanent NHS employee who also undertakes temporary NHS work on their day off. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health made a commitment to revisit the clause and we now agree that relevant independent health care providers that provide NHS services under contract with the NHS should also benefit from the provision. Amendments Nos. 52 to 54 achieve this. For example, they would cover when a particular NHS trust contracts with an independent health care body to run a specialist treatment centre. If a member of staff employed by the independent body to work in the treatment centre agrees to cover a post at short notice within the NHS trust, the trust would not be required to make an additional check. New clause 17 gives the Secretary of State the power to place a requirement on holders of certain positions to be subject to monitoring and to place requirements on an appropriate person to check. These will enable us to mirror the governor provisions in clauses 8(3) and 12 for certain positions of authority, such as trustees of children’s charities. We plan to consider with the Charity Commission whether it would be appropriate to require checks and in what circumstances. Depending on the circumstances, that might be a requirement on, for example, the chair of the trustees or a person nominated by the trustees and checked by the Charity Commission. Amendments Nos. 218 to 220, 222, 228, 236 and new schedule 3 clarify how employers can comply with their duty to check that an individual is subject to monitoring and therefore not barred. They can do this themselves through an online check or an enhanced disclosure, or they can obtain equivalent confirmation from another source, such as an employment agency. Enhanced disclosures provide more information than an online check and can help employers assess whether an individual is suitable for a particular position. Enhanced disclosures are currently required in sectors involving very close contact with children, such as foster care and children’s homes. The new schedule provides the power to require employers to obtain an enhanced disclosure or check an individual’s status via an online check to allow supervised employment to begin while waiting for an enhanced disclosure. New schedule 3 also explains what information a regulated activity provider must obtain from a personnel supplier or a contractor. For example, a girls’ dance school that hires a teacher from an agency could rely on written confirmation that the agency had registered an interest in the individual and had no reason to believe the individual was not subject to monitoring. However, if the employer was required to get an enhanced disclosure through regulations under the Bill, it would be required to obtain a copy of the enhanced disclosure from the agency. New clause 18 and amendments Nos. 226 and 227 explain how checks of a governor can be performed through an online check or an enhanced disclosure. New clause 19, new schedule 2, and amendments Nos. 34, 35, 40 to 42 and 217 strengthen the provisions on personnel suppliers, such as employment agencies and businesses. The new schedule ensures that an employment business will commit an offence if it supplies an individual to engage in regulated activity and has failed to ensure that the individual is subject to monitoring. Amendments Nos. 34, 35 and 40 to 42 ensure that a personnel supplier will commit an offence if it knowingly supplies an individual who is barred or not subject to monitoring to engage in regulated activity, even where the activity takes place only occasionally. In response to a previous debate in the House, we have sought to strengthen the controlled activity provisions. New clause 22 and amendments Nos. 232 and 238 provide the power to place a series of mandatory requirements on employers through regulations. We will use them to require employers to check, and to introduce the necessary safeguards when employing a barred person. I hope that that will be welcomed throughout the House, because it was pushed in Committee. Failure to comply with the regulations may result in a criminal offence punishable by a fine of up to £5,000. The amendments that I have just explained are critical. They strengthen and clarify the way in which the scheme will be enforced, and I commend them to the House.