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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

Conservative Members agree with the intention behind the Bill, and welcome the debate that we have had since its introduction in the other place in February. I commend the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda), and his colleagues for the way in which they have listened to the arguments, and for their willingness to amend the Bill and thus—we hope—improve it, although I am sure that Members in all parts of the House wish they had listened a little earlier to some of the points raised. We could then have avoided the deluge of 25 new clauses, four new schedules and 250 Government amendments that was presented only a short time before today’s debate. The Bill has been expected and consulted on for more than two years, and has been debated since February. It is therefore difficult to understand why so many Government amendments were tabled at the eleventh hour. Many provide the basic details of how the vetting and barring scheme will work. We have been asking for those details for the past six months, and they should have been thought through before, rather than after, the Bill was presented to us. With that in mind, I thank the teams from the Department for Education and Skills and the Public Bill Office, who have worked tirelessly and often under great pressure as a result of the Government’s late tabling of amendments. They have, as always, been an integral and invaluable part of the process. Some four years after the tragedy that led to the Bichard inquiry, there are still too many examples of existing vetting procedures being implemented haphazardly. That was highlighted only in June, in Ofsted’s report on recruitment practices in schools. We were presented with a somewhat hollow Bill in February, despite the two years that had elapsed since the Bichard report. There was a lack of definition, a lack of detail on the processes to be followed and a disregard for many of the findings in the consultations that had been held—specifically the DFES’s own post-Bichard consultation, which called for much of the clarity in terms and definitions for which we, and other Members, have continued to press today. Even after more than six months, there are still no definitions of some of the key terms in the Bill. My colleagues and I are pleased that the debate has led to some changes. Much of the spadework in the other place was done by my noble Friend Lady Buscombe, both in debate and in behind-the-scenes meetings, on the issue of read-across between the vulnerable adults’ and the children’s barred lists. It was widely felt to be a fundamental flaw in the Bill as initially presented. I commend the work done on Second Reading and in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). As always, he brought his wit and depth of knowledge to debates in Committee and on Report. I want to thank my hon. Friends the Members for St. Albans (Anne Main), for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson) and for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) for their continued support and their contributions to our debate. We must not forget our two Committee Chairmen—my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Derek Conway) and the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew)—who oversaw that particular stage and, despite some trying times, kept our debate in reasonably good humour. Considerable improvements have been made in respect of read-across, how some detailed processes will work and clearer definitions. Many of the amendments will prove fundamental to the operation of the legislation and we should thank the Government for them. I realise that the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda), has been in a difficult position because he inherited the Bill from the Minister for Children and Families. He was not in the driving seat—or, indeed, even in the Department—when the Bill was first introduced. Perhaps he would agree that the handling of the Bill has not been an example of great parliamentary process and that a review might be in order. Conservative Members remain concerned about clauses dealing with the position of those who are barred if they inadvertently apply for monitored jobs and we have debated the issue extensively. We are also concerned, as we stated clearly in Committee, about the Government’s intention to expand the number of people monitored under the Bill in future. As we know, the Government have the ability to achieve that without much further debate in the House. We shall certainly monitor that matter closely. When the Bill was introduced, the right hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Beverley Hughes) firmly stated that one of the principles behind the Bill was that the breadth of the bar imposed should be proportionate to the risk. I hope that Ministers continue to adhere to that and that they are open to revisiting the provisions if they appear to have created unintended consequences, perhaps along the lines that we have discussed today. The amount of reworking of the Bill at such a late stage is also worrying because a number of areas require further attention. We have already mentioned the use of vague terms and we have had little time properly to debate critical issues such as the development of the IMPACT police national database. It is now delayed until 2010, yet it was one of Bichard’s key criticisms of the progress that the Government have made so far. Overseas workers is another matter—we debated it earlier—that was virtually ignored in the later stages of our debate on the Government amendments. We wish the Bill well as it passes from here to wherever it goes next, but there remains a need for a fundamental change to the process of vetting and monitoring. We all agree that it needs to take place, but we urge the Government closely to watch the impact of the Bill in practice. We support the intention to make the vetting system better, but we do not want the Bill to become an unwieldy instrument that, instead of simplifying the position, adds even more complexity. In short, we simply hope that the Bill does not become a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We hope that the Government will monitor the impact in as much detail as possible as the Bill is implemented.