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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

I thank all the Ministers who were involved with the Bill. They have been extremely courteous throughout and although we may not have received all the explanations as they were intended—we may not have been satisfied at the time—I believe that every attempt was made to respond on the various points of debate. I would like to thank the Bill team. This is the first time that I have had to telephone someone on the team to get help with understanding some Government amendments. It is not surprising that we needed clarification, but it was good to see the explanations come in at 9.37 pm last Wednesday. That contact was very helpful, as was the meeting with the Minister. I reiterate my thanks to the Public Bill Office team, who have been extremely helpful, to the Committee Chairmen and, of course, to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) for supporting me and joining in whenever matters needed clarifying. She has made a great contribution. I also wish to thank Baroness Walmsley, because enormously valuable work was done in the other place and the Bill was much improved by the time that it reached us. It was surprising how many amendments were accepted. I commented in my speech on Second Reading that I was not hopeful that amendments would be accepted, and in fact the pendulum may have swung too far in the other direction with the many amendments we have seen in the past few days. However, I appreciate Ministers’ responsiveness on many matters, in particular those about which we expressed the greatest concern. The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda), said that the legislation is complex, but that might prove to be an understatement. It is very complex and that has to be a concern for us all. From the start, we have all seen the Bill as being of great importance and significance. We will all always remember the events at Soham and the revelation that some information could have been passed on. In fact, there was lots of information around, but it had not gone through the various channels or been put together so as to lead to someone taking action. We have many examples of similar situations in world history and that was another example of failure of communication. Given the system that was in place, it was impossible for anybody to put together all the pieces of information available. It seems a long time since the Bichard report in 2004 and there has been much consultation on the Bill. Have we achieved what we set out to do? That is a difficult question to answer and I have to admit to some nagging doubts. Because we have had so many Government amendments, I am not convinced that we have been able to scrutinise them properly in the short time available. There may well be unintended consequences that we have not envisaged tonight. That is a serious issue and I hope that Ministers will reflect on that and carry out some of the monitoring that the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) suggested. The Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis) rightly said that safeguarding vulnerable groups is everybody’s responsibility. I could not agree more. We have to work on changing our culture so that we put children and vulnerable adults first. We must implement the available safeguards and do any extra checking necessary. To protect others, we must be on our guard. I repeat my thanks to everybody who has worked on the Bill and I hope that it works out as intended. Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.