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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I was involved in the creation of a group called FACT—Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers— not long after the major investigations that took place, first, in north Wales over children’s authorities and allegations of abuse of children in those authorities and secondly, in the major Merseyside study of schools and of children’s homes shortly afterwards. Those were extensive inquiries and many dozens of people were involved in allegations that were made about them in one way or another. Undoubtedly some of those allegations held up. The fact that the police chose a method effectively seeking to obtain evidence from people who attended those care homes or those schools—which was known in the trade as cruising for crime—led to a number of people coming forward from those institutions in order to make allegations, not discouraged by the fact that it was widely known that there was a possibility of substantial compensation being paid to someone who had suffered from abuse. In other words, there was a true motivation for some fairly unsavoury characters coming forward to make such allegations. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, that we are talking not only about the wrecking of the lives of certain teachers who turn out to be completely innocent but also the shadow that is cast by the very fact that they are named even though they may be later found to be innocent, shadows that to my certain knowledge—I can give a number of cases about which I happen to know first hand from the association—led to people being unable to find appointments and stay in their positions, even though it turned out that there were absolutely no grounds for the allegations made against them. I have not followed in detail what the legal difficulties may be here. I am sure that there are some, there are almost always legal difficulties about virtually any amendment that anyone moves, but I believe that this is a serious issue. It is one where we need to protect the good names of teachers until a decision is made about whether criminal proceedings should be brought. I am being as brief as I can because of the hour. I would like to say that this is an extremely serious matter. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, has addressed it powerfully and I hope that the Minister will give it whatever consideration he can to try to protect innocent teachers against whom allegations are made on which there are no grounds at all.