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Independent Safeguarding Authority

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) on securing this important debate—although I am sure he was not hoping that it would be the first debate of the day, at 9.30 on our first day back. It is an important debate, and there has already been a great deal of discussion about the scheme. Inevitably, after the Soham murders, everyone supports the principle of safe and effective public protection and welcomes the steps being taken by the Government to improve safeguarding and to protect children and vulnerable adults. That support is still very strong, but as people have had the opportunity to look at the details of the vetting and barring scheme, concerns have inevitably come to the fore, particularly among those people who work with such issues every day. I am pleased that the Government have already acted to make the scheme less burdensome and more proportionate. For instance, it makes absolute sense to exempt children's authors, sportspeople and, in my constituency, ceramic artists who go into schools to work with children and inspire them; they should not be subject to burdensome regulations under the scheme. I am pleased that 16 to 18-year-olds who help out in schools or sports organisations will also be exempt. That makes absolute sense, because we do not want to do anything that would deny those young people the great opportunity of sharing their skills with younger pupils or other people. Good sense has also prevailed in respect of parents making private arrangements to care for each other's children. It was crazy to have a situation in which a police officer was told that looking after another police officer's children was somehow breaking the rules. Clearly, that makes no sense at all, and such people will not be affected in the future. However, there is a group of parents—the 40,000 parents who home educate their children—who are up in arms about the extra checks that they will face in the future under the Badman report. This issue does not come directly within the scope of this debate, but it is part of what is, perhaps, the over-protection of children, and part of the difficult process of striking the right balance in keeping children safe without being unduly burdensome, bureaucratic or invasive. Many of those parents, who are doing a fantastic job educating their children at home, feel that the hand of the law on their shoulder suggesting that perhaps their own children are at risk is not acceptable, and I agree with them. We have to get the balance right. Volunteers and the voluntary sector play an important and increasing role in our communities, so I am delighted that volunteers will not have to pay the ISA registration fee. I am a volunteer myself, with a fantastic charity called Rudyard Sailability. We work with disabled children and adults, and I am delighted that that charity will not have the extra burden of having to pay the fee. However, I remember that the process of having my Criminal Records Bureau check done was very bureaucratic. It put a great burden on the gentleman who dealt with that on behalf of the charity, and I would be worried if this check created such burdens for voluntary sector organisations, whether they be disabled sailing charities such as mine, sports clubs or churches. I hope that the ISA process will not overburden such organisations. They would much rather spend their energies dealing with their client groups and giving them the good time that they want to give them, rather than filling in forms. It is important that we get this right and do not alienate volunteers. They will not have to pay the charge, but obviously they give their time freely, and if that time is taken up with form-filling, it will not be as attractive an option as working with vulnerable client groups. I, too, am a member of the public sector union Unison. I should like to discuss some of the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North addressed. I believe that many MPs have come across cases of people who could not fully take up employment because their CRB check had not been done. That is worrying, particularly for someone in their first job. They want to start off well, but they are prevented from taking up their post because the CRB check has not come through, perhaps for a purely bureaucratic reason—the papers might have been lost. It has nothing to do with the individual applicant, but if the CRB check takes a long time to come through, it begins to reflect on the applicant. I do not want the same thing to happen with the ISA checks.