By John Lettice for The
Register.
This article has been reproduced with permission.
The production of the centralised (with "real time" updating)
list will be a mega IT challenge of itself. Several overlapping
lists (including List 99 for education, the Sex Offenders Register
and the Protection of Children Act lists) currently exist, and the
task of merging them leaves plenty of scope for the usual delays
and disasters. And there are legal considerations which we'll go
into shortly.
The big sales point for the Bill, however, is the reassurance
that fast checking of an up to date central database of teachers,
nannies, care and youth workers can offer to parents. Secure online
access for schools is perhaps just about conceivable, given that
the location of terminals and the authorised users of the system
can at least in theory be severely restricted (in, erm, schools and
education administration offices throughout the country no,
we don't really believe that either), but how do you
handle nannies? Children's Minister Beverley Hughes (last seen in
these parts letting large numbers of fraudulent visa applicants
through a huge Home Office security hole) assures us that "parents
for the first time will be able to check online when they're
employing a nanny or a music teacher [for example]", so we have
here a vast widening of both the population that is to be vetted
and of those with a right and requirement to access the records.
Online, instantly.
The precise extent of this widening is not yet entirely clear.
According to the
Department for Education "individuals, parents and families"
will be "able to make an instant online check" of the "barred
status" of "nannies, music teachers, care workers, personal
tutors". Parents will not however be committing an offence
"if they employ someone who has not been through the central
vetting process". So although failing to check will be a criminal
offence, this will not apply to parents, who can view the system as
voluntary. Those they employ, however, may well be committing a
criminal offence if they have not put themselves forward for
vetting; it will be an offence to put oneself forward for work with
children "or vulnerable adults" if barred from doing so, and an
offence to apply for such work without already being the subject of
monitoring.
Given the size and complexity of the system it will probably
(inevitably?) be possible for virtually anyone to obtain
information on a vetted worker quite easily, possibly without risk
(as policing and auditing accesses will be a massive task). It's
possible that the information that's widely available will be
confined to "barred status" (i.e. it may simply report whether or
not the subject is cleared for work), but that's not necessarily
wholly helpful; vigilantes, for example, might conclude that being
barred, or simply not registered as available, meant
"paedophile".
The precise status of those on the list also has some relevance.
Earlier this year Education Secretary Ruth Kelly came close to
being forced to resign after the discovery that registered sex
offenders can and do work in British schools. The specific
difficulty here was that those on the Sex Offenders Register are
not necessarily on List 99, and those on List 99 are not
necessarily registered as sex offenders. List 99, which bars
unsuitable candidates from work in the education sector, has a
rather wider catchment area than this, while some of those on the
Sex Offenders Register will be there for fairly minor offences
(ill-advised sex while mutually teenage might do the trick, as
might a bit of drunken mooning or flashing) which do not
necessarily involve children. Nor are people always put on the
register for life - some are simply there for a fixed period, after
which they are removed.
The usual public outcry, however, demanded that anyone who had
been on the register should never be allowed to work with children,
and (subject to our being able to check the small print) Kelly
appears to have bravely given in. One fairly common example
scenario however serves to indicate that the small print will need
to have some fancy footwork in it. In some cases (including one of
the ones which caused Kelly her recent problems) suspects have
elected to accept a caution and being added to the Sex Offenders
Register for a period. The police view is that acceptance of a
caution is effectively an admission of guilt, but cautions are
frequently offered by the police in cases where they may find it
difficult to prove charges conclusively. So, someone perfectly
legally (we make no moral judgment, and nor does the law) accessing
adult porn on the Internet could find police claiming there are
traces of child porn on their computer, and do they really want to
be dragged through the courts and the newspapers while protesting
their innocence? So they should take the caution rather than fight
the case? Particularly if, as was the situation before the baying
started, that did not necessarily bar them from working. But now it
does. So does the new system just hang these people? And if it
does, how loud might they shout?
Some considerable time will however elapse before the new
converged, real-time register of everything ships. The DfES tells
us that would be employees "will apply to the CRB [Criminal Records
Bureau] for a vetting and barring report. The police will provide
the CRB with relevant information, including convictions and
cautions so that the new independent body can make a barring
decision... Applications will start the process of continuous
monitoring of police information about the individual, allowing the
barring decision to be changed if any new information comes to
light."
The "new independent body" will be a panel set up to take the
blame, er, make the decisions over who is on the list and who is
not. Its ability to do so, however, hinges on the police's ability
to supply the "relevant information" and to keep it up to date in
real time. In order to do this, the police need to have the IMPACT
(Information Management, Prioritisation, Analysis, Co-ordination
and Tasking) police information sharing programme fully
implemented, and this (see
Spy Blog for analysis) was recently put back from 2007 to 2010.
This delay was spun by the Home Office as being a consequence of
the planned strengthening of the system as a response to the
Bichard Enquiry into the Soham murders (where you're recall
systemic failures led to the employment of a child murderer by a
school). And the new Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups measures
announced today, Beverley Hughes told us this morning, will deal
with "all of Michael Bichard's recommendations". So conceptually it
all hangs together, but they'll be stringing it together for years,
and don't go putting any money on it working by 2010.
© The Register
2006
