It will be a criminal offence for an organisation to knowingly
employ a barred person for a regulated role, such as moderating
children's sites.
The Government is changing the way that it controls who has
access to children and vulnerable adults and new laws take effect
on 12th October. Those make the moderation of online services such
as bulletin boards a regulated activity.
That means that anyone on the list of people banned from working
with children will also be banned from moderating online services
that are likely to be accessed and used by children. The same is
true of people on the list relating to vulnerable adults in
connection with online services likely to be used by vulnerable
adults.
The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act was introduced in 2006
and has been modified by a commencement order which expands it to
include some online services as regulated activities, meaning that
they cannot be performed by anyone on the list of banned
people.
The new law includes as a regulated activity "moderating a
public interactive communication service which is likely to be used
wholly or mainly by children".
Organisations will have to decide whether any of their activity
falls within the boundaries of the new law. If it does they will
need to register staff with Government body the Independent
Safeguarding Authority (ISA), which will check if those people are
on either list.
Schedule four of the Act defines the activities which will be
regulated from October.
"A person moderates a public electronic interactive
communication service if, for the purpose of protecting children,
he has any function relating to—
(a) monitoring the content of matter which forms any part of the
service,
(b) removing matter from, or preventing the addition of matter to,
the service, or
(c) controlling access to, or use of, the service.
(5) But a person does not moderate a public electronic interactive
communications service …unless he has—
(a) access to the content of the matter;
(b) contact with users of the service.
An ISA spokeswoman said that a person would need to have access
to two-way communication with users for the Act to cover their
activity. Many interactive online services, though, demand
registration, which usually involves the provision of an email
address, which would allow two way communication.
The ISA spokeswoman said that it would not proactively regulate
the law. "We are not an investigatory agency," she said.
It would be up to social services or the police to follow up any
complaints that a barred person was engaging in work covered by the
act, an ISA spokesman said. Any organisation that knowingly
employed a barred person to perform work which it knew was
regulated would be committing a criminal offence, he said.
The law will be phased in and from 12th October this year will
only apply to people filling new jobs in regulated areas. It will
extend to all 11 million roles connected with children and
vulnerable adults over the following five years on a phased basis,
but the Government has not yet published the phasing-in programme,
the spokeswoman said.
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