Lords Sitting of 2 December 1996

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Coventry.

Burma: Human Rights
Baroness Cox Baroness Cox asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their response to continuing violations of human rights by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) regime in Burma (Myanmar).
Lord Chesham: My Lords, we remain deeply concerned about the human rights situation in Burma. We have issued several statements in recent weeks, most recently with our EU partners on 15th November, condemning violations of human rights in Burma. We shall continue to put pressure on the ruling State Law and Order Council both bilaterally and in international fora such as the United Nations to implement democratic reform and full respect for human rights.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply, which will give much comfort to many of the suffering people in Burma. Is he aware that while considerable media attention has been rightly given to the great courage shown by the political leader Aung San Suu Kyi, much less media attention is given to the very widespread suffering of many of the ethnic minorities such as the Karen and the Karenni, many of whom are suffering from military offensives, torture, slave labour and massacres and have been forced to flee in their thousands to refugee camps on the Thai/Burma border? Can he say what the Government are doing to raise these matters in terms of political and humanitarian concerns against the violation of human rights by the SLORC regime?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, probably the most effective recent political action was on 28th October when the EU agreed a common position on Burma which imposed a ban on entry visas for senior members of SLORC and the military and the suspension of high level bilateral government visits to Burma. We are concerned about the plight of the Karen, the Mon and the Karenni. We are also concerned that forced relocations in Shan and Kayah states have resulted in a new influx of refugees into Thailand. The Thai Government have made it clear that refugees will be humanely treated and not returned until it is safe for them to be returned. We support the relief work in refugee camps, health and schooling facilities and teacher training. Since 1992-93, we have provided about £630,000 in humanitarian aid for Burmese refugees in neighbouring countries.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, does the Minister agree that there was some small evidence of improvement in the
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receptiveness of SLORC earlier in the year? Does he further agree that the decision of ASEAN to accept Burma as a member next year provides a much better opportunity to achieve something real than pressures from the former European colonial powers, which are deeply and increasingly resented by virtually every ASEAN member and are totally counterproductive as far as concerns SLORC?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, the admission of Burma into ASEAN is a matter for ASEAN and not for us. However, we continue to encourage ASEAN members, collectively and individually, to use their influence to encourage real reform in Burma. We very much support that.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, whatever encouragement might be offered locally to improve the regime in Burma, if the European Commission confirms the recommendation to suspend European GSP trade privileges to Burma, will Her Majesty's Government support that condition?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, the forced labour position in Burma is currently being investigated by the European Commission. The EU will then decide what action to take in the light of the Commission's proposals.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I had intended only to ask my noble friend the Minister whether he agrees that we have had enough of quiet diplomacy and that it would be as well if we were to support, if we have not already done so, the Americans in refusing World Bank money to people who do not satisfy good government criteria. However, I should like also to take up the point made by my noble friend Lord Marsh. I cannot agree that it would be anything but right for us to support the Karen, who were our friends and our comrades in a dangerous and difficult war. That is not colonialism. That is honour and supporting our friends. I would hope that we will be seen to do that by the ordinary people of Burma. I cannot believe that the SLORC government, if they claim to be a soldiers' government, are so lost to honour as not to understand that.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, we are certainly concerned about the Karen. We believe that it is appropriate to express that concern in both a multilateral and a bilateral way. That is what we are doing.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Minister in another place, Mr. Jeremy Hanley, said that the recent Amnesty International reports on political prisoners in Burma make grim reading? Is he further aware that Myanmar has declared this to be a year of tourism in which it intends to encourage visits by travellers from Britain and other European countries? In those circumstances, will the Foreign Office consider collaborating with Amnesty International in the production of a note which could be issued to anyone who makes inquiries of the FCO about the propriety of

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going there so that at least they have a health warning about the state of human rights in the country they propose to visit?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, we have no present plans to discourage tourism to Burma. We believe that it is up to individuals to decide.
Viscount Waverley: My Lords, how does the Minister reconcile pursuing the ideal, while facing the reality, given that there are many countries, most notably in ASEAN and France, who send conflicting messages by not placing conditionality on their inward investment into Burma? What is the Government's position on UK investors?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, we are not taking any steps to encourage inward investment. The attitude of the ASEAN countries and France must be for them.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, while it is for ASEAN countries to make up their minds about the admission of Burma to that organisation, is it not rather surprising that they should have decided to do this within a year and just a few days after a report by a major UN committee on human rights condemning political repression in Burma and after President Clinton had made similar condemnation only last week? In the light of that, can the Minister tell the House what further pressure or action the Government intend to take in discussing this matter with ASEAN countries?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, as I said earlier to the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, it is up to ASEAN to decide whether it admits Burma or not. We encourage its members, as I said earlier, to use their influence to encourage real reform in Burma. It might well be that if Burma does join ASEAN that could exert greater influence than being outside that body.
Viscount Brentford: My Lords, can my noble friend elaborate a little on the refugee situation on the Burmese borders? Can he say how well they are being looked after and whether the state of the refugees is all right?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, I do not believe that the state of refugees is ever all right. However, we are supporting the Burma border consortium this year by an increased amount, which is now up to £150,000.

Nuclear Disarmament: UN Resolution on ICJ Advisory Opinion
2.45 p.m.
The Lord Jenkins of Putney The Lord Jenkins of Putney asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will support a motion in the United Nations General Assembly welcoming the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice given on 8th July 1996.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, in the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, the UK voted
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against Resolution L.37 on the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. As was made clear in our Explanation of Vote, we believe that the resolution contained highly selective quotations from the opinion and called for an unrealistic schedule for disarmament.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, in the circumstances, is it not the case that the vast majority of countries of the world have voted in favour of the action commended by the Canberra report? Can the noble Lord assure the House that the report, which he will recall was commended to the House by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, on 28th October, is being seriously considered by the nuclear countries?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, the resolution was opposed by 22 states and 29 states abstained. As regards the paragraph calling for immediate nuclear disarmament negotiations, 27 states opposed the resolution and 27 abstained. That demonstrates widespread reservations about the resolution. As regards the Canberra report—like the Australians, I prefer to call it that—there are some ideas with which the United Kingdom strongly agrees. We welcome the recognition that nuclear arms control measures can be negotiated only between the states holding nuclear weapons themselves. However, we disagree that the role of deterrence has disappeared. Disarmament measures cannot be divorced from the broader global security context. Deterrence continues to make a central contribution to European security.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is the danger in all this that the whole question of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice may be misunderstood? Is it not the fact that, after six months' deliberation and 200 pages of evidence and dissenting opinion, the conclusion of the court was as follows:
"The court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence in which the very survival of the state would be at risk".
As that is the very circumstance in which a nuclear response would be threatened or used, is it not irresponsible and mischievous to suggest that the international court has declared that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is illegal, when it has done no such thing?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, I could not have put it better myself.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, however the noble Lord puts it, does he not agree that the court made it clear that the exception related to a very narrow range of situations and that the rest of the judgment was absolutely unambiguous? Although it was only advisory, does the noble Lord agree that an opinion of the International Court of Justice carries some authority? Do Her Majesty's Government have no intention of offering any reaction to the report?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, a large majority of 11 to 3 found that there is in international law no

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comprehensive and universal prohibition on the threat or use of nuclear weapons as such. The voting was 11 to 3. We continue to believe that the use of nuclear weapons is not prohibited as such under international law and that the legality of any such use would depend on all the circumstances. In fact, we would only ever use our nuclear deterrent in self-defence and in extreme circumstances.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, as the Government apparently support some aspects of the Canberra commission report, can the Minister tell the House whether the Government would support a nuclear weapons convention modelled on the chemical weapons convention of 1993? If they would not support one, can the Minister tell the House why not?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, I do not have details of the chemical weapons convention with me so I would prefer to write to the noble Baroness about that.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, on that last matter, are the Government seriously considering the possibility and do they recognise the strength of the Canberra report following the decision of the International Court of Justice, however one rates that? If the Government are impressed with the Canberra report—as I believe they should be—can the Minister say whether the Government will come back to the House with a considered view about it?
Lord Chesham: Certainly, my Lords. I have just stated that there are parts with which we firmly agree, although we do not agree with other parts.

Poliomyelitis: WHO Aim
2.50 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What assistance they are giving towards achievement of the World Health Organisation's aim to eradicate poliomyelitis globally by 2005.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, I promise that I shall not be answering the fourth Question.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Chesham: My Lords, since 1992 the UK Government have committed £56 million towards vaccination and immunisation programmes, including £7.9 million for UNICEF's expanded programme of immunisation which covers polio. In addition to this, we have recently committed £47.5 million in support of the mass vaccination programme in India and £100,000 to Albania in response to the World Health Organisation's appeal to contain the recent outbreak of polio in the Balkans.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply and I am glad that the British
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Government have made a generous and far-sighted donation relating to India. As the World Health Organisation has stated that its aim is to immunise every child in the world, does my noble friend foresee any difficulties arising from a refusal to co-operate by individuals or groups who are motivated by religious, ideological or just perverse reasons, even though polio immunisation does not normally require injections but simply a small quantity of liquid sugar to be swallowed?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, the lessons to be learned from India are terribly important in that, although only two national immunisation days have taken place there, there has been a drop of 70 per cent. in reported polio cases in India since last year. That is a staggering figure. Neither the UK Government nor the World Health Organisation encourage the development of a legal framework to compel parents to have their children immunised; instead they prefer to stress the risks to young children of not having immunisation carried out and the consequences of the effects of the disease. Parents are given the facts to enable them to decide. The ODA accepts and respects different religious and social systems and recognises the rights and responsibilities of parents.
Lord McNally: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that Rotary International and hundreds of Rotary clubs in Britain have made the supply of polio vaccine their major international objective in the millennium campaign to eradicate polio? Does he agree that that is a most welcome initiative from the private sector in helping to eradicate that childhood scourge?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, I am happy to agree with the noble Lord. Any efforts, particularly private efforts to back up those made by the Government, are to be applauded. Your Lordships may be interested to know that apart from the obvious benefits in human terms—I refer to avoiding the suffering and death which are the direct effects of the disease—the global eradication of polio is expected to save the world up to £1 billion per year on routine immunisation campaigns. Once polio has been eradicated, no one will need to be vaccinated ever again.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of the work of Robert Repetto and his colleague on pesticides and the immune system? That work indicates that the immune systems of young people and children in third-world countries (where they are exposed to very high levels of pesticides) are severely compromised. There are now indications that vaccines, such as the measles vaccine and the poliomyelitis vaccine, are not working as well as they should. Can the noble Lord say what the United Kingdom Government are doing to ensure that pesticides are used properly in

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the third world and that they are sent out from this country with proper labelling in the language of the country to which they are being sent?.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, the Question is on polio and I should like to keep to that area.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I asked a question about polio. successful polio vaccines rely on a healthy immune system. If the immune system is compromised by pesticides, the polio vaccine will not take.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, I still feel that that is wide of the Question.
Lord Judd: My Lords, we on these Benches add our warmest good wishes to the Government in this vital work against polio. But does not the noble Lord agree that not least in the context of polio, despite all the convincing evidence that well-targeted aid works, the most acute killer and maimer of young people and children in the third world remains poverty, with 33,000 largely preventable distressing child deaths every day and with an under-five mortality rate of 170 per thousand as compared with nine in our part of the world? Does he agree that as we come up to the new millennium the values which we should be celebrating demand that we all renew our determination to eradicate world poverty and to ensure that children who are born are wanted and have the prospect of a reasonable life ahead, and that women all over the world are emancipated from the tyranny of excessive child-bearing?.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, as the noble Lord is aware, that is the target and aim of the ODA and its programmes in all parts of the world. However, perhaps I may refer the noble Lord to the Question on the Order Paper.

Monopolies and Mergers Commission: Privatised Utilities
2.56 p.m.
Lord Haskel Lord Haskel asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will refer to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission all further bids in the recently privatised utilities in the run-up to the general election.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie): My Lords, reference to the MMC is mandatory for certain large water mergers under the Water Industry Act 1991. My right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade has stated that he will continue to consider other mergers on their individual merits.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. However, is he not aware that there is a lot of disquiet about the inconsistency of government policy
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towards such mergers and takeovers? There is disquiet about the future ownership of these essential services, which in many cases are monopolies as far as the customer is concerned. Does the Minister agree that, by stating that bids will be so referred until the election, speculation in the shares of such companies will be quietened, a period of reflection will be created, and the new Government will be able to look at the position with a fresh eye without too much unalterable change having taken place?.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I do not accept that there has been either disquiet or concern about this. In relation to the regional electricity companies, as far back as August 1995 my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade set out the issues to which he would pay particular attention in considering any merger involving those companies. As I indicated in my Answer, under the terms of the Water Industry Act 1991, referring water mergers to the MMC is not a matter of choice for the President of the Board of Trade; it is mandatory. I can give the noble Lord this undertaking: the President of the Board of Trade will observe the law. What astonishes me about the noble Lord's proposal is that he might be inviting the President of the Board of Trade to breach the law because he does not have the power to refer anything and everything to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission; he can do so only within the definitions allowed to him.
Lord Borrie: My Lords, is the Minister satisfied that the powers of the specific industry regulators are adequate (either to obtain information or otherwise to regulate the privatised industries in the public interest) if the seats of governance of so many more of them are removed to the United States of America?.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, as matters stand at the moment, the view is that the powers of the regulators are sufficient. However, if the position changes, the regulators may wish to alter the conditions that are set out in the licences to ensure that they have adequate information and can be satisfied that true competition is operating in each and every sector. It is for that reason that in the decision of August 1995, to which I referred, the President of the Board of Trade indicated that he would have particular regard to the necessity for the regulator to have a proper set of comparators. In short, yes, we believe that the powers are sufficient, but if the regulators were to indicate that there had to be some change, we should pay careful regard to that. It would appear, however, that the powers that are necessary can be adjusted through the conditions in the licences.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, is the noble and learned Lord aware that the real disquiet in this area is the threat posed by the windfall tax, which would deprive millions of ordinary shareholders of the value

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of their shares in order to punish a few so-called fat cats over whom they have no control whatever? That is common theft, and I hope that it will be stopped.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I offer one particular way to ensure that there is no such windfall tax—the answer may be rather obvious—and that is the return of this Government. The Government are firmly opposed to the tax. However, despite a long debate in the other place recently, those of us who take an interest in this matter are astonished that, given all that has been made of the desirability of a windfall tax, no one has the clearest idea of how issues such as non-hybridity should be tackled were such a tax to be introduced. Nor do we have an idea as to exactly what utility may be involved in such a windfall tax.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, can the noble and learned Lord tell the House what steps will be taken to ensure that when mergers take place there is consultation with the workforces, as laid down under European legislation and, I believe, under the TUPE regulations?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, clearly before the President of the Board of Trade makes any reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission he is bound under statute to take advice. That he has done and will continue to do, both up to the general election and beyond it. But if there are those who have representations to make they can make them. As I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, they regularly make such representations.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, in considering bids for the private utilities, particularly those in the electricity sector, do the Government take into account not only the possible impact on competition and monopoly but also the impact on the structure of the industry—for example, a return to vertical integration in a big way?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, yes. If the noble Lord looks back to the statement of August 1995, to which I have referred on a number of occasions, one of the issues that the President of the Board of Trade specifically addressed was whether any vertical integration would have any adverse effects. He has not ruled out a greater degree of vertical integration than exists at present, but he has clearly indicated that before further vertical integration is permitted he must be satisfied that there are no adverse effects on competition in that particular area of utility.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble and learned Lord aware that an incoming Labour Government will have no more technical difficulty in establishing a windfall tax on utilities than the present Government did in levying a windfall tax on the banks within a couple of years of taking office?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I suggest that the noble Lord may wish to reflect on exactly what is a utility and who may be subject to this tax. I should have
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thought that a bank could be easily defined. However, utilities are wide-ranging. If a degree of hybridity were introduced, it would be extremely interesting to see how long it would take for the matter to be resolved. I have no doubt that the shadow Chancellor, Mr. Gordon Brown, is living in an Alice in Wonderland world if he believes that an incoming Labour Government will have any revenue in their first year of office.
Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, does my noble and learned friend agree that a windfall tax would be a tax on pension funds and therefore a tax on all pensioners who were dependent on such funds for their income?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I absolutely agree. My noble friend could not have put it better. The idea that this will have only a neutral impact is complete nonsense. It is not only individual shareholders who will suffer. If the party opposite is not concerned that individual shareholders may suffer, it may at least have some concern that pension funds will equally suffer.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord agree that the intervention of his noble friend Lady Seccombe was wide of the question?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, if the noble Lord had woken from his slumbers a little earlier, he would have realised that the issue of the windfall tax was addressed to me long before my noble friend intervened.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, if the windfall tax is to be on the agenda, we are quite happy to defend it. What the noble and learned Lord has not proved is that the fat cats in the utilities who benefit from such mergers are to be controlled. Referring to my noble friend's Question, what disadvantage is there in making sure that the fat cats in the utilities do not become fatter as a result of mergers before the next election?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, if the noble Lord had woken from his slumbers during my first response, he would have appreciated that I was being invited to say, on behalf of my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade, that every merger should be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. I have already indicated to the House that in certain circumstances that is mandatory, and that will done. In other circumstances, what lies behind the Question is an invitation to the President of the Board of Trade possibly to breach the law as it stands at present. I give the equally clear undertaking that he will certainly not do that. This has nothing to do with fat cats. However, I admire the noble Lord as being the only Member of the Opposition Front Bench I have yet encountered who is prepared to defend in any respects the detail of a possible windfall tax.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord agree that the pensioners referred to by his noble friend Lady Seccombe are concerned about having a guaranteed supply of water?

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In those circumstances, how can the Government justify failing to refer such bids to the MMC at a time when money is being returned to shareholders and regulators complain about the lack of action to repair leaks in the system?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, a number of the matters raised in that question are for the regulator. Like the noble Baroness, we would hope that the regulator would pay close attention to any shortcomings on the part of the water utilities. I indicate to the noble Baroness—I believe this is the fourth time that I have said it—that, if a merger comes within the terms of the Water Industry Act 1991, it does not lie within the discretion of the President of the Board of Trade. That he makes such a reference is mandatory.

Police Bill [H.L.]
3.7 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Blatch.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
Clause 100 [Criminal conviction certificates]:
Lord Weatherill Lord Weatherill moved Amendment No. 103:
Page 40, line 7, at end insert ("except that where the application is supported by a letter from a registered charity or appropriate body confirming that the application is made in connection with the appointment of the applicant to a voluntary position for which he will receive no remuneration other than his expenses, the fee shall be waived.").
The noble Lord said: The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that people who apply to be volunteers do not have to pay a fee to obtain a criminal conviction certificate, a criminal record certificate or an enhanced criminal record certificate, as set out in the Bill, where such application is made in connection with their voluntary work.
Every year in the United Kingdom over 20 million volunteers provide a service that is beyond price. That contribution should be nurtured and supported. As at present drafted, the Bill could have a potentially devastating effect on organisations that depend on the services of a large number of volunteers. Not all volunteers work for registered charities. Many work for small local charities such as church groups or play groups which are not registered charities. The amendment proposes that the prescribed fee should be waived where the applicant needs the check in order to be a volunteer in a registered charity or other appropriate body of the kind that I have mentioned.
The amendment is vital to ensure that the Bill does not place an intolerable financial burden on organisations which involve volunteers and, above all, does not create a disincentive to volunteering. The
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amendment has the support of the Scout Association. I declare an interest as president of the scouts in Kent. It has also the support of numerous other splendid organisations with whom I am connected, notably St. John Ambulance, the British Red Cross, the YMCA, the National Trust and other organisations represented by the National Centre for Volunteering, the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services and the National Council for Voluntary Child Care Organisation. The latter represents over 100 of the main childcare organisations.
The Bill recognises that many organisations working with vulnerable groups, not just children, have for many years been seeking access to criminal record checks. The Bill clarifies the situation and should be welcomed for its good intentions. Nevertheless, broader access to criminal records will not in itself solve the problem. Organisations such as the Boys Brigade, for instance, fear that people could be lulled into a sense of security by a clean certificate. It has told me:
"The danger is that a 'clean' certificate will be seen as 'the OK' to work with children and young people and other vulnerable members of society. As a consequence, less reliance may be placed on the careful recruitment and selection of volunteers, the provision of appropriate training, the supervision of volunteers, and the promotion of good practice".
Indeed, that view was borne out by the Home Office-funded research in 1992 which found criminal record checks encouraged a false sense of security within organisations. It is worth remembering that many offenders and potential offenders do not have a criminal record and have no contact with the police. That indeed was the fact in the case of Thomas Hamilton.
In summing up on Second Reading the Minister said:
"Many individuals will pay for their own checks. There is no requirement on the voluntary sector to meet this cost".—[Official Report, 11/11/96; col. 835.]
That is not the considered view of the organisations upon whose behalf I am speaking. It is accepted good practice that volunteers should not be out of pocket as a result of their volunteering. The view of the National Centre for Volunteering, which represents over 500 volunteer-involving organisations, some large and some very small, is that charities will not feel able to ask the volunteers to pay for those checks. It fears that the fee will be another disincentive to volunteering.
On Second Reading the Minister also expressed the opinion that those costs would be minimal, but the Scout Association, with which I have a close connection, estimates that it would cost about £2.5 million to screen all its current and occasional volunteers who have direct access to children. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, pointed out on Second Reading that, assuming a cost of £10 a check, it would cost the Scout Association £500,000 a year to screen its new scout leaders. In addition, there would be administrative costs which even waiving the fee will not address. The scouts estimate that those will be about £60,000 to £70,000 a year. Thus, the annual costs will be in the order of £570,000 every year for the scouts.
The Boys Brigade believes that it will cost it an extra £20,000 in administrative costs. The National Association of Boys Clubs for Young People says that it

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would incur immediate costs of £200,000 if all existing volunteers were to be provided with an enhanced criminal record certificate. A further £40,000 annually would he needed to cover new volunteers.
For small locally based charities, for example, church play groups or even Sunday schools, those additional costs could seriously jeopardise their financial security. They will hit them disproportionately. They have limited fund-raising abilities. The Woodcraft Folk, for instance, runs children's clubs throughout the country. Checks for the London branch alone would cost £20,000 a year. That represents 22 per cent. of its current budget. It would have to fund-raise that additional 22 per cent. just to deliver the same service to the community.
I have had a letter from the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, which would need to find an additional £600,000 a year to cover its checks. It writes:
"Any substantial increase in the cost of running and administering the Scheme would seriously threaten its existence … It is impossible to overestimate the devastating effect of the Bill".
On Second Reading the Minister said:
"The voluntary sector will have recruitment processes which will obviate the need for checks in many cases".—[Official Report, 11/11/96; col. 835.]
She implied that organisations will not need to make a criminal record check unless they choose to do so. But the reality is that organisations will come under intense pressure to use those checks. It will become a de facto obligation because of the pressure of insurance, trustees, fund-raisers and those responsible for the protection of the vulnerable.
The Abbeyfield Society involves some 15,000 volunteers in the UK in its residential care for older people. It believes that it will come under pressure to screen, even if the checks are not mandatory, in order to avoid accusations that it has failed in its duty of care to beneficiaries. Organisations which do not carry out those checks could leave themselves open to a huge potential legal liability.
I have said that I am connected in my "alleged" retirement with numerous voluntary organisations. I spend a good deal of time encouraging people to volunteer. I am concerned also with the impact that these fees will have on volunteering—a fear shared by the organisations that I have already mentioned.
To their credit, the Government have sought actively to encourage volunteering through the make-a-difference initiative. They support the work of those who are trying to broaden the base from which volunteers are drawn; to encourage the unemployed, the young and disabled to volunteer. But the Scout Association, for instance, receives a grant of £125,000 a year from the DfEE to support scouting in urban and isolated rural areas and among minority ethnic groups. In its present form the Bill will seriously undermine that work.
We were all shocked by the shooting at Dunblane Primary School. Lord Cullen recommended in his report that the cost of his proposals for protecting children should be kept within the limits of what organisations can afford and should be subsidised by the Government, if necessary. My amendments echo that sentiment. It is
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that volunteers and organisations that involve them should not be asked to bear costs which they cannot support. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: In the absence of my noble friend Lord Dubs, who has put his name to the amendment but is not able to be here until later this afternoon, perhaps I may intervene to give my support and that of my noble friends to the amendment which has been so ably moved.
I wonder whether the Committee realises how modest and limited is the amendment. It refers only to volunteers who work without remuneration and have only their expenses refunded. It could, with justice, have gone a great deal further. It could have included those paid staff of voluntary organisations whose checks will have to be paid for even if the amendment is carried and who will therefore cause those voluntary organisations an additional financial burden. It could have applied to the many people who are low paid or part-time but who work with children or people who are otherwise vulnerable. We shall come later to the issue of vulnerable adults.
If Members of the Committee would think, for example, of child minders, lollipop ladies or part-timers working in schools, children's homes or old people's homes, all those people are paid (probably a pittance) and yet the amendment does not seem to cover them or extend to the protection which will be required under Clauses 101 and 102.
In contrast to the recommendations in the Cullen Report, which the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, read out, the Government proposed in their financial memorandum that the cost of providing the criminal record information as proposed will be met through charges in registration fees. The implication appears to be that in public expenditure terms the provisions will be self-financing. But of course they will not be because all the fees which must be met by public bodies—education authorities, the health service, social service organisations and so forth which are financed out of public expenditure—will be an addition to public expenditure. Yet the financial memorandum gives no indication of what the additional public expenditure is likely to be, even if one were to exclude the cost to voluntary organisations for the searches to be made for their paid staff.
Therefore, if the Government are going to argue—I have no doubt that the Minister will do so—that an additional public expenditure is involved, it is incumbent upon them to come clean about the amount of public expenditure which is already involved and to recognise the extent to which, even with the amendment, the Bill will provide a very serious additional burden on our social and education services.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln: I wish to speak on behalf of the Churches, which are perhaps the largest reservoir for volunteers in our society. In 1995 the Bishops of the Church of England adopted a child protection policy which is now being implemented in all

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dioceses. I wish to pay tribute to the efficiency of the Department of Health's consultancy service in helping us with that policy.
The Churches welcome in principle the possibility of acquiring enhanced checks as affording additional protection for children. Access to enhanced checks would clearly provide credibility for all voluntary organisations with statutory agencies such as probation, education and social services. All of us who work with children need to do what we can to promote good practice which can restrict opportunities for any abuse of children. We have a duty to ensure that those placed in positions of trust do not abuse them.
I wish to add my concerns to those already expressed in the Committee and gathered together in the amendment about the burdens which the payments for enhanced checks will place on the voluntary sector. Surely, if the Government are committed to the principle enshrined in the Children Act 1989—namely, that the welfare of children is paramount—government funding should cover the cost of the enhanced checks. Charging for checks may well be appropriate for profit-making organisations. However, as the Committee has been reminded, the agencies and the groups of volunteers about which we are speaking do not fall within that category.
There is no doubt about the considerable financial burdens which will be placed on voluntary organisations and the Churches should they be forced to pay for checks on their office holders and volunteers. Society relies a great deal for its well-being and enrichment on the work of volunteers. We need to keep that willingness and service at full strength, as the Government have recognised. If charging for checks is insisted upon, there is a clear danger that some people will be deterred by the requirement to pay, particularly as trustees and insurers will rightly insist upon that. In consequence, voluntary organisations will suffer and decline. I hope that the Committee will support the amendment.
Viscount Waverley: I rise to support the amendment. It must be right.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: A nice short speech!.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: With respect to the noble Viscount, I wonder whether it is inevitably right. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, said, we are dealing with 20 million people a year who offer their voluntary services, are all of them involved, or is the 20 million those who receive no remuneration other than expenses? As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, raised the point, I should be interested to know what is the administrative position in terms of cost.
It is a little odd and unrealistic to suppose that those within that category who receive no remuneration other than expenses should have some form of waiver, whereas the others have none. It also seems a little odd that as part of their commitment, those who wish to offer their services should not be able or willing to pay and save the coffers of the charity. In that context,
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I totally accept that if the charities had to pay for 20 million people—if that be the figure—or for those who receive no remuneration other than expenses it would not be right.
Perhaps the Minister or another Member of the Committee can confirm that there are three checks. One costs £3 to £5; another more important check costs £5 to £6; and an enhanced check, concerned with those who work with children, costs £8 to £10. I begin to wonder whether it is inevitably right and necessary that the amendment should be approved, although I should be the first to agree that it is vital to the country to maintain the voluntary services, which fill a gap that inevitably exists in any state-funded regime.
Lord Renton: Before my noble friend sits down, will he clarify one matter? He referred to a waiver. Is he aware that we are dealing here only with the waiver of a prescribed fee? We are not dealing with the waiver of the certificate.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: I appreciated that fact and I am sorry if it was not apparent.
Lord Murray of Epping Forest: The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, suggested that volunteers could well put their hands in their pockets and pay these trifling amounts. The fact is that many charities and bodies such as the Retirement and Senior Volunteer Programme are aiming at people who have retired early, perhaps having been made redundant, and are living on very low salaries indeed. We are hoping to provide them with an opportunity to fill their time before they reach the age of 60, 65 or whatever. They cannot afford to pay £3, or £5.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, that it is vitally important to encourage voluntary organisations, as the Government have emphasised. However, the Government must make up their mind whether they want to encourage voluntary organisations or to put obstacles in the way of recruiting volunteers. I say that because voluntary organisations cannot function without volunteers.
The experience of charities with which I am involved would suggest that it is becoming more difficult to recruit volunteers. On the one hand, there are more women working who previously might have been available for such voluntary work—with children, at day centres, and so on. On the other hand, as has already been said, charities—especially children's charities—are much more sensitive about the problems of recruiting people who may subsequently turn out to be "wrong'uns". They are bending over backwards so as not to recruit such people.
The central point of the amendment is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, said, it brings out the fact that we are not discussing an optional extra; indeed, it will become a requirement. It will become standard practice. Insurers and others will expect charities to recruit people and ensure that, in the increasing state of litigiousness with which we are faced—and we only

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have to remember what has been happening in schools recently—they are protected against the dangers that are inherent in using volunteers.
Therefore, to impose any extra charge on volunteers or on their organisations in such a situation would be totally inconsistent with the Government's acceptable former policy. I hope that they will think again on the matter. However, if they will not, I hope that Members of the Committee will require them to do so.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I think that all Members of the Committee are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, for introducing such an amendment. It gives us the opportunity to consider the broad aspects of the issue of voluntary service, which everyone in this Chamber wishes to encourage. It also gives us the chance to talk about the possible costs that Clause 100, as it presently stands, might impose in a situation where no one in this place would wish to put anything by way of disincentive on to voluntary service. In that general sense, we must all be highly sympathetic to what the noble Lord said.
However, in arguing his case, the noble Lord said that there was a danger that the existence of a certificate of a criminal record might make some of the voluntary organisations rather more casual about their selection and training procedures and that in fact such a certificate was not a guarantee of either the morality or the ethical standards of anyone who might enter into voluntary work. In that sense, the existence of such a scheme of criminal records could be a counter indicator. Indeed, if I dare say so to the noble Lord with his parliamentary experience, I believe that he produced an argument that I might have expected to hear from the Government Front Bench in response.
When one considers the question of cost as regards what the Government propose, I must admit that I do not quite know what to think. We know about the cost of the certificates and we know how many people undertake voluntary work. However, to multiply one by the other and say that that is the cost to the voluntary sector, which there is a great temptation to do, would be entirely erroneous.
If we just argue the case of the Scouts, it seems to me that many people who might in a voluntary capacity help them may well, in my experience, have been Scouts themselves. People who grow out of scouting very often volunteer to carry on in the organisation in the service side of the business after they cease to be Scouts. The same applies to cadet forces and to almost all organisations. Therefore, in the case of a young man who has been, so to speak, under your hands for five or 10 years, is it credible that you would then ask for a certificate of criminal record on his account? I find that unbelievable. If someone as distinguished as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, were to volunteer to work in the voluntary sector, I would find it equally unbelievable if such a certificate were required. Indeed, I find the idea preposterous. We must think most carefully about what the real financial burdens of this proposal would be as opposed to what the theoretical financial burdens seem to be. There is a clear distinction between the two.
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Although I am sure that all Members of the Committee have sympathy with the thought behind the amendment, I do not believe that we should blind ourselves to the reality of the situation: the actual cost will not be anything like the theoretical cost. We must also be well aware of the argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill; namely, that even if such a scheme were to exist, it would do nothing to remove the obligation from the voluntary bodies to make the proper checks into the background of any individual whom they may wish to take on to work in a voluntary capacity.
Lord Northbourne: About a year ago the noble Baroness very courteously sent me details of a scheme to encourage volunteering. Indeed, I am not entirely sure that the Government did not set aside a substantial sum of money to support projects for volunteers. I follow the argument raised by the noble Lord, Lord Murray. The Government must make up their mind as to whether or not they want to encourage volunteers.
I am involved with the Stepney children's fund which runs camps during the summer. The camps cater for about 100 children and the cost is something under £150 per child. We have 40 youngsters, mostly university graduates or young people from universities, acting as volunteers for one week only. At a cost of £10, that would mean at least another £400—indeed, nearly 5 per cent.—on our total costs. That is a significant amount.
The Lord Bishop of Coventry: I want to dispel the notion that we can choose the volunteers for whom we require a certificate. That is simply not the case. Under the Children Act we have to provide certificates. Therefore, in such circumstances, we would have to get as much certification as we could; that would be required of us. As has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, there has been tremendous pressure upon us to do so. We need a degree of certification, so we would need to get as much certification as we could. This will bear very heavily on voluntary organisations. It could kill voluntary recruiting.
I do not believe that Members of the Committee who have spoken have sufficiently represented what a strong destructive effect this will have on voluntary effort. I should plead particularly for those areas where we are, at present, trying desperately to raise the number of volunteers to help with children and young people. I refer to inner cities and the housing estates of our land. I would say that the measure is one which could destroy such efforts if we do not pass an amendment like the one moved by the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill. We must ask the Government to think again on the matter. This cost must be covered. It cannot be covered by the voluntary organisations themselves and it cannot be covered by the volunteers; indeed, it would simply discourage them. It is simply not true to say that we would have choice in the matter as regards whom we certificated. Whatever we know about people beforehand, we must apply the process to everyone.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: I should like to add the support of this side of the Committee to the very

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powerful expressions of opinion which we have heard from all Members of the Committee. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh said, this is a modest and limited measure, yet it is of the greatest importance to voluntary organisations of all sizes and identities.
I should merely like to say that I am sure that the Minister will spell out very clearly in her response what the cost of this measure might be. The Bill refers to a "turnover" of £18 million as regards its "financial effects". As far as I understand it, the only income of the agency is likely to come from fees. In working out the likely income and deciding what the fees should be, the Treasury and the department must have made some assumptions about what proportion of the total number of applications would come from the voluntary sector. Therefore, I am sure that the Minister will tell the House—indeed, she is nodding her head—the sort of sum of money that would be involved.
Given that the turnover is, in Exchequer terms, as small as £18 million, I cannot believe that the extra cost of granting such certificates free to voluntary organisations (given proper safeguards) is one which the Exchequer should not bear. I say that in anticipation of an argument which the Minister may very fairly put forward—namely, that if this were to be a self-financing organisation and no fees were charged to voluntary bodies, then the fees to others would be greatly increased.
As the Committee knows, at a later stage I intend to oppose the Question that Clause 100 stand part of the Bill. There are many objections to the clause as a whole which do not apply in any way to Clauses 101 and 102. One of the arguments which we shall bear in mind in our discussion today is the considerable sum of money which any applicant may have to pay, if that is not borne by the organisation to which he or she is applying. Were this amendment to be accepted, I hope there will be no argument about the additional costs falling on those who will have to pay for the certificates. It will be a relatively small sum. In view of the importance of the issue and the strength of feeling in this Chamber, I am sure it is a sum that the Treasury should bear.
Lord Craig of Radley: I wish to support the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, in this amendment, and to follow what the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, has just said. We are reminded in the Bill that the effect on public expenditure is expected to be broadly cost neutral. Although the figures which the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, has mentioned are clearly of great importance to individual charities, it does not seem to me that they amount to a large sum of money regarding the overall effect on public expenditure. No doubt the Minister will be able to put us right on those figures, but the statement in the Bill that the overall effect on public expenditure is expected to be neutral would still stand. I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill.
Baroness Rawlings: I declare an interest as an honorary vice-president of the British Red Cross Society and as someone who has been a volunteer worker for many years. I speak on my own behalf.
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I had every intention of supporting the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, on what appeared to be an important amendment for which I had great sympathy. However, I realised that the point in the amendment which concerns the costs of the enhanced checks on voluntary workers does not cover every worker. Perhaps the Minister will reiterate this point. But, as I understand it, voluntary organisations do not have to check everyone through this system. Therefore the heavy costs that have been mentioned will not arise. Organisations will naturally follow their sensible recruitment procedures and follow up normal checks and references. Only if they are suspicious will they need to use the enhanced system. Will the Minister clarify what would happen if a person who was not checked through the enhanced system turned out to be a "wrong'un"? As few volunteers will need to be checked in this way, costs for any organisation should be minimal and should not amount to the vast sums that have been mentioned. Therefore I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn.
Lord Northbourne: On what basis does the noble Baroness state that only a small percentage of volunteers will need to be checked? Would she be prepared to take the responsibility of accepting unknown volunteers who offer their services to work with children without checking them?.
Baroness Rawlings: There would be checks because all organisations carry out minimal checks. However, if they know people who have worked for them for a long time and who have lived in the same area for a long time, they will not need to conduct a criminal check on those people.
3.45 p.m.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: I declare an interest as a vice-president of the scout movement in Lancashire. I am deeply troubled by the preceding contribution and exchange. When this legislation is enacted, the scout movement and other voluntary organisations will be placed under pressure, as my noble friend Lord Murray said. In the circumstances of our time voluntary organisations have to protect themselves through insurance. They have to protect themselves against any action that may be taken in the future. Insurers will demand that due care is taken. The situation that has been described is rather like someone insuring his house against burglary and then refusing to fit catches on the windows.
For many years my sons belonged to the scout movement. I believe it is difficult for a scout troop leader at local level to judge those individuals who will need to be checked and those who will not. That measure would place such people in an invidious position. I believe that even if such people were not required to take that decision they would still do so. They will be required to do so by insurance companies. It will be impossible for people organising volunteers within their local community to decide that one group of people must be checked but another must not.
It is precisely in some of the most deprived and transient communities in cities where the checks will be needed most as individuals in those kind of communities

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will have little knowledge of people who volunteer their services. Those are the very sectors of our community which will have the greatest difficulty in bearing the costs we have been discussing. Some Members of the Committee on the Government Benches have said that the measure may not be as expensive as it seems, or that we cannot quantify the figures. I believe—I say this with the greatest respect—that they miss the point. Many people from different sides of the Chamber have expressed concern about this measure. If in two or three years' time it is discovered that the measure has damaged the volunteer movement, it will be too late to try to retrieve the situation. I support the amendment.
Lord Swinfen: I declare an interest as I work for a voluntary organisation which uses volunteers. However, I do not wish to use that organisation as an example because it employs few volunteers. However, I feel that the insurers of voluntary organisations which employ any volunteers will insist that these checks are undertaken. If they do not do so, the insurers are idiots. However, insurers are not idiots and they like to cover themselves from all angles.
Often social services departments place children with voluntary organisations. I am sure that the directors of social services will want to know that the voluntary organisations with which they place those children have undertaken these checks; otherwise, those children will be placed with other voluntary organisations, or somewhere where the local authority has to pay for them, in which case the costs to the community would be considerably greater. I am not a lawyer but I suspect that if the measure reaches the statute book trustees of a voluntary organisation who failed to insist that the checks were undertaken would be failing in their duties as trustees. Therefore there will inevitably be an increased cost to the voluntary organisation because of these checks.
I have some notes on one voluntary organisation which employs some 3,370 volunteers a year who give some 5,257 weeks of their time. Therefore that organisation employs volunteers who spend, on average, less than a fortnight with that organisation. Therefore that organisation will face a considerable administrative burden as well as the cost of carrying out the checks. With that number of volunteers, at a fee of £10, the cost to this organisation would be £33,700 a year. However, if as a result of the checks 5 per cent. of its volunteers were no longer to come forward, it would then cost that organisation an extra £115,000 a year to pay for the additional permanent staff whom it would be required to take on board.
There are additional costs to voluntary organisations for not carrying out the checks. However, when they use volunteers, the cost is so large that I believe we should support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill.
Lord Rix: I identify myself with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen. However, I wish that he would delete the word "idiot" and substitute the
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word"naïve" with regard to insurance companies. I wish, too, that he would add "vulnerable adults" to the word "children". That is the subject of Amendment No. 111.
With those two provisos, I identify myself completely with the noble Lord's remarks. I must declare an interest as regards MENCAP and its leisure arm, Gateway. With 50,000 members, 700 clubs and over 20,000 volunteers, they will be subjected to an enormous cost if the Bill goes through as drafted. Without question, insurance companies and trustees will wish to ensure that those checks have been carried out in all instances, whether they involve children or vulnerable adults. I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Weatherill.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: When the Statement on the Culham Report was made in this House, I asked the Minister whether the Government would consult organisations such as the Scouts, Guides and Boys Brigades. The Minister replied that they would be consulting such organisations. When the noble Baroness replies to the amendment, will she tell us whether the Government have consulted those organisations; and, if so, what they said.
I apologise to the Committee and to the noble Lord who moved the amendment that I did not hear the whole of his speech; the train was late. In discussing the amendment we are discussing many different types of organisations. For example, leaders of Scouts, Guides and Boys Brigades are not employed. They are simply members of the organisation who, as the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said, may have grown up through the organisation. They undertake a leadership role. They are not employed; they are paid nothing. It costs the leaders quite a lot of money. The organisations are funded almost entirely out of the young people's membership subscriptions.
One has to be careful. The leaders of these organisations come and go. The organisations are taking on new people. At the same time those organisations are often the most vulnerable. The leaders go camping; they go on expeditions with the young people. Such an organisation must be absolutely certain that those leaders are reliable. That is very difficult to do as regards boys' organisations.
I hope that the Government are considering the issue carefully to see whether they have got the position right. It could be a very big problem. I can understand their desire to have a self-financing system; it will be quite an expensive business. But for the organisations to which I refer, it seems a large potential burden. I agree with those noble Lords who said that it will be difficult not to obtain a certificate. If you do not have one and something goes wrong, there will be trouble. Those of us who have worked in the organisations about which I speak have felt the responsibility very heavily upon us. I could describe a number of awkward moments when there were doubts about people. It is difficult to shed them. The certificate will be desirable for the

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organisations. I shall be interested to hear what my noble friend tells us about the cost and whether the Government see a way of paying for it.
Lord Renton: Perhaps I may briefly follow up what my noble friend said. The only issue is whether the prescribed fee should be paid by the general body of taxpayers or by the various charities. With a small charity there would not be a great turnover requiring many new applicants to be considered each year. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Rix, said, with the large charities it could come to a considerable sum each year because inevitably there is a considerable turnover. It seems to me that it is more a matter of arithmetic than of any legal principle. When my noble friend Lady Blatch replies, it will be interesting if she can give us some indication of the arithmetic.
Viscount Brentford: The noble Lord, Lord Murray, rightly said that many volunteers are taking early retirement. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, touched upon the large number of undergraduates. They are unable to pay the fees. They have to do their utmost to meet the cost of fares to wherever the activity takes place, when they give one week of their time in a year. I hope that that point will be taken into account by the Government. I support the amendment.
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh: I declare an interest. I speak as a patron of SENSE. It is a charity which deals with the deaf-blind. Not too many people appreciate how many are born deaf-blind. It may be congenital and last through puberty, adolescence and adulthood to the end of their lives. They do not see or hear in full. Sometimes they are unable to walk. Since they cannot hear, they cannot talk. However, they have an animal sense. They were born male or female and they therefore have the ability to reproduce. Intimate and close attention has to be paid to these people to help them to understand—because they are totally unaware of the consequences of the talent with which they were blessed at birth.
The noble Lord, Lord Rix, has mentioned vulnerable adults. He and the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, will raise the issue in Amendment No. 111. The vulnerable adult's impairment has an adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. The effect of his or her disability is substantial and long term. This same disability significantly impedes his or her ability to communicate. I refer to close and intimate contact as regards the volunteers and those people who are hired by SENSE to look after those vulnerable adults. As I said, the disability may be congenital; but it may result from the inevitable ageing process in the long term—what we call old age. Millions are affected and fall within that bracket. I disagree with the belief held by some that those working in close, unsupervised contact with those over 18 constitutes a relatively smaller class—with a growing number of people living longer it is fast becoming a marginally smaller class of employees.
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As I said, I have the good fortune to be a patron of SENSE. In a conversation I had with the manager of a residential home, he raised the following points. This information comes, as it were, from the rock face. He said that, first, it is important that police intelligence is sought for all his contact employees. Secondly, it is vital that such intelligence is supplied speedily. He had found that to be a problem up to now and said it would be a greater problem in the future, if more and more bureaucracy is involved, speedily to avoid any staff shortages in such a sensitive area as duo-sensory caring. Thirdly, SENSE takes those in its care on holidays each year, and those holiday parties "survive" off volunteers. He said fourthly that he was finding it increasingly difficult to find volunteers who would attend on a regular basis. That is vital for those who are deaf-blind since they rely so much on the smell and touch of the person who is associated with their care. His fifth point was that, should a potential employee be made to pay for his or her police intelligence report and then not get the job, that was a disincentive when applying for a similar position elsewhere. His sixth point was that there must be a designated list of past crimes which will forbid certain volunteers from taking roles in certain charities dealing with vulnerable people.
We spoke about finances, and his seventh point was that the enhanced criminal certificate could be financed through the lottery fund—not the charities or volunteers. Despite the denials that we have heard from so many sources, it is recognised that the purchase of lottery tickets has affected the voluntary donation made to charities.
Perhaps the Committee will bear with me for a few seconds longer. If noble Lords would like me to sit down, I will; but I should like to make one final point. I am a Cross-Bencher, supporting a Cross-Bench amendment. With all the political parties trying to command the moral high ground, it would be immoral and unjust for the Government and Parliament to tax those who volunteer their time and their privacy to act in a moral and Christian way, to help those who cannot help themselves. I support the amendment.
4 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: I understand why these amendments have been brought forward. There are many millions of people in this country who act as volunteers. The Government recognise the valuable part that volunteers play in the community. It is a role which this Government have sought to encourage and extend. We have no wish to discourage volunteering and we do not believe that the proposals in this part of the Bill would have that effect. Until fairly recently I was the Minister with principal responsibility for the voluntary sector. I know how much work is going on in that sector and the degree to which it impacts on all our communities throughout the land.
One of the main reasons why we introduced these proposals was in order to meet the widespread demand there has been within the voluntary sector for access to criminal record checks on prospective employees and volunteers on the same basis as already exists for the statutory sector. At the moment the police service

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carries out over 1 million criminal record checks, mainly on those who work with children, free of charge. But the checks cost money and neither the police nor any agency could increase the number of checks which they undertake without extra resources. In the case of the police this would mean diverting them from core policing activities. The only way to increase the availability of checks was to find an alternative way of funding them. Rather than place an additional burden on employers and voluntary organisations, we decided that the fairest way of spreading the burden was for individuals to pay for their own checks.
We estimate that there are between 8 million and 20 million volunteers in this country. It is difficult to be more precise given the wide range and often informal nature of volunteering opportunities. But it is clear that there could potentially be a huge number of volunteers who might qualify for a free check if these amendments were adopted. Even so, when preparing the proposals in the Bill, we did give very careful consideration to the possibility of free or subsidised checks for volunteers. Both options having been carefully considered, they were rejected for reasons of equity and practicality.
It would only be possible to provide free checks on volunteers working for charities and voluntary organisations if, as my noble friend Lord Renton said, someone else met the costs. We do not believe that it would be right to require the taxpayer or voluntary organisations to pick up the bill. Costs should be met by those who wish to use the service. This means that the cost of providing free or subsidised checks for volunteers would have to be met by other users. We estimate that free checks for volunteers would at least double the cost of criminal record certificates and enhanced certificates for those who had to pay for their checks and who are left outside the scope of this amendment. In some circumstances that includes the unemployed.
The increase could be even higher if, for example, the fact that the checks were free meant that there was a significant stimulation of the demand for checks for volunteers. Subsidised checks would have a similar effect on charges depending on the level of subsidy. It is surely not right to expect those seeking checks for employment or other purposes, many of whom will be unemployed or low paid and so less able than many volunteers to pay the fee—not just the fee but double that amount or more—to meet these additional costs.
But the practical difficulties of free or subsidised checks are even more formidable. There would clearly be an incentive, all the greater if fees were higher, to obtain a check free of charge on the basis of being a volunteer. The voluntary sector in this country is large and diverse. A complex system of controls would be necessary to establish whether applicants claiming a free check were in fact entitled to do so. Without such safeguards, the whole system would be wide open to abuse and understandable public concern. Sophisticated, verifiable systems would need to be put in place. It would also produce a more expensive system to operate with the result that the fees for those who had to pay would be pushed even higher.
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I believe that those are powerful arguments against providing free checks for volunteers as these amendments propose. We must not assume that checks provide a guarantee that volunteers are suitable for the post they are seeking.
The noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, said that the checks could create a false sense of security. We have made the point in the code of practice that we specifically do not wish that to happen. The checks must not be taken as the only guarantee that anybody being employed in the voluntary sector or anywhere with access to children is safe. They should not be the be-all and end-all. It will be no guarantee that such people are safe. It will certainly eliminate some of the worst effects of employing people, but there is no substitute whatsoever for proper systems being put in place. Much was said about the scout, brownie and guide movements and the Red Cross. From experience, I can tell the Committee that those organisations have some pretty good systems in place for checking on the people they recruit to work for them and who therefore have access to young people.
Voluntary agencies as much as others must ensure that they make other inquiries and are discriminating in their use of and reliance on checks. The existence of a fee for a check will encourage voluntary agencies to think properly about whether a check is needed—a point made by my noble friend Lady Rawlings—and, if so, what value it will add to the other recruitment procedures. Many volunteers will not require checks because the type of work they will perform does not justify it or because they are well known to the organisations for whom they seek to work.
Where a check is needed, many volunteers will be well able and willing to pay for the check. Many of us volunteer in the knowledge that we may incur additional costs; for example, for the purchase of uniforms, materials or travelling, as well as giving up our time. If a check is genuinely necessary for those undertaking voluntary work, I believe that the vast majority of volunteers will be happy to pay the fairly small level of fee which we envisage, provided that the costs are spread fairly across all users. I should also point out that, in the case of a criminal conviction certificate, once it has been obtained, the individual concerned may also be able to make use of it for other purposes such as job applications. It is not clear why such uses should also effectively be subsidised.
A point which I made at Second Reading and repeat now is that although there will be no requirement on the voluntary organisation to meet the cost of checks for individuals wishing to work for them, some have a very low turnover of staff—again a point made by my noble friend Lord Renton—and might be willing to meet the cost for those individuals who genuinely feel unable to pay the fee themselves. Alternatively, they might recover the cost from the individual over a period of time, particularly—as I mentioned—as the individual might be able to make use of the certificate for other purposes unconnected with volunteering.
Compared with the difficulties of principle and practice with providing free or subsidised checks for volunteers, we believe that the right approach is to

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spread the costs across all users and so keep the fees as low as possible. On that basis, we expect that the fee for a criminal conviction certificate or a criminal record certificate will be about £5 or £6, with an enhanced criminal record certificate costing between £8 and £10. Those sums are considerably less than most people were expecting. I do not believe that they are unreasonable amounts for most volunteers to meet or that they will act as a serious disincentive to volunteering.
I was asked to give figures and I shall do so. However, perhaps I may preface the statistics with this remark. I personally have worked in the voluntary sector and can name a few of the organisations with which I have worked: the citizens advice bureaux; the Women's Royal Voluntary Service; youth clubs; I have been a Sunday school teacher and have worked with the Macmillan nurses. I am president of the National Benevolent Institution. All I can say is that my volunteering activities go back a long way. There are thousands and thousands of people in my position who would willingly have met this cost rather than have it fall on the voluntary organisation. If we accept that the amendment would cover my obligation to pay the fee, we all know that if something is free then very few people volunteer to pay for it. It is true that a substantial number of people are well able to meet the fee and it is my view that they will.
On the point made by my noble friend Lady Rawlings, large numbers of people work in the voluntary sector at a local level. They are well known, they have come through the organisations within which they volunteer, their antecedents are known, and whole families are known. The idea of carrying out enhanced checks on them is nonsense and is inconsistent with the code of practice. So that is another group of people who can be taken out of the equation. Of course, a small number of people who come into the voluntary sector and wish to give time and energy to it will not be able to pay. For them, it could be spread over a period and, especially where there is a low turnover, it is possible that the money could be found to help them. However, the amendments go all the way. They ask for the fee to be waived for all those people.
I finish with the figures. Everyone who has spoken in support of the amendments today, like the noble Lord, Lord Weather11, and others, argued strongly that there would be so much pressure that checks would have to be done on everyone. I take all the figures that have been used by Members of the Committee in the course of the debate as to what the checks will cost voluntary organisations. My range of figures is from 8 million to 20 million volunteers. If I take the most conservative of those figures—and this is not inconsistent with some given for individual organisations—with 8 million volunteers the enhanced check would cost anything between £64 million and £80 million, using the £8 or £10. With £8 it would be £64 million, and with £10 it would cost £80 million.
If we use the figure of 20 million volunteers, the costs become £160 million to £200 million. The figures will be somewhere between £64 million and £200 million on the enhanced check. However, I take an even more
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conservative look at the figures. With the 8 million volunteers, if one does no enhanced checks, merely the full checks, at £5 per check we are talking of £40 million and at £6 per check £48 million. With the figure of 20 million volunteers, we are talking of £100 million to £120 million.
In anyone's language, those are substantial sums. Depending on the check that is done, at the lowest, the costs are between £40 million and £200 million, whether we take 8 million volunteers or 20 million volunteers. I say to noble Lords opposite that this is a real commitment to public spending. My noble friend Lord Renton made the point that it is incumbent on all of us not to say that these are trivial or, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, a "modest sum of money". The sums are substantial and it is particularly incumbent on this House to give another place an indication of where we believe the money will come from. I believe there are only two places: one is the taxpayer, the other is all those residual people who are not included in the amendment. I do not believe that that amount of money can be afforded and therefore we fall back on what we said at the outset. Having considered the matter carefully, we believe that an even spread and a modest fee for that important information which will enhance the effectiveness of the voluntary sector and make vulnerable groups safer in the community is the fairest way forward. Then it will not become an unreasonable burden on individuals and/or the taxpayers.
4.15 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I know that the Committee does not wish the debate to be prolonged, but I must come back on the figures given by the Minister. They are completely in conflict with what is stated in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to the Bill. It states that:
"It is expected that up to 2.5 million checks will be carried out during the first year of operation with turnover estimated at about £18 million".
The memorandum started by saying that:
"up to 8 million checks a year might be needed when the service is fully operational".
Presumably the cost of that would be 18 times 8 divided by 2.5. In other words, it would be of the order of £40 million to £50 million at most, compared with the £200 million mentioned by the Minister. Does she seriously say that the Financial Memorandum did not consider the cost of checks on volunteers as part of the costing of the Bill? If so, it was grossly inadequate. Everyone, including the Minister, has agreed that checks on volunteers will be required.
Before the Minister answers, perhaps I may put one final point to her. When the Government responded to the Cullen Report on Dunblane, they quite rightly congratulated themselves on the number of Lord Cullen's recommendations that were accepted by the Government. The only change that they made—in my view quite rightly—was to be tougher about gun control than Cullen recommended. On everything else, the Government said, "We are accepting Lord Cullen's recommendations". Did not Lord Cullen recommend specifically that the vetting and supervision of adults

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working with children and young people should be kept within the limits of what organisations could afford and therefore be subsidised by the Government, if necessary? If the Government were going to respond honestly to Cullen, should they not have said that they were not accepting that recommendation?.
Baroness Blatch: The noble Lord has graphically illustrated why I believe there is so much misunderstanding about the Bill. On his first point, the Financial Memorandum is written to be entirely consistent with the code of practice and the way in which we believe it would work. The amendments are very different, however. They include waiving the fee completely, which will inevitably stimulate demand, which is what the noble Lord has said, as have the noble Lords, Lord Rodgers and Lord Weatherill: these checks will become common practice and the voluntary organisations will wish to check everybody.
We refer to £18 million as being the turnover in the first year, when, because of phasing—and we considered phasing—only enhanced and full checks would be undertaken. We estimated that about 2.5 million people would require checks. The code of practice does not encourage wholesale checks on absolutely everybody. It does argue for, say, making judgments about whether they need to be done, how much is known about people, whether they have the ability to pay, and all that sort of thing.
There is nothing inconsistent with the Financial Memorandum here. It is consistent with our proposals, but the Committee is discussing an amendment which is asking us to waive the fees, when of course a considerably larger number would need the checks than is envisaged by the Bill.
I was remiss in not coming back to the point raised by my noble friend Lady Carnegy, which links with the point of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. We did accept the recommendation of the noble Lord, Lord Cullen, and we did agree that an accreditation agency would be set up. We have agreed to that. I am able to give my noble friend the assurance which she sought from me that we will, of course, consult in some depth with the affected bodies, which will include Scouts, Guides and Brownies and so forth. So, there is nothing inconsistent there.
The noble Lord also said in his report that he saw no reason why the fee should not fall on individuals. Our proposals include that the cost should be amortised across all individuals, rather than that a large body, something between 8 and 20 million people, should be remitted by the effect of this amendment.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: May I pursue the specific point, because we are in Committee? The noble Lord, Lord Cullen, did say, did he not, that the costs should be kept within what such organisations can afford and that there should be government subsidy. That is the point that the Minister is failing to take into account. When the Minister talks about the numbers, surely at present checks are made by voluntary organisations and local authorities on the basis of an existing Home Office circular, and local authorities and voluntary organisations follow the terms of that circular
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closely. Is the Minister actually saying that the result of the Government's proposals is going to be a reduction in the number of checks made? That is not the impression that the Government gave.
Baroness Blatch: No. I am pleased that the noble Lord recognised that this is important, because it is absolutely vital to the discussion we are having at the moment. We have taken the view that there will be more checks. We have also taken the view that it is reasonable to accept that individuals themselves should share the burden. I mean "share" the burden, because we are talking about somewhere between 5 million, on the lower end of the checks and 8 million to 10 million on the enhanced checks, and we have always argued that the enhanced checks would be used for a smaller number of people than the full checks, whereas all the arithmetic done by noble Lords opposite, and indeed by some of my own noble friends who support the amendment, has included the enhanced check for everybody. So there is a great deal of difference between us.
So, yes, we believe a number of things. This is important. Access to this information for the voluntary sector is absolutely crucial. We believe it would be fair to spread the cost across individuals. We accept the view of the noble Lord, Lord Cullen, that there is nothing wrong in levying this charge on individuals, but he quite rightly also said that the cost should be what the voluntary sector can afford. We believe that, if one applies the policy more sensibly and indulges in enhanced checks only where they are really needed, and full checks where the cost predominantly falls on the individual, and one bears in mind those people who, as my noble friend Lady Rawlings, said, are so well known to the local voluntary sector that it is considered that checks are not necessary at all, and if that is done consistently with the code of practice, the cost falling on the voluntary sector will be much reduced. Indeed, it will be more affordable.
There is nothing inconsistent in what I have said; there is nothing inconsistent with the Financial Memorandum; there is nothing inconsistent with our response to the Cullen Report and its recommendations. We believe that a balance has to be struck and I pose this question to Members opposite. They cannot argue with my arithmetic. There are between 8 million and 20 million people out there volunteering. If one takes the most conservative estimate, which is 8 million people, and multiplies that by £5 or £6 or £8 or £10, the sum of money is very substantial. If one takes 20 million and multiplies that by £5 or £6 or £8 or £10, the money involved is substantial indeed. It is incumbent upon Members opposite to say where that money will come from.
Lord Monson: Would my noble friend the Minister explain to me whether this fee will be subject to VAT, because if so it will increase by 17.5 per cent?.
Baroness Blatch: My understanding is that it will not. If I am wrong, I will let my noble friend know. It is predominantly charitable bodies that are involved.
Viscount Bledisloe: The Minister has said that nobody can quarrel with her mathematics. I confess

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I find them wholly unintelligible. I am sure I am being idiotic and not just naïve, but the noble Baroness has multiplied the fee by the total number of volunteers. There will not be checks on every volunteer every year. The noble Baroness then said that that was the yearly figure. After the first year there will presumably be checks only on new volunteers, so surely her figures are totally meaningless.
Baroness Blatch: The noble Viscount absolutely makes my point. It may have been unintentional but the noble Viscount makes my point. I have argued that it will not be necessary to do checks on everybody, and I have also said that it is quite wrong for this Committee to accept the argument that you take the number of volunteers and multiply it by the sum of money, but that is precisely what everybody who has spoken in favour of the amendment has done. It is what the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, has done. He gave an example of a body that had 800 members and he said the cost would be £8,000. There was another one with 400 members, so the cost would be £4,000.
All I can say is that I have taken those components of these amendments and I have played the same game. Perhaps I can make this final point to the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe. One of the difficulties of this amendment is that it is not a scientific proposition. The trouble is that the worst financial scenario that I have given could, in fact, come about. It is, in effect, a blank cheque. It is a blank cheque on the taxpayer and it is a blank cheque on those, if we choose the other way, who would be required to pay, because the truth is that we do not know whether the voluntary sector will check everybody. We do not know whether they will do an enhanced check on everybody or a full check on everybody, but what we do know is that the number can range from the very conservative estimate I gave, which at the bottom end of those figures is £44 million, right to the top end of that estimate, which is £200 million.
The truth is that when we sign up to this amendment we virtually sign up to a blank cheque. It is as long as a piece of string.
Lord Weatherill: I have listened with interest and a good deal of sympathy to what the noble Baroness has said. This is another case of our old friend "the law of unexpected consequences". In the light of Dunblane the whole Committee and most charities would support the thrust of Lord Cullen's recommendations, but the unexpected consequences, as many noble Lords have stated, have been rather different. I accept what the noble Baroness has said about the Scouts or the Guides, who have codes of good practice. Indeed, as I mentioned, Thomas Hamilton was refused a certificate to be a Scout leader as a result of the Scouts' own checks, although he had no criminal record.
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There is another point. Are these checks necessary every year because, in effect, as a noble Lord behind me has just whispered in my ear, they are rather like an MOT certificate which is only valid for a period, probably one year?.
Baroness Blatch: I promised that I would not come back to my Chief Whip unless the noble Lord said something which could be challenged. There is a provision that one cannot simply come back frequently. There will be a period specified, which will be very much longer than one year, for updating purposes.
Lord Weatherill: That may be so. I do not wish to stress the point any more; but although allegedly voluntary, these checks would, in effect, as both the right reverend Prelates said, become mandatory because of insurers, trustees and other people. Furthermore, some local government officers have already publicly stated that they would refuse to lease premises to youth organisations unless they had carried out the checks. So I am afraid that I remain unconvinced by what the Minister said. With some regret I must test the opinion of the Committee.
I should have confessed at the beginning that in moving Amendment No. 103—I have not moved an amendment since 1965 and I am rather out of practice—I spoke also to Amendments Nos. 106 and 109. As I said, I regret that I have to test the opinion of the Committee.
4.31 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 103) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 137; Not-Contents, 135.

Division No. 1

CONTENTS

Addington, L.

Dean of Thomson-le-Fylde, B.

Alderdice, L.

Desai, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Archer of Sandwell, L.

Donoughue, L.

Ashley of Stoke, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Avebury, L.

Dubs, L.

Barnett, L.

Ewing of Kirkford, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Exmouth, V.

Blackstone, B.

Ezra, L.

Bledisloe, V.

Falkender, B.

Borne, L.

Farrington of Ribbleton, B.

Broadbridge, L.

Gallacher, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Geraint, L.

Browne-Wilkinson, L.

Gladwin of Clee, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Gould of Potternewton, B.

Carew, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Gregson, L.

Carter, L.

Grey, E.

Castle of Blackburn, B.

Halsbury, E.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Hamwee, B.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Coventry, Bp.

Haskel, L.

Craig of Radley, L.

Hayman, B.

Dahrendorf, L.

Hayter, L.

David, B.

Hertford, M.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

491

Hoflick, L.

Richard, L.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Rix, L.

Hooson, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Howie of Troon, L.

Rochester, L.

Hunt of Tanworth, L.

Rodgers of Quarry Bank, L.

Hylton, L.

Russell, E.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Sainsbury, L.

Irvine of Lairg, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Jay of Paddington, B.

Scanlon, L.

Jeger, B.

Serota, B.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Sewel, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Shannon, E.

Judd, L.

Shepherd, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Simon, V.

Kintore, E.

Simon of Glaisdale, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Stallard, L.

Lester of Herne Hill, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Lincoln, Bp.

Strabolgi, L.

Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, E.

Strafford, E.

Longford, E.

Symons of Vernham Dean, B.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Swinfen, L. [Teller.]

McNair, L.

Taverne, L.

McNally, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Mason of Barnsley, L.

Tenby, V.

Merlyn-Rees, L.

Terrington, L.

Meston, L.

Thomas of Gresford, L.

Methuen, L.

Thomas of Walliswood, B.

Molloy, L.

Thomson of Monifieth, L.

Thurlow, L.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Tordoff, L.

Monkswell, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Monson, L.

Varley, L.

Moms of Castle Morns, L.

Waverley, V.

Moyne, L

Weatherill, L. [Teller.]

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Wharton, B.

Northbourne, L.

White, B.

Northfield, L.

Whitty, L.

Ogmore, L.

Wigoder, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Peston, L.

Williams of Mostyn, L.

Porter of Luddenham, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Ramsay of Cartvale, B.

Winston, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Clark of Kempston, L.

Addison, V.

Cockfield, L.

Ailsa, M.

Coleraine, L.

Anelay of St. Johns, B.

Courtown, E.

Annan, L.

Cranborne, V. [Lord Privy Seat]

Ashboume, L.

Cuckney, L.

Astor of Hever, L.

Cumberlege, B.

Attlee, E.

De Freyne, L.

Balfour, E.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Barber, L.

Denbigh, E.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Beloff, L.

Derwent, L.

Berners, B.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Blaker, L.

Dudley, E.

Blatch, B.

Eden of Winton, L.

Bowness, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Brain of Wheatley, L.

Elles, B.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Bruntisfield, L.

Erne, E.

Burnham, L.

Feldman, L.

Butterworth, L.

Fevers, E.

Byford, B.

Rather, B.

Cadman, L.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Freyberg, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Gainford, L.

Carlisle of Bucklow, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Charteris of Amisfield, L.

Geddes, L.

Chelmsford, V.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Chesham, L. [Teller.]

Goschen, V.

Clanwilliam, E.

Greenhill of Harrow, L

492

Griffiths of Fforestfach, L.

Northesk, E.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

O'Cathain, B.

Harding of Petherton, L.

Onslow, E.

Harmsworth, L.

Oppenheim-Barnes, B.

Harris of Peckham, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Hayhoe, L.

Park of Monmouth, B.

HolmPatrick, L.

Peel, E.

Howe of Aberavon, L.

Pender, L.

Inchcape, E.

Perry of Southwark, B.

Inglewood, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Jenkin of Roding, L.

Pilkington of Oxenford, L.

Kenilworth, L.

Pym, L.

Laing of Dunphail, L.

Quinton, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Rankeillour, L.

Liverpool, E.

Rawlings, B.

Long, V.

Renton, L.

Lucas, L.

Renwick, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Rodney, L.

Luke, L.

St. Davids, V.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Seccombe, B.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Sharpies, B.

Mackay of Clashfern, L. [Lord Chancellor.]

Shaw of Northstead, L.

Stewartby, L.

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Strange, B.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Strathclyde, L. [Teller.]

Melville, V.

Sudeley, L.

Merrivale, L.

Swansea, L.

Mersey, V.

Taylor of Warwick, L.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Tebbit, L.

Milverton, L.

Teynham, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Mountevans, L.

Trumpington, B.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Ullswater, V.

Munster, E.

Vivian, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Westbury, L.

Nelson, E.

Wolfson, L.

Norfolk, D.

Wynford, L.

Nonie, L.

Young, B.

Resolved in the affirmative, and clause, as amended, agreed to accordingly.
4.40 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 104:
Page 40, line 10, after ("records") insert ("and which might be relevant to consideration of the applicant's suitability for a specified paid position").
The noble Lord said: In rising to move Amendment No. 104, I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 105, 112, 113, 114, 115 and 116. The purpose of all these amendments is to ensure that only information which might be relevant to the consideration of the applicant's suitability for a specified paid position is included in the certificate under Clause 100.
The significance of "specified paid position" comes to the fore only as a result of the decision which the Committee has just taken, as the Minister might well have been briefed to say that the use of the word "paid" would have been inappropriate if the Government had carried the day on the previous amendment. What we are trying to do is to make sure that we have a system which records only relevant information rather than all kinds of information which might be found on a criminal conviction certificate.
There is nothing new or extraordinary about this. The Netherlands and Greece both have a comparable provision for what is contained in a certificate. We quite understand that in Clauses 101 and 102, where the

493
sensitivity of the job is already predicated by the provisions of the clauses, there may have to be different provision. However, in Clause 100, with which Amendments Nos. 104 and 105 are concerned, it is clear to me that to have indiscriminate information on unspent convictions would be unnecessarily restrictive and would damage the operation of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.
It is not as if we have a particularly strong Rehabilitation of Offenders Act compared with other jurisdictions. Under our 1974 Act, for a prison sentence of more than six months and up to 30 months a conviction is unspent for up to 10 years and for a prison sentence of more than 30 months a conviction is never spent. The law is tougher here than in any other country in the European Union except Ireland. A number of jurisdictions, notably the Netherlands and Greece, successfully restrict information on these certificates to those matters which are clearly relevant to the job in hand and are not simply a deterrent to an employer who employs someone who has had a conviction.
There is a genuine conflict of public interest here. There is no point in pretending that there is not always going to be a conflict of interest and that there is no one place in which that conflict of interest can be resolved. On the one hand, it is clearly desirable for offenders who have served their sentences and have taken their punishment to be readmitted on fair terms back into society. That is not just a moral consideration. Clearly, rehabilitation of offenders is desirable in itself. But it is also a practical consideration in the sense that former prisoners whose convictions are spent are much less likely to offend again. Therefore, in terms of prevention of crime, it is better if these people have jobs, provided—this is the other side of the equation—they are not doing any damage in doing so.
Throughout the consideration of the Bill we have supported the provisions for the protection of young people and the protection of the gaming business as proposed. In a few minutes we shall be supporting the extension of protection to vulnerable adults, as proposed in the amendment to be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen. So there can be no question that we want this provision to work. But it will work properly only if it is restricted to those areas which are relevant and recognises the need of society to have offenders whose offences are irrelevant to a particular job get that job and make a proper life for themselves in society again.
In addition to Amendments Nos. 104 and 105, which refer to the criminal conviction certificates in Clause 100, the remaining amendments in the group relate to Clause 102 and tighten up the definition of relevance. The Bill refers to information,
"which … might be relevant".
We think it is better to say "is relevant". The Bill says "ought to be included". Instead of that we suggest it should say that the Secretary of State may, if in his opinion it is relevant, include this information on the certificate. Clause 102(5) refers to,
"information which, in the chief officer's opinion … might be relevant".
Amendment No. 115 removes the words "might be" and inserts the word "is".
These are not fundamental changes to the Bill but they would shift the balance between the need for the rehabilitation of offenders and the need for the protection of the public and the protection of children slightly towards the scope for rehabilitation of offenders. We think this is a proper, although perhaps not a major, move. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: I have listened carefully and with some sympathy to the noble Lord's case. However, I do not think that his amendment adds enough to the Bill to make it worth having. Clause 101(3) states:
"A criminal record certificate is a certificate which—
(a) gives the prescribed details of every relevant matter"—
"relevant" is stated in a broad sense and without limitation—
"relating to the applicant which is recorded in central records".
That is broader than the expression "might be relevant". It is also broader than,
"the applicant's suitability for a specified paid position".
To say that it is relevant is putting it as generally as it can be put. It is in the applicant's favour that it should be put as generally as that.
Therefore, with great respect to the noble Lord, I do not believe that the amendment which he has moved and those which go with it, which are really consequential, are necessary. They would add a certain amount of verbiage to the Bill and make it a little more difficult to interpret. Therefore, I hope that he will reconsider whether his amendments should be pressed.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Perhaps it would be convenient if I respond to that question of fact. Clause 101, as the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said, deals with,
"the prescribed details of every relevant matter relating to the applicant".
But if he looks at the top of page 41 of the Bill he will see that "relevant matter" is very precisely described as being,
"a conviction within the meaning of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, including a spent conviction, and … a caution".
But my amendment is wider, not narrower, because it refers to matters,
"which might be relevant to consideration of the applicant's suitability for a specified paid position".
In other words, I am introducing a judgment, if one likes, about suitability; whereas what the noble Lord has referred to as "relevant" is used in a very much more restricted sense in Clause 101.
Lord Renton: The noble Lord has overlooked the fact that a criminal record inevitably records convictions and, quite frankly, nothing else.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton, that there is a safeguard in Clause 101 and that the rule of relevance applies. As I shall explain in a moment, it is for that reason that I shall be supporting Amendments Nos. 112 to 116 in Clause 102.

495
But before I do so, perhaps I may say how glad I am to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, in his place for reasons which I shall explain in a few moments.
As I understand the Bill, the position is this: when one looks at Clause 101 dealing with criminal record certificates as distinct from enhanced criminal record certificates, subsection (3) of that clause, as the noble Lord, Lord Renton, rightly indicated, requires the criminal record certificate to be a certificate which,
"gives the prescribed details of every relevant matter relating to the applicant which is recorded in central records".
I believe that the first amendments of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, were about Clause 100, but that is another matter and I shall not deal with that.
Turning to Clause 102, there is a major difference because subsection (3) states,
"An enhanced criminal record certificate is a certificate which—(a) gives—
(i) the prescribed details of every relevant matter relating to the applicant which is recorded in central records".
If it stopped there, there would be no problem, but the subsection continues by saying,
"and (ii) any information"—
that is to say, information other than relevant matter relating to the applicant
"provided in accordance with subsection (4)".
When one turns to subsection (4)—and this is the vice—it says,
"Before issuing an enhanced criminal record certificate the Secretary of State shall request the chief officer … to provide any information which, in the chief officer's opinion—

(a) might he relevant for the purpose described in the statement under subsection (2), and

(b) ought to be included in the certificate".

There is the same use of "might be relevant" in subsection (5).
Perhaps I may explain the net effect of all this and why I referred to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone. I well remember one of his last cases at the Bar when he led me in a case called Regina v. The Gaming Board for Great Britain (ex parte Benaim v. Khaida). That was a famous case that came before the Court of Appeal about our clients' application for gaming licences, seeking licences at Crockfords, as I recall. The case established that persons like our clients refused a gaming licence could not get very full reasons as to the Gaming Board's decision. It perhaps blighted their livelihood and it might blight their reputation. But for reasons that I well understand, the Court of Appeal said, "You cannot expect chapter and verse". The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls, presided.
If one applies that to Clause 102, enhanced criminal record certificates are of course to apply to licences under the Gaming Act. Unless the rule of relevance is put in, confining the information to what is relevant rather than to what a chief officer believes, in his subjective opinion, might be relevant, what will happen is that information about criminal records of dubious relevance or of no relevance or of a relevance that
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cannot be tested, would be passed to a body such as the Gaming Board and there would be no effective remedy because the only remedy that I can see under the Bill would be way of judicial review. For reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, will know as well as I do, a judicial review court will be most reluctant to compel the respondent to disclose the information, whether he be the Secretary of State, the agency or the Gaming Board.
So to make a long story shorter, the only safeguard that we can write into the Bill is contained in Amendments Nos. 112 to 116 because they have the important function of ensuring that an enhanced criminal record certificate is treated like such a certificate in requiring not that a chief officer believes that the information might be relevant for the legitimate purpose, but that it is relevant. Therefore, building on what the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said, it is very important that we make the rule of relevance apply with equal force to Clause 102 as well as to Clause 101. I am sorry that I have taken so long to explain the matter. There are consequential amendments that deal with the matter in relation to other subsections.
Lord Renton: So that I may understand the noble Lord, will he confirm that that means that he will not be supporting Amendment No. 104, but that he will be supporting Amendments Nos. 112 to 116?
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I believe that is right based on a quick and, I hope, accurate reading. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, will forgive me for saying that Amendment No. 104 is misconceived for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Renton gave.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln: Perhaps I may remind the Committee about the importance of the rehabilitation of offenders, which is a central concept to Christian theology and tradition. In a recent lecture to the Prison Reform Trust the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury observed that restoring relationships requires positive attention to the relationships by which the offender can be rehabilitated and restored and helped to avoid the temptation of further crimes.
In the experience of numerous Christian agencies which have worked with ex-offenders, such relationships are fostered through settled employment and accommodation. A person should not deceive an employer. But there is a danger that, unless that is very carefully defined, we use the criminal conviction certificates to undermine the successful re-integration of offenders into society. There is a real danger that many employers will routinely ask for certificates and that they will decide to play safe and refuse to employ anyone with a criminal record. That would be unjust and amount to double punishment. If ex-offenders find it significantly harder to find jobs, that must increase the likelihood of re-offending. So I urge the Committee to be very careful in defining precisely the point that Members of the Committee have already discussed. It is important that we retain the possibility of a new beginning. Even in terms of moral philosophy, surely

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once a person has "done their time" that fact should not necessarily be held on their record for all time, thus denying them the opportunity of a new beginning.
5 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: It is an interesting irony that the effect of the previous amendment, which was lost by the Government, will be to increase substantially the number of certificates issued. That in turn will increase by a very large margin the work of those who carry out the sifting and who have to determine what matters are, rather than might be, relevant. The provisions would also increase substantially the opportunity to challenge such information because as the volume would increase, so the opportunities of and scope for challenges under Clause 104 would also increase. The costs continue to escalate as we consider other amendments.
Criminal conviction certificates are intended to be multi-purpose documents issued only to individuals. They are likely to be used for purposes other than employment where individuals are required to produce a certificate of good conduct; for example, in applying for visas or permits to reside in foreign countries. Unlike the other certificates for which provision is made in the Bill, they will disclose only information about convictions which are unspent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. It is open to any employer or organisation to seek this information and the certificate will serve to confirm the accuracy of an individual's statement about his past.
We expect the availability of these certificates to curtail the practice of enforced subject access whereby individuals are required by prospective employers or embassies of foreign countries to apply, under the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1984, for details of information held about them on police computer systems. As the noble Lord, Lord Lester, knows, this results in the supply of details of all convictions, including those which are spent and which should not therefore be taken account of for most employment purposes.
The amendments could have the effect of requiring an individual to obtain several certificates as part of a job search. They would also require public servants to determine the relevance of conviction information to a job about which they knew little and an individual about whom the only information available to them was his or her criminal record. Only a prospective employer would be in a position to weigh the relative merits of the individual's qualifications and experience against the needs of the job and any potential relevance of previous convictions. It is not merely a question of having to have one certificate for one particular job. Somebody going for another job may need to gain a separate certificate, involving a separate sift to see what is relevant for that specific job description.
Turning to Amendments Nos. 112 to 116, these would, in effect, require chief officers only to disclose information from local records which was obviously relevant to the post in question rather than information which might be relevant. They would also require
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officials acting for the Secretary of State to change decisions taken by chief officers of police about what information from local police records is relevant to an application for an enhanced criminal record certificate.
Decisions on the information which should be disclosed from local police records are never going to be easy, particularly when they involve the possible disclosure of information which has not been tested in court. However, similar decisions have had to be taken under the current arrangements for disclosing information from local records and this is a matter which has always been left to the discretion of chief officers of police. They have had years of experience of taking such decisions and they are far better placed than officials of the Secretary of State would be to decide what information from their local records might be relevant to an application and ought to be disclosed.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham was rightly concerned about the needs of offenders trying to get back into the world of work. In my job at the Home Office I am embroiled in such work because I am responsible for the Probation Service—
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln: I am the Bishop of Lincoln, not the Bishop of Birmingham.
Baroness Blatch: I stand rebuked. That is an unforgivable mistake, given that I come from a neighbouring diocese. I apologise most profusely.
Perhaps I may return to the important point. I have been much embroiled in the work of the training and enterprise councils and the various voluntary bodies and organisations which are doing a wonderful job in this respect. An important and material part of getting ex-offenders back to work is the openness with which they deal with employers. I am referring to their openness about their offending and the nature of their offending, which helps to promote an understanding with the employer and an atmosphere conducive to a fresh start. I am referring to the specific work that is being done to give people the opportunity to get back into work by giving them a fresh opportunity to work on trust with a company or employer, without risk.
I am reminded that the provisions would require volunteers to apply for more than one certificate. I stress that we are talking not only about employees and people looking for jobs. Somebody who wanted to undertake voluntary work with children would require one sort of certificate while somebody who wanted to work with the elderly would require a different sifting process to determine the relevance of the information contained on the certificate.
I have already referred to Clause 104 which raises a very real issue. The provisions of the previous amendment, which we lost but which was won by those noble Lords who promoted it, will have a substantial and material impact on the numbers of certificates applied for. We believe that that must, as night follows day, increase the amount of work undertaken in determining what is and what is not relevant with regard to the information on the certificate. The very volume of increased applications for certificates will increase

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the scope for challenging (under Clause 104) the accuracy of the information held on a certificate. I assume that if these amendments are passed, it will not only be a question of accuracy but of relevance, because that is what is at stake here.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intervene because I am not following the argument. I agree with her that the chief officer is the best placed public officer to decide questions of relevance, but I do not understand the need for a difference of treatment between a Clause 101 certificate and a Clause 102 certificate.
My first question is: why is not the Clause 102 certificate confined only to relevant matters? Secondly, what is to be the effective remedy (whether under Clause 104 or anywhere else) for someone like Messrs. Benaim and Khaida who lose their licence (or do not get one) because certain information is transmitted and reaches the Gaming Board? As I understand the whole purpose of Clause 102, a licence may be lost but, as I have explained, the licence holder will not be given the reasons. What remedy would such a victim of an invasion of privacy have if irrelevant information had been transmitted? Is there another safeguard? Clause 104 does not deal with relevance; it deals with accuracy. I can quite understand that one has a remedy to correct an inaccuracy. I want to keep down unnecessary litigation and the need for officials to have to second-guess the decisions of chief officers. However, if the Bill requires the chief officer to do under Clause 102 what must be done under Clause 101—that is, to make sure that the information is really "relevant" to the matter—we should include a safeguard in the Bill, cut down avoidable disputes and provide an effective remedy. I should be grateful if the Minister could deal with those points which greatly concern me.
Baroness Blatch: As I understand it, the first two certificates, the criminal conviction certificate and the certificate under Clause 101, contain information which is a matter of fact. They relate to convictions and, as the noble Lord knows, under this Bill an individual has an opportunity to challenge the accuracy of such information.
An enhanced certificate is a rather different matter. In that case the chief officer makes a judgment about the information that the certificate should contain. The noble Lord says that he does not want officials to second guess. I believe that these amendments invite officials to second guess the relevance of the information. It is for the chief officer to determine what should go into the certificate. The information having been given, it will be for the employer to make a judgment, bearing in mind the particular job that is required to be done, about the import of the information contained in the certificate. Either it will have a bearing on the suitability of the person to be employed or it will not.
I return to the point that the noble Lord makes about the Gaming Board. Save in the most exceptional circumstances, we have made clear that the individual will receive the information. The noble Lord will be aware that exceptional circumstances may arise where a
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person is under investigation and the information may be regarded as very sensitive. Save in those exceptional circumstances, the individual will receive the information. That is a very significant improvement on the present situation. We took this opportunity in the Bill to improve the situation. Referring to the Gaming Board, at the moment only the board will be in receipt of that information without the counter-balancing effect of the individual seeing it and being given the opportunity to challenge the information that is held.
Lord Renton: I should like briefly to reinforce the argument that my noble friend has just put. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, whose legal arguments are always so interesting and well presented, has borne in mind that relevancy is in part a matter of undisputed fact and in part a matter of opinion. Therefore, there is no difference between saying "any information which in the chief officer's opinion might be relevant" and saying "any information which in the chief officer's opinion is relevant". The words "might be" indicate the "opinion" element. To change it to "is" makes very little difference. However, if it is a difference, it is to the applicant's disadvantage and not advantage, which I believe the noble Lord, Lord Lester, hopes to achieve.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, this debate is becoming a lawyer's plaything, which I had hoped could be avoided. Clause 102(5) refers first to the chief officer's opinion. I agree that it must be his opinion. But what is the opinion? The opinion is either that it is relevant—which is what I think it ought to be—or that it might be relevant. The reason why it does not provide a safeguard for the particular subject is that it allows in information which is only of doubtful relevance rather than information that is relevant.
I accept the Minister's point that this is an improvement on the existing situation, in that at least in normal cases the subject can see the information that goes to the Gaming Board. That is a powerful argument. I promise that if it is left as it is it will lead to a good deal of judicial review. As to those who have been refused licences, documents that have been relied upon by the Gaming Board which are not in the chief constable's opinion relevant, but which in his opinion might be relevant, will be accessible to them. It will simply increase the scope for legal argument in the courts because of the vague and elastic language. For that reason, I much prefer the language that is sought to be included by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. It tightens it up to avoid pointless legal argument and judicial review proceedings in relation to a body like the Gaming Board where information that has contaminated its decision, as it were, is not information which a chief constable considers to be relevant but is something less than that.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: Perhaps I may tiptoe tentatively into the playground for a moment. Surely, in neither Clause 101(3)(a) nor Clause 102(3)(a)(i) do the

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words "every relevant matter" refer to a matter of opinion, because a relevant matter is defined in Clause 101(5) as a conviction, including a spent conviction and a caution. If one substitutes for the words "relevant matter" the definition, surely in Clause 101(3)(a) one has the prescribed details of every conviction, including a spent conviction and a caution. No one's opinion comes into it. There does not appear to be a sifting to determine what is or is not relevant—or have I completely misunderstood the drafting?.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not believe that the noble Lord misunderstands it. If he had been here he would have heard me make exactly the same point to the noble Lord, Lord Renton. I shall beg leave to withdraw these amendments. Before I do so, I do not believe that the Minister should be allowed to get away with her continuing claim that the result of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, will be a huge increase in the workload of the Criminal Records Agency. At present, local authorities and voluntary organisations work to a Home Office circular which, at the very least, encourages them to make searches which are carried out free of charge on volunteers as well as paid employees. That will not change.
If the Minister argues that the number of volunteers would change it would be marvellous, but I do not believe that that would be the case. Since the noble Baroness never provided the figures for the costs of the Criminal Records Agency, which will have to be paid by public authorities, we do not know the position. It may be that there will be some increase in expenditure as the price to be paid for not imposing new deterrents on volunteering. Unless the noble Baroness suggests that a very large number of volunteers would otherwise slip through the net, I do not think that she can argue that there will be a significant increase in the workload of the Criminal Records Agency. However, that is a backward-looking point and I do not believe it is one that we expect to raise again.
I accept that Amendments Nos. 104 and 105 are different from Amendments Nos. 112 to 116. It is probably prudent not to rely on Amendments Nos. 112 to 116 but on later amendments which relate to control of the accuracy of the information supplied. As for Amendments Nos. 104 and 105, I do not believe that any of the references to Clause 101 are relevant to this consideration. I shall have to think again about how to achieve my objective of making sure that irrelevant convictions are not communicated to employers. I speak as the trustee of a charity which in the past year has employed, in my view rightly, a murderer who has reached the end of his tariff as part of his life sentence and is doing a job for which that murder is quite irrelevant. I shall have to think again about how to ensure that people like that are not disadvantaged by the Bill as drafted.
Baroness Blatch: Before the noble Lord sits down, I rise merely to say that he accuses me of being over-inflationary in my predictions about what might
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happen. The noble Lord cannot have it both ways. The noble Lord and his colleagues opposite supported, as the amendments are put to the Committee, a wider use of it. In fact, the mainspring of the argument put by noble Lords opposite is that there will be such pressure that more checks will need to be done on more of the volunteers, particularly for people working with children. As under the amendment the fee has been waived completely, the idea is that that will not be an inhibitor for the voluntary sector to respond to any of those pressures but merely to check whether it believes that the check is needed.
We took a view that more checks would need to be undertaken. We believed that the code of practice would be applied properly; there would be a much more modest number of checks done. Therefore our assumption of what impact that would have on the voluntary sector, given that the fee would fall on the individual, was very much more modest. The noble Lord cannot argue that there will be a substantial cost on the voluntary sector and then say, when that has been waived, that somehow the sum does not become substantial and the number of applicants does not increase.
In response to a point the noble Lord has just made to my noble friend Lord Renton, perhaps I may say that he is now looking at ways of determining which criminal conviction is relevant, as opposed to which information is relevant. The noble Lord has conceded by that remark that for each application for one job or another job, voluntary sector or employment, a different certificate will be needed because the conviction, and the relevance of a conviction, will need to be freshly thought through to provide the certificate. The noble Lord is making a case for a very much enlarged number of certificates that would have to be introduced under the amendment.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If that were the case, and I am by no means certain that it is, it could well be argued that it is a price worth paying to achieve the objective of the rehabilitation of offenders. I wish I thought, with the right reverend Prelate, that it was only a matter of moral philosophy. A balance between rehabilitation and protection has to be achieved. I do not believe that there is any right to protection. I want to think again about how to achieve that balance better than it is achieved in the Bill. That is why in a minute I shall beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Before I do, it is probably unseemly for us to go on talking about the merits or demerits of a previous amendment rather than this one. I regret that I responded in that way to the Minister. The point I was trying to make was that at present voluntary organisations can obtain certificates on volunteers without charge. It is the Government who were proposing the change, not the amendment which has just been carried. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 105 not moved.]
On Question, Whether Clause 100, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: Perhaps I may first make a clear distinction in opposing the Question that Clause 100 stand part of the Bill between Clause 100, which I should clearly like to see deleted from the Bill, and Clauses 101 and 102, which we on these Benches wholly support and which are widely supported on all sides of the Committee.
I make it clear in relation to Clauses 101 and 102 that we support, without reservation, all the appropriate measures to protect children and other vulnerable groups. There may be a case for extending the definition of vulnerable groups in the Bill.
Clause 100 does not deal with those matters at all. If your Lordships have not previously focused on that, I would ask you to look at Clause 100 as being very different from the two clauses that follow it. Secondly—it is fair to say this, because these are arguments which the Minister may well bring forward—I recognise that widescale vetting would be a convenience for employers, and I choose that word carefully.
I recognise, too, that the clause as printed represents a tidying up of the present ad hoc arrangements. I hear the argument—I put it no stronger than that—that Clause 100 may possibly help those with spent convictions to maintain their privacy. I gladly concede those arguments in advance because they are relevant and must be taken into account.
However, in my view, those arguments are outweighed by the principle of routine intrusion into private lives, which Clause 100 embodies, and the practical problems of devising a system that is efficient, reliable and fair. Our previous debate on the amendment which was withdrawn by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, illustrates that point. In my view, there is a real danger that Clause 100 will do more harm than good. Far from protecting society against crime, it might help to create circumstances in which criminal acts will persist.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, referred to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. I confess that I was surprised when I reminded myself of its provisions. Perhaps I may refer to them for the Committee's convenience. First, a prison sentence of more than two and a half years can never be spent. Therefore, under Clause 100, an offence committed at the age of 18 will show on a criminal conviction certificate when an applicant for employment is 28, 38 or 48. Indeed, it will show for ever. If he is sent to prison for more than six months it will show for 10 years; that is 10 years during which he may be seeking employment. A non-custodial sentence will show for five years.
Those offences of varying quality—if I may use that word—will be shown on a criminal conviction certificate. The consequence will be that a large number of men and women who are now law-abiding citizens, perhaps having committed an offence in their late teens, will have their conviction recorded on a certificate for between five years and a lifetime. That is the force of Clause 100.
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The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux is not a campaigning organisation but it has made clear its view about Clause 100. I hope that the Committee will forgive me if I quote its comments because, given the high regard with which the view is held, they are important. It states:
"The Citizens Advice Bureaux service is deeply disturbed about the introduction of a 'voluntary' criminal record disclosure scheme as contained within Clause 100 of the Bill. We believe that such a system, particularly in the current climate of public concern generated by events such as the Dunblane tragedy, is over-reactive and ill defined. Rather than creating the basis for greater security, we are concerned that, in fact, it will lead to increased job insecurity and an environment in which crime levels may rise rather than be reduced".
The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux goes on to state:
"Based on the evidence that we receive from local Citizens Advice Bureaux working throughout the country, we believe that the consequences of introducing such a measure may be to increase unlawful discrimination and to exclude applicants who are unable or unprepared to pay for this service to prospective employers".
The amendments that we have debated and the amendments which follow—Nos. 119 to 124 and 128—are in one way or another an attempt to constrain the incidence of Clause 100 and to build in safeguards. They recognise its dangers. Although I wait to see whether the Minister accepts them, either way the Bill would be better without this clause.
I wish to put forward five points for the Committee to consider. First, as I said in relation to the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, Clause 100 will lead to discrimination in employment against anyone with an unspent record who is trying to go straight. That point was made most forcefully by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln. A highly regarded organisation, the Penal Affairs Consortium, states:
"We have grave concerns about the introduction of criminal conviction certificates. We consider that this proposal is likely to undermine the successful reintegration of offenders into society. It would give employers extensive information about criminal convictions which in most cases will have no relevance to the job for which someone is applying. There is a real risk that many employers will decide to 'play safe' and refuse to employ anyone with a criminal record. If as a result ex-offenders find it significantly harder to find jobs, this must increase the likelihood of reoffending".
That is the view of more than 30 highly reputable bodies which are deeply concerned about these matters. I believe what they say to be true.
Secondly, in practice there will be no even-handedness between an applicant for employment who, we anticipate, will be expected to show such a certificate and an employer or interviewer who may regard it as impudent to be asked for one. This is not some narrow and minor point. We know that it is very possible that from time to time employers—not necessarily those in reputable undertakings—will have a criminal record of a kind. It is wrong that the prospective employee should be required, although the certificates are voluntary, to show a certificate while the man or woman who is employing him or her will not be required to do so.

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Thirdly, self-employed people will be exempt because in normal business relations they are unlikely to be asked for a certificate. On Second Reading I mentioned the issue of candidates for Parliament. I said that my tongue was half in my cheek. However, the more I think about it, the more I regard the point as serious. Candidates for Parliament and other elective public offices, where very important issues of trust are involved, will also be exempt because the Bill contains no requirement for such a certificate to be deposited with the returning officer at the time of nomination. I see no way under this clause that that can be done. I return to what I said about fairness; it is a very unfair clause if those are the automatic exemptions which appear to follow from the clause as written.
Fourthly, despite what the Minister said—and I thank her for her remarks on Second Reading on 11th November reported at col. 833—there are endless possibilities of forgery, fraud and even blackmail, whatever security measures may be properly taken by the Home Office to avoid that. If I were a betting man I would say now with absolute certainty that there will be examples of forgery and fraud and there may be examples of blackmail if the clause stands in the Bill.
Fifthly, as has been referred to in passing by others, including my noble friend Lord Lester, it is certain that certificates will contain errors. There is no redress nor compensation for anyone—applicant or employer—who may suffer. There is only Clause 104, which states baldly that if the Home Secretary is convinced of an error he will issue a new certificate.
In making those points, I leave aside the question of cost which was explored in an earlier amendment. However, it must be said that, whereas the voluntary sector has been deeply concerned about the cost of the certificates falling on it because it does not believe that they should fall on volunteers, it will be true that the cost of the certificates will fall on many men and women who may not have the resources to pay for them, although the sums may be small.
Clause 100 is not central to this part of the Bill. The priorities for this part of the Bill are in Clauses 101 and 102. We should be far better off if we concentrated on those clauses and dealt with the need for greater safeguards and certain refinements. We should let those clauses stand but delete Clause 100 from the Bill.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Lord is proposing that Clause 100 as a whole be taken out of the Bill. I have a great deal of sympathy with his arguments about the undesirability of it becoming a general practice for employers to seek certificates of unspent convictions. Whether or not I wish to support him depends on only one question, which is a question of fact which the Minister will be able to answer.
I understand that the Data Protection Act allows an individual under "enforced subject access" to have access to what of his record is available on a police computer. That goes wider than the provisions of Clause 100. The fact that an individual can obtain that information is in close analogy to the provisions of
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Clause 100. It is not compulsory but it can be enforced on him by an employer who wants him to make that check. The situation is exactly the same whether it is the criminal conviction certificate under Clause 100 or the enforced subject access under the Data Protection Act.
My question to the Minister is, if Clause 100 is carried, will enforced subject access under the Data Protection Act lapse? If that is the case, Clause 100 is an improvement on the present situation where enforced subject access gives an employer access to more than Clause 100 provides. If it is not the case, and enforced subject access will continue alongside the provisions of Clause 100, the situation is worse with Clause 100 and it should be omitted.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: In discussing an earlier amendment, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, rightly said that a balance must be struck between policies of public importance. On the one hand, there is the need to ensure that an offender may be rehabilitated and brought back into the community to play a useful part both in working and in participating. On the other hand, there must be the protection of an employer or of other persons who may be affected by the nature of the specific employment.
In striking that balance, Clause 100 introduces a general requirement for certificates of that nature. Clauses 101 and 102 set out what my noble friend Lord Rodgers referred to as the priorities; namely, the specific areas where public policy may demand knowledge of previous convictions. Clause 101 relates to "exempted questions" where the Secretary of State has made an order, and Clause 102 relates to specific issues.
Clause 100 weighs in against the offender for all time. It has been rightly said by the citizens advice bureaux, which is deeply disturbed by the proposals and refers to them as over-reactive and ill-defined, that crime levels may rise rather than be reduced. The reason for that is obvious. It so happens that last week we had a discussion about juvenile crime, which some Members of the Committee may remember. The startling figure produced by Home Office statistics was that the age at which peak offending now takes place is 18 years. If that is the age at which most people gain convictions, are they really to be carried against that person for the rest of his or her life?
Again, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, referred to his own personal experience of being involved with someone who had been convicted of murder. In most instances, murder is a one-off crime. It is committed in all sorts of circumstances—for example, through pressures which may be domestic, and so on. The vast majority of murders do not occur as a result of a person's deep set-character. He does not offend over and over again. Nothing could be more off-putting to a subsequent employer when that person is finally released from prison, having paid the proper penalty as determined both by the court and by the Home Secretary. Murder is not something that will ever be cleared from his record. He should not be debarred from ever working again.

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If we are going to create a whole body of persons who have been offenders, who have served their time in prison but who are unable to obtain employment when they are released—not just immediately, but for many years—then, as the CAB rightly puts it, crime levels will rise because those people will not be brought back within the community.
The purpose of the argument put forward by my noble friend is rightly to say that in specific areas set out in the Bill let there be an order from the Secretary of State which permits people to know about someone's background. However, to introduce a coverall so that a person carries his record to the grave is something which places the balance, to which I referred at the beginning of my remarks, in the wrong direction; in other words, it weighs it down in the wrong way. We would be creating more problems than we would resolve.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: When considering the proposal put forward by my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, I wonder whether the Minister could help us with one important and relevant matter. What are the effective safeguards where the very wide information covered by Clause 100 is disclosed in circumstances where it is irrelevant, say, to a particular job, promotion or appointment? What is the safeguard where the information is accurate but irrelevant and gives rise to an infringement of the right to personal privacy? In particular, I suggest that we should be concerned once again about whether we shall find further breaches of the European human rights convention. Will the Minister confirm my understanding that a disclosure of information covered by Clause 100 is prima facie a breach of personal privacy within the meaning of Article 8 of the convention? I am sure that that is common ground. However, the real question is whether the disclosure is necessary in a democratic society in a particular case.
I confess to being ignorant on whether the safeguards in the Data Protection Act 1984 would avail a victim of a breach of privacy under Clause 100. If they would, my concern would be greatly allayed. I have not looked into the matter, but if there is a safeguard under that Act for an invasion of personal privacy by the operation of the provisions of Clause 100 it meets my concern—subject, of course, to checking. However, if the position is that there is to be no safeguard under that Act and no new safeguards, then it seems to me that that would be an authorisation by Parliament of a situation in which there could be breaches of the right to personal privacy guaranteed under international law. The Committee should ensure that adequate safeguards against abuse are written into the Bill. If such safeguards are not to be written into the legislation, then, for that reason as well as others, I would support the proposal put forward by my noble friend.
5.45 p.m.
Viscount Bledisloe: As the last speech has demonstrated, surely such eloquent arguments are directed towards a totally different matter—namely, the rehabilitation of offenders. As I understand Clause 100, the only person who can obtain a criminal conviction certificate is the person himself. I fail to see how even the ingenious arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, could make an application by me for my criminal certificate an invasion of my privacy.
The main concern of most Members of the Committee is that employers may say to a man who is applying for a job, "Before I give you the job, I should like to see such a certificate; go off and get one". But as the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 stands at present, an employer is entitled to ask a prospective employee, "Do you have any convictions other than spent ones?" The prospective employee can, if he wishes, say, "That's nothing to do with you, I'm not going to tell you". Alternatively, he could answer. All that a certificate would do is demonstrate that such a person is answering truthfully.
Liberal Members of the Committee appear to want to give prospective employees licence to answer the question untruthfully. If they have a case—and they may well have—for saying that employers should not be entitled to know 20 years later about an offence which took place when the person was 18, then the right answer is to amend the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. It is not to encourage prospective employees to lie by ensuring that employers are not able to demand that they go off and obtain such a certificate.
The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, gave examples of other circumstances where a certificate may not be forthcoming. But, presumably—and I know nothing about politics, thank goodness!—any sensible selection committee could, if it wanted to, say to a prospective candidate, "Bring along with you a criminal conviction certificate before we consider whether we are going to appoint you". It cannot be an invasion of privacy to enable me to ask public records to produce details about myself.
Baroness Blatch: In response to the noble Lord's proposal, I am inclined to pray in aid everything that the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, has just said. Indeed, he has put forward almost precisely some of the arguments that I will employ. I should also like to extend the point made by the Viscount about candidates. It is not only selection committees who could ask a candidate to produce a certificate to prove that he is telling the truth, but a group of electors or a single elector could do so. It would be a matter for the candidate whether he produced it. It is certainly something which can be done by people who are being asked for their vote.
However, it is incumbent upon me to respond more formally to the debate. As we all know, Clause 100 makes provision for the Secretary of State to issue a criminal conviction certificate to an individual who applies for one and who pays a fee. The criminal conviction certificate will either give details of convictions which the individual may have, which are recorded in central police records and which are not spent under the Rehabilitation of

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Offenders Act, or will state that no such conviction is recorded. As the noble Viscount said, criminal conviction certificates will be issued only to individuals, but employers or others may ask individuals to obtain them if they wish to confirm details of the individual's criminal record. As I said earlier, we expect the cost of a criminal conviction certificate to be about £5 or £6.
I think the greatest worry which has been expressed is that this clause will seriously damage the employment prospects of ex-offenders. I have already said that the best way to help ex-offenders enter mainstream employment is to advise them to come clean with prospective employers. Our training and enterprise councils and the voluntary sector have been most effective in this area when they have advised job applicants to be open and honest as regards not only the offence but also the nature of the offence, and whether or not that will have any impact on the job to be carried out.
It has also been suggested that the clause could be in conflict with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. That is not the case. Ex-offenders will retain the protection of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act which, as many Members of the Committee know, provides that, after varying periods of time, ex-offenders who have received a sentence of fewer than two and a half years' imprisonment and have not re-offended become rehabilitated and their convictions become spent.
A spent conviction is treated for most purposes as if it never occurred and, in applying for employment in any occupation which is not an exception to the Act, an ex-offender need not declare a spent conviction. This safeguard will not be damaged by the introduction of criminal conviction certificates. This could in fact make it easier for some ex-offenders to find employment because we hope it will do away with the practice of enforced subject access. I shall return to the point the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, made about that. As the noble Lord knows, this is a practice being adopted by an increasing number of employers—in the absence of criminal conviction certificates—whereby they require prospective employees to exercise their rights of subject access under the Data Protection Act 1984 to apply for a copy of information held about them on police computerised records. It greatly disadvantages ex-offenders because a check of a criminal conviction certificate will not show spent convictions.
Another concern expressed was about the rights of redress individuals have if a certificate gives inaccurate information about them. As I have said, Clause 104 of the Bill provides that an applicant for a certificate who believes that the information contained in a certificate is inaccurate may apply for a new certificate. If the Secretary of State is of the opinion that the information on a certificate is inaccurate—this is a simpler science in that we are talking about a matter of record—he is required to issue a new certificate at no cost to the individual. Therefore individuals need not worry about incorrect information on criminal conviction certificates as they
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will be issued only to individuals and not to prospective employers. If an individual believes the information on a criminal conviction certificate is incorrect, he will apply for a new certificate before he makes it available to others. Therefore the incorrect information would not be handed to an employer until the individual had had it corrected. He could not therefore be disadvantaged. I should add that if an individual has been issued with an incorrect certificate, as I have said he will receive a fresh certificate at no cost to himself.
On the question of forgery and fraud, this is, of course, a problem with any official document issued to the public and will not be unique to criminal conviction certificates. However, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, that we are aware of this issue and of the problems that could be posed by forgery and fraud and we intend to take measures to ensure that opportunities for this are kept to a minimum. For example, we envisage using security paper which is more difficult to forge, and to ensure that any photocopy of a criminal conviction certificate is readily identifiable as such.
At the moment we cannot predict with certainty what sort of demand there will be for criminal conviction certificates. However, I point out that there is nothing in the Bill which requires individuals to apply for criminal conviction certificates; nor is there any requirement on employers to ask prospective employees to apply for a criminal conviction certificate. The criminal conviction certificate will simply provide a way for employers and others to check the accuracy of information which they may lawfully seek.
The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, referred to Clause 100. Clause 100 does not deal with convictions which are spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. It is therefore entirely consistent with the policy behind the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. That point was made by the noble Viscount. Part of the rationale for this Bill is to make sure that people do not put employers and employment—and people who are served by the work—at risk. We believe an employer is entitled to ask whether an individual has unspent convictions. He is entitled to ask that at present and the criminal conviction certificate will be a means of checking that someone has told the truth.
I was asked about the risk of placing a large number of young men at a disadvantage. We do not believe that that will be the case as only unspent convictions will be included in a criminal conviction certificate, which is the certificate for which most people will be eligible to apply. That means that many ex-offenders will be issued with a clear criminal conviction certificate, unless of course their offence was committed comparatively recently, or was of a serious nature. Home Office figures show that while 30 per cent. of men born in 1953, and who are now in their 40s, have been convicted of a standard list offence—in broad terms, an indictable offence—only 6 per cent. have convictions which remain unspent, and which would therefore be listed on a criminal conviction certificate. Despite the fact that more recent

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convictions may not yet have become spent, of men born in 1973, who are now in their 20s, only some 12 per cent. have unspent convictions.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, referred to the Data Protection Act and enforced subject access, and asked whether Clause 100 prevented enforced subject access. The straight answer is no. We expected the introduction of the certificate to address the problem and to phase out the need to resort to enforced access. The noble Lord asked whether its use would be abolished. The answer is no. However, we shall continue to monitor it. If we believe we need to consider the disclosure rules as regards computer information held by an individual—if that is required rather than a criminal certificate—we will consider the possibility of looking again at that matter, and amending the rules of disclosure. We would certainly expect—with the introduction of the certificate—employers, and indeed foreign embassies, to use the provisions under Clause 100, if those provisions remain in the Bill.
An employee can ask an employer for a criminal conviction certificate. That satisfies one of the concerns raised with regard to employers. I do not accept that the self-employed are necessarily exempt. They, too, can be asked for a criminal conviction certificate. I believe that is a useful provision. For example, it is possible for a customer to insist that before he or she allows a self employed plumber on to his/her premises that plumber should produce a criminal conviction certificate. As I have already said, an elector could also ask a parliamentary candidate for a criminal conviction certificate. That would also apply to selection committees.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, for saying at the outset that the measure would provide protection for those with spent convictions. However, I suggest to him that the protection goes far wider than that. It protects employers from employing unsuitable people. It protects and preserves the right of the employer to consider the honesty of the information which has been presented by an applicant seeking work. It also protects those people who have no convictions, or who have completely spent convictions, and allows them the opportunity to prove that they are fit for employment, and that the convictions—which may have occurred a long time ago—no longer have any relevance.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am sorry to return to this point but the Minister gave an uncertain reply to the definite question that I asked her. On one occasion she said that she hoped—and on another occasion she said that she expected—that the use of enforced subject access would decline if Clause 100 were accepted. That is not good enough. If Clause 100 is to achieve what it ought to achieve, it ought to replace enforced subject access under the Data Protection Act. Will the noble Baroness at least say that the Home Office will issue guidance to employers that they should be using the criminal conviction certificate rather than the Data Protection Act if they
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wish to ask individuals to show their freedom from a relevant conviction? If she were to say that, I should support the inclusion of Clause 100 in the Bill.
6 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: Between now and the next stage of the Bill, perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to read what has been said in the debate and to think about what he said. First, I gave a straight answer. I said that, no, we had not intended formally in legislation to rule out the use of enforced access to information held on computer. We shall continue, because we must under the law allow the individual to seek that information. The noble Lord looks vexed; I hope that he will hear me out on this point. The individual will be allowed to continue to seek information held about him on the computer. We believe that the absence of a criminal conviction certificate has probably given rise to an increasing use of enforced access. We believe that the criminal conviction certificate will take the place of enforced access.
I said to the noble Lord—he finds it unsatisfactory—that we would wait and see; and that only if it became an issue would we consider looking again at the rules of disclosure. The noble Lord invites me to say that simultaneously we should introduce Clause 100 and outlaw under the legislation the use of enforced access. I wish to think about what the noble Lord has said.
I come back to what the noble Lord, Lord Lester, said; I have had some advice. The noble Lord asked about disclosure being a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I understand that disclosure of the criminal conviction certificate will be a matter for the individual. Therefore, we do not believe that it is a breach of Article 8 of the convention. It is for the individual to decide to whom to disclose the information and on what terms.
Secondly, the protections of the Data Protection Act will apply to information contained in a criminal conviction certificate where held on a computer. Therefore, it could only be disclosed to a third party with the consent of an individual or where it falls within the provisions of that Act. Therefore the Data Protection Act applies only to data held on computer, although there are proposals to extend the provision to normal files. As we move towards the 21st century, the Data Protection Act and the disclosure rules would bite on this information, it being held on computer.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The Minister has answered my direct question in a direct way. The noble Baroness confirmed that Clause 100 does not repeal that part of the Data Protection Act. What I wanted her to say, and what I think she is saying, is that she understands the problem. She understands that the present situation is unsatisfactory and that we seek an improvement through the enactment of Clause 100. If that is the case, and if the noble Baroness is willing to talk between now and the next stage of the Bill about the possibility, for example, of issuing guidance

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to employers that they prefer criminal conviction certificates, I should be prepared to urge the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, not to put the issue to a vote.
Baroness Blatch: I should have been more forthcoming. I apologise to the noble Lord. I hope that he will understand if I reserve my position on what we do legislatively about enforced access. However, even without consulting with officials, I can say that we would consider putting the matter in guidance. I take the point that we should be discouraging employers from using this route to seek information and that the criminal conviction certificate should suffice. I can give him an absolute assurance that we would address that issue in guidance.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am grateful. On that basis we could have a better position than now. I urge the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, not to press this issue to a Division.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: I am grateful for the advice of the noble Lord. I listened with attention and wry amusement to the exchanges across the Chamber. I thought that the Minister was trying very hard to say yes to the noble Lord. In so far as she did not succeed, the noble Lord sought to put into her mouth the words which, if she spoke them, would enable him to say that he did not intend to oppose Clause 100. Although I should like to read the Official Report to gain the full flavour and excitement of the exchange, between the two of them I think they reached the conclusion that on Clause 100 they agree. As I understand it, the noble Lord asked whether Clause 100 would replace the Act. The answer was no. There was then a movement of opinion: perhaps it would lead to the phasing out of the Act. The answer was: not really. It was suggested that it might result in there being no need for access to the Act. The answer was that that might be a possibility. The Minister was asked to consider giving guidance to employers. The noble Baroness was not going to say whether she would or would not. I have never heard so many reserved opinions on both sides of the Chamber in the whole of my time here. I fully understand the difficulties of the Minister and the noble Lord. I believe that we shall remember that exchange for its entertainment value.
A number of interesting points were made during our short debate. I shall not dwell upon them too fully now. I say only that my reference to the position of parliamentary candidates was to illustrate what I believe to be the unfairness of Clause 100. I remind the Minister—she understands this even if the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, pleads that he knows nothing about politics—that anyone can stand for Parliament; one does not have to be selected by a political party. I can guarantee that at the next election a large number of men and women will stand without a selection process. For the Minister to believe that within two or three days of polling day it is realistic for anyone to stand up at the back of a political
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meeting and ask the candidate, "Will you produce your criminal conviction certificate?", and that that would have any bearing on the result, is Cloud-cuckoo-land.
The point I make is not a major one. I made it at Second Reading and shall not do so again. It is not compatible with the fairness of the Bill that those going for paid employment, often in jobs where there is no risk, should be expected to produce this certificate. If one stands for elective office, with all the trust that that entails, whether in local or central government, one will not be expected in the same way to produce a criminal conviction certificate.
I agree with the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, about the practice today. It may not be unusual for employers to ask potential employees whether they have a criminal conviction. However, Clause 100 institutionalises a routine question. For that reason I find it unacceptable.
I shall not further discuss the meaning of Clause 104. However, my understanding of the word "redress" is different from that of the Minister. The Minister repeated what is palpably true: that if for any reason a criminal conviction certificate is inaccurate, a new certificate will be issued free of charge. But that does not deal with redress in the event of damage being done to an applicant as a result of the first certificate being inaccurate.
I agree with the Minister that perhaps what matters most is rehabilitation. However, she rested where I am not prepared to rest—on the argument (it is true so far as it goes) that those with spent convictions have no need to worry. I have argued, and will continue to argue in further stages of the Bill—I understood that it was the message of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln—that under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (and there is no proposal to amend the Bill; it is the basis for our decision today) many convictions are not spent in a lifetime and other convictions are not spent for many years.
I have no doubt that Clause 100 is prejudicial to such men and women gaining jobs. I regard that as serious, unfair and likely to lead to greater offending. I do not expect 137 noble Lords to follow me into the Lobby. But the issue is one of principle and it should be on the record that at least some of us believe that Clause 100 should be deleted from the Bill.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Serota): The Question is, That Clause 100, as amended, stand part of the Bill. As many as are of that opinion will say "Content"; to the contrary "Not-Content". I think the "Contents" have it. The "Contents" have it.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: Forgive me, but there is some misunderstanding. The intention was to divide the House. I believe that the fault lies with what the Deputy Chairman said in putting the Question to the Committee.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: I shall put it once more for the sake of clarity.
6.10 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 100, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 126; Not-Contents, 39.

Division No. 2

CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Kintore, E.

Ailsa, M.

Laing of Dunphail, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Lauderdale, E.

Anelay of St. Johns, B.

Liverpool, E.

Ashbourne, L.

Long, V.

Astor of Hever, L.

Lucas, L.

Balfour, E.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Berners, B.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Birdwood, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L. [Lord Chancellor.]

Blaker, L.

Blatch, B.

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Bledisloe, V.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Bowness, L.

Massereene and Ferrari, V.

Brentford, V.

Mersey, V.

Bridgman, V.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Brigstocke, B.

Milverton, L.

Butterworth, L.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Byford, B.

Monk Bretton, L.

Cadman, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Caithness, E.

Mottistone, L.

Caldecote, V.

Mountevans, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Mountgarret, V.

Carlisle of Bucklow, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Camegy of Lour, B.

Munster, E.

Chelmsford, V.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Chesham, L. [Teller.]

Napier of Magdâla, L.

Clanwilliam, E.

Nelson, E.

Clark of Kempston, L.

Northesk, E.

Clitheroe, L.

O'Cathain, B.

Colwyn, L.

Onslow, E.

Courtown, E.

Orkney, E.

Craigavon, V.

Off-Ewing, L.

Cranbome, V. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Oxfuird, V.

Cumberlege, B.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Davidson, V.

Peel, E.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Pender, L.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Perry of Southwark, B.

Downshire, M.

Platt of Writtle, B.

Dundonald, E.

Rawlings, B.

Eccles of Moulton, B.

Rees, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Renton, L.

Elles, B.

Renwick, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Fevers, E.

Seccombe, B.

Rather, B.

Sharpies, B.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

Shaw of Northstead, L.

Gage, V.

Simon of Glaisdale, L.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Slim, V.

Goschen, V.

Stewartby, L.

Greenway, L.

Strange, B.

Griffiths of Fforestfach, L.

Strathclyde, L. [Teller.]

Halsbury, E.

Sudeley, L.

Hertford, M.

Swinfen, L.

Hesketh, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Holdemess, L.

Trumpington, B.

HolmPatrick, L.

Ullswater, V.

Hope of Craighead, L.

Vivian, L.

Howe of Aberavon, L.

Wharton, B.

Inchcape, E.

Whitelaw, V.

Inglewood, L.

Wilcox, B.

Jenkin of Roding, L.

Wise, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Wynford, L.

Kingsland, L.

Young, B.

Kinnoull, E.

Young, B.

516

NOT-CONTENTS

Addington, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Alderdice, L.

Lester of Heme Hill, L. [Teller.]

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Lincoln, Bp.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

McNair, L.

Dahrendorf, L

McNally, L.

David, B.

Meston, L.

Desai, L.

Methuen, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Perry of Walton, L.

Falkland, V. [Teller.]

Rea, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Geraint, L.

Rochester, L.

Gladwin of Clee, L.

Rodgers of Quarry Bank, L.

Grey, E.

Taveme, L.

Hamwee, B.

Thomas of Gresford, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Thomas of Walliswood, B.

Hooson, L.

Tope, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Tordoff, L.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Varley, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham. E.

Resolved in the affirmative, and clause, as amended, agreed to.
6.18 p.m.
Clause 101 [Criminal record certificates]:
Lord Weatherill Lord Weatherill moved Amendment No. 106:
Page 40, line 25, at end insert ("except that where the application is supported by a letter from a registered charity or appropriate body confirming that the application is made in connection with the appointment of the applicant to a voluntary position for which he will receive no remuneration other than his expenses, the fee shall be waived.").
The noble Lord said: I spoke to this amendment with Amendment No. 103. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill Lord Lester of Herne Hill moved Amendment No. 107:
Page 40, line 36, leave out ("and cautions").
The noble Lord said: These amendments standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank seek to remove from the scope of information contained in a criminal record certificate the record of a caution.
Cautioning is an extra-statutory procedure, although it has received some statutory recognition. It was considered by the Court of Appeal in Collins v. Wilcock in 1984 in the context of the cautioning of women for loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution. Lord Justice Robert Goff (as he then was), observed that the system of cautioning had been encouraged by the Home Office as a way of discouraging young women from becoming prostitutes. However, Section 2 of the Street Offences Act 1959 provides a procedure for applying to a court for an order that no entry be made on the central register in respect of a caution, and that any entry already made be expunged. That procedure, the Court of Appeal observed,
"enables a respectable woman, who has been mistakenly identified by the police as a common prostitute, to have the records corrected".
No one in your Lordships' House would doubt that the system of cautioning is a sensible one because it avoids unnecessary arrests and prosecutions, while

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serving as a deterrent against any repetition of the conduct cautioned against. But it is an official warning, not a criminal conviction, still less a punishment. It is sensible and convenient for central records to contain information about cautions. It is sensible so that the police can check before deciding whether to administer a second caution or to exercise the power of arrest.
However, it is a fact that no safeguard is contained, so far as I am aware, either in this Bill or anywhere else, equivalent to what is in Section 2 of the 1959 Act in relation to prostitutes. So we are dealing with a criminal record of information about cautions which has not been tested in the courts, which stains an individual's character and for which there is no statutory procedure to correct the record by applying to a court. I appreciate that there is a safeguard in Clause 104, but that is administrative and discretionary and does not provide, as does the 1959 Act, for an application to a court for an order to expunge the caution.
The question then is whether it is reasonably necessary to meet any pressing social need for information about cautions to be included in criminal record information given to employers under Clause 101(4). That is, for example, to those involved in the administration of justice or some professions such as health, pharmacy and law or senior managers in banking or financial services. I quote from page 10 of the White Paper.
I suppose there might be particular and highly exceptional cases in these areas in which there was a real need to communicate information about a caution. Speaking for myself, I cannot think of any and I should be very surprised if my colleagues in the Bar Council—although they often surprise me—had in any consultation considered that it was necessary for the recruitment of staff to the legal profession—or, I add, to my own chambers—that we should be given information about cautions.
In any event, in my view, the vice of Clause 101 is that it contains no statutory limitations at all on the disclosure of cautions, even where such disclosure is completely unnecessary. It seems to me that there is nothing to ensure that a sense of proportion is observed. Nor does the clause provide any effective remedy for the unnecessary or disproportionate interference with the disclosure of information which could lead to a breach of privacy.
I note with interest that the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 contains safeguards for something which is a bit more serious than a caution. I note, for example, that someone who has been absolutely discharged has a six-month rehabilitation period. Once that has been dealt with, there is no way in which an absolute discharge can form part of the criminal record. Similarly, the 1974 Act provides that if someone has been conditionally discharged or bound over to keep the peace, after a year the rehabilitation period will have been served and information about a conditional discharge or a bind over or, for that matter, a probation order, will not be permitted to be disclosed. It will be treated as spent.
So, for the life of me, I cannot understand why there is no rehabilitation period for a caution, as I understand the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, and why the framers of this Bill have not thought fit to give protection against the unnecessary spreading of information about a caution which stains one's character and which ought to be protected at least as well as a probation order, absolute discharge or bind over. For those reasons, I hope that there will be support for the amendment from the framers of the Bill and from the Committee. I beg to move.
Baroness Blatch: It needs to be emphasised at the outset that cautions are admissions of guilt for imprisonable offences. They cannot therefore simply be disregarded as insignificant matters and may be relevant for occupations and licences for which criminal record certificates would be available.
The purpose of the criminal record certificate is to provide fuller information to those employing individuals in occupations which are exceptions to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Those covered by the provisions would, for example, include those working with children and vulnerable adults such as doctors, nurses and care assistants.
By virtue of making them exceptions to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, the Government have already indicated that full information about convictions for any offences can be requested. A caution is not, of course, a conviction. It is given at the discretion of the police; but an individual, in accepting a caution, is admitting that he or she is guilty of an offence.
If the offence is serious enough for the caution to have been recorded on the police national computer, which, broadly speaking, only contains information about offences which are imprisonable, that is a fact which in the Government's view should be made known to prospective employers and licensees. It could be both irresponsible and dangerous to deny access in all cases to that information which might cover offences such as dishonesty, violence or other behaviour which might be extremely relevant in considering someone's suitability for a position of trust.
The noble Lord, Lord Lester, referred to the situation where there was an absolute discharge. An absolute discharge is not a conviction. I take it upon me personally without consultation with anyone to say this about the other point which he made about a conditional discharge. I am not certain whether he implicitly accepts that there is either deemed guilt or admitted guilt, but nevertheless the sentence awarded in court is a conditional discharge. I believe that I should consider the point and reflect on it between now and the next stage of the Bill. However, that is not an argument for not including cautions. It might be an argument for including conditional discharges.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am puzzled on a question of fact. The Minister mentioned the police national computer. I assume that she refers to Clause 101(3) and the phrase:
"which is recorded in central records".

519
That must be what she means by "the police national computer". She said that offences which are not imprisonable offences are not normally included in the police national computer. In those circumstances, how can cautions be included on the police national computer?
Baroness Blatch: If the caution is not a matter of record, it would not be included. Cautions will only be included if they are a matter of record. I described the kinds of cases that go forward to the national computer. They are usually serious, are mostly for imprisonable offences and do so if it is deemed by the police that they should form part of the central records.
In response to the point about expunging and an application in court for an order to expunge a caution, I should say that if it is expunged, it is no longer a matter of record.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Will there be cautions in practice? Will there be cautions on the police national computer? Will there be cautions for imprisonable offences? I thought cautions were for much more minor offences than that.
Baroness Blatch: We are talking about formal cautions as opposed to informal cautions, and there are many informal ways of cautioning someone about their behaviour. My understanding is that the formal caution is a matter of record on the police records, and where it is recorded nationally it is usually a relatively serious and/or possibly an imprisonable offence.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I am not a criminal practitioner, and it is some years since I had the duty of sitting as a recorder and passing sentence, so anything I say now I hope your Lordships will listen to with tolerance in case I get it wrong. I am now more confused than I was to begin with.
Perhaps I may deal with what we are actually looking at. We are looking at the disclosure of information, not only in respect of the healthcare professions, but in a narrow sense, in a sense where, for example, paedophiles and sex offenders and matters of that kind are concerned, and we are looking at barristers, dentists, opticians and bankers. The question we are asking ourselves is whether, in respect of those categories, a caution, which serves a useful social purpose but does stain one's character, needs to be disclosed.
The position under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 is that where, in respect of a conviction—in other words a case where there has been a trial and someone has been found guilty—a person was conditionally discharged, that being the sentence of the court, or bound over to keep the peace, that being the sentence of the court, or to be of good behaviour or placed on probation, that also being the sentence of the court, the rehabilitation period applicable to the sentence is one year from the date of conviction or for a period beginning at that date and ending when the order for conditional discharge or probation etc. ceases to have effect.
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The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act says that where there are sentences far more serious than a caution, which is not a sentence at all, after a year they are treated as spent. They cannot be referred to. They cannot form any part of any record.
Viscount Bledisloe: Surely the noble Lord is forgetting that spent convictions are also disclosed.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I follow the noble Viscount's point. It is the point I seek to make. By contrast to spent convictions, which cover these various matters, a caution is not subject to any rehabilitation period at all because a caution does not involve a conviction of any kind. It is not protected by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act because there has been no conviction. The position is that there is no safeguard. There is not the Street Offences Act safeguard by which you can apply to the court to get it expunged because you are an honest woman and not a prostitute. There is not that safeguard. There is not the rehabilitation period safeguard.
What one has is a totally indiscriminate ability to circulate information about cautions. I do not know whether the Minister has it in mind that in future, before someone is cautioned, he (or she) will be warned by the police officer that if he admits his guilt, that will appear on his criminal record. That seems to me only fair, if that is where we are now going. But that would deter people from admitting their guilt and accepting the caution, and thus would give rise to a lot of unnecessary prosecutions, trials and all the rest. Also, it would not lead to the deterrent effect of a caution properly applied.
For those reasons I very much hope that the Minister and her advisers will think again about these matters. It seems to me, with great respect, that there is not sufficient clarity of argument for us to be able to resolve the matter this evening.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Before the noble Lord decides what to do, I believe that the position is more confused than he describes. A caution is an admission of guilt and that is why it is put out separately. An absolute discharge is not a conviction and being bound over to keep the peace is not a conviction; but a conditional discharge is. If they all have terms under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, there is something wrong with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, and that ought to be sorted out before we come to a final conclusion.
Baroness Blatch: Before this becomes even more complicated, I would like to correct something I said to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, about absolute discharge. Of course, if there is a conviction, it is a conviction. An absolute discharge is a conviction and, therefore, for the purposes of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act it is spent after six months. I concur again with the point made by the noble Viscount about spent convictions. A caution, as I said earlier, is not a conviction and, therefore, never becomes spent under the Act, but will only be disclosed when there are full criminal record

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certificates or enhanced certificates, which include spent convictions. Either way, even if it were spent, it would also be disclosed.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I rise to make the point which the Minister made a moment ago, that an absolute discharge is a sentence following a conviction. I have known it given in the case of a lady who killed her husband with a hammer. It can relate to a very serious case. Being bound over does not involve a conviction at all. That is an administrative role which is normally undertaken by magistrates.
In recent times the practice has grown up for there to be two forms filled in in the Crown Court, whether it is to deal with witnesses or defendants. One form lists convictions and the other form lists cautions. So cautions are normally kept on computer and are now made available, not only to the sentencing judge but also, of course, to the advocates on either side. As I say, this is not simply in respect of an accused person, but in respect of witnesses as well. They are playing a more and more important part in the administration of justice. Consequently, I support my noble friend in drawing to the Committee's attention the difficulties and problems relating to cautions.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I confess that I am still bewildered and it is probably my fault. I clearly must read the debate carefully and then think again. The Minister has not dealt with my main points, unless I misheard her. She has not explained why there is any necessity for this to apply to cautions that are not even convictions, nor what remedy there is to be or safeguard against misuse, but I have made those points already.
At this stage I would like to reflect further and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 108 not moved.]
Clause 101, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 102 [Enhanced criminal record certificates]:
Lord Weatherill Lord Weatherill moved Amendment No. 109:
Page 41, line 9, at end insert ("except that where the application is supported by a letter from a registered charity or appropriate body confirming that the application is made in connection with the appointment of the applicant to a voluntary position for which he will receive no remuneration other than his expenses, the fee shall be waived.").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: In calling Amendment No. 110, I should point out to the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to I cannot call Amendment No. 111.
Lord Swinfen Lord Swinfen moved Amendment No. 110:
Page 41, leave out lines 13 to 15 and insert—
("(a) the applicant's suitability for—
(i) a position (whether paid or unpaid) in which he would regularly be involved in any relevant activity,
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(ii) a position (whether paid or unpaid) in which he would regularly be involved in appointing, dismissing, managing or supervising a person or persons regularly involved in any relevant activity, or
(iii) his participation in a scheme operated by a registered body where as a result of such participation he would gain opportunities to be involved in any relevant activity,").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 110 and at the same time speak to Amendment No. 117. This is an amendment that I tabled after my Amendment No. 111 at the request of the Law Society. I draw your attention to the words that I wish to insert in the Bill at paragraph (a):
"(ii) a position (whether paid or unpaid) in which he would regularly be involved in appointing, dismissing, managing or supervising a person or persons regularly involved in any relevant activity".
The relevant activity is detailed in Amendment No. 117.
That covers the position where an individual is responsible for supervising others. There could be a paedophile who appoints paedophiles to work in children's homes. Therefore the person who is in the position of appointing undesirable people to work with children or indeed vulnerable adults should also have the same police checks undertaken on him.
The Law Society has written to me that on several occasions it has received representations from solicitors, social workers, doctors and other professionals as well as from carers and relatives to the effect that adults who are vulnerable because of age or disability are not accorded the same degree of protection from abuse, nor are they given equal access to justice, as other members of the public. It considers that those are serious matters which the law should address. I am sure that the Committee does also.
In particular, it is becoming increasingly recognised that vulnerable adults, particularly those with mental disabilities, are subject to abuse both physical and sexual. In its comprehensive inquiry into mentally incapacitated adults and decision-making, the Law Commission identified the protection of mentally vulnerable adults as a particular area of law in need of clarification and put forward proposals for reform in its draft Mental Incapacity Bill. A person under the age of 18 with a learning disability does not suddenly lose that disability when he becomes 18 and one day. He is still a vulnerable person.
The need to protect vulnerable members of society, particularly children, and bring their alleged abusers to justice has been recognised and acted upon through the development of child protection procedures and the implementation of the main recommendations of the Piggott Committee on video evidence. As currently drafted, the provisions in this Bill which enable criminal record checks to be made for employment and related purposes continue that imbalance and injustice. While criminal record certificates can be issued for most job applicants, the provisions for enhanced criminal record certificates are limited to those who will be in contact with children or in particular types of work connected with gambling and lotteries.
The Law Society has written to me to say that it is concerned that any measures introduced to protect children from sexual or other abuse should also be extended to protect vulnerable adults, particularly those in residential or institutional care or attending day care services. The society has been involved in a number of initiatives aimed at improving the investigation and prosecution of cases involving abuse of mentally vulnerable victims and witnesses. The need for that has been demonstrated by a number of recent cases, where mentally vulnerable adults in residential care were found to have been seriously abused by their carers. It would, therefore, wish to ensure that measures are put in place to protect vulnerable people and prevent opportunities for abuse.
For criminal record checks to be effective, it is important that they include all information which may be relevant in order to protect people who may be at risk of abuse. Such information will be available only in enhanced criminal record certificates. The Law Society therefore believes that access to enhanced certificates should be available to registered bodies receiving applications for positions which involve contact with vulnerable adults as well as with children.
In moving this amendment, I declare an interest in that I work for a voluntary body that cares for vulnerable adults. I beg to move.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I support the two amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen. Clearly, vulnerable old people and those with mental disabilities need protecting. It is also very important that the managers who hire the people who are in contact with children, old people or those with mental problems are subject to the provisions about enhanced criminal records because managers essentially set the tone and institute particular regimes which affect those who work with them.
It is just as important that children should not be subjected to the attentions of paedophiles as that old people should not be subjected to the attentions of people who may bully them or have convictions for assault. Regimes of the kind that used to exist in institutions—not so much nowadays but there is still the occasional case where old people are bullied—could be prevented by these amendments. I therefore support the amendments.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Rix: In the Second Reading debate I highlighted my concerns and those of MENCAP to ensure that vulnerable adults were afforded the same protection as vulnerable children and elderly people. I was heartened by the Minister's response to those concerns.
If Amendments Nos. 110 and 117 are accepted, I understand that Amendment No. 111, to which my name is attached, cannot be moved. However, I am assured that vulnerable adults will be protected by those amendments. Therefore, I support them and hope that
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the Minister will be able to accept them and give vulnerable people of whatever age the protection that they deserve.
Baroness Blatch: I am in some difficulty in responding to my noble friend's amendment. I should quite like to have had it grouped with Amendment No. 111. I understand that the advice is that, if this amendment were accepted, Amendment No. 111 could not be called, and I want to respond rather more warmly to Amendment No. 111, which I believe will have a direct impact on this amendment. I shall respond to this amendment in the way that I have prepared.
Lord Rix: Perhaps I may interject. I too prefer Amendment No. 111 from the point of view of MENCAP. But clearly I have been, as it were, disbarred from moving that amendment at this moment.
Baroness Blatch: Only disbarred if this amendment were carried. But let me refer first to this amendment.
The amendment would extend considerably, perhaps by as many as 1 million, I understand, the number of people eligible for enhanced checks. They would place a very significant extra burden on the police, who would then be required to undertake the local element of the check. In addition to those who have regular unsupervised contact with children for whom provision is already made in the Bill, these intrusive checks would be available on almost anyone who has contact with a child, an elderly person, a vulnerable adult or even an adult who is simply ill. They would also cover managers and supervisors who may never come into personal contact with the individuals that the amendment seeks to protect and who would never be in a position to abuse them.
The amendment would cover clerical and administrative staff in schools and hospitals who regularly work with children or patients but who, common sense suggests, are not necessarily, or certainly should not be, in a position to pose a risk. At a practical level, these proposals would mean that the police would have to take on extra staff in order to cope with the workload. Again, I remind the Committee that it is a workload which would be additional to that contained within Amendment No. 103.
Inevitably, enhanced checks will take longer than those which require only a check of central records, which will build delay into the recruitment of many staff and cause applicants additional expense. In my view, that would be quite unjustifiable, if they were not likely to be in a position where the job that they wished to do would not fulfil the criteria of contact, which are such where abuse could take place.
Annex A to the White Paper makes clear that it is our intention that all those to whom these amendments would apply would be eligible for a full criminal record certificate. It would provide details of centrally recorded convictions, including those which are spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, and centrally recorded cautions. That is considerably more information about criminal records than is presently available to those working with people other than children.

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As I have referred to centrally recorded cautions, I think I ought to refer back to at least one definition. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, was concerned about very serious offences being dealt with only by a caution. The noble Lord will know how much we have done to reduce the incidence of cautioning before, if it is appropriate, people are eventually put into custody. An example is theft. It is a potentially serious offence. It can be dealt with in the early stages by caution. But it would indeed be relevant where someone, having had a caution and having admitted guilt to the theft, was seeking work in a position of trust.
It is important to remember that those making appointments will not normally be doing the job in isolation. There will be many other procedures to be followed and many other people to check that the wrong people are not being appointed to sensitive posts. It is necessary to strike a balance—we are here talking about a balance—between protecting the most vulnerable in our society and the rights of individuals to privacy. Finding the right balance will always be a question of judgment, but the Government believe that extending enhanced checks to this potentially enormous group of people would be difficult to justify. For those reasons, I hope my noble friend will not press his amendment.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The Minister indicated that she will respond rather more warmly to Amendment No. 111. Perhaps it would be better if we moved on to that. However, that is up to the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen.
When the Minister responds to Amendment No. 111 I ask her to recognise that her objections have, as I understand them, been entirely confined to questions of practicality. The Government say in their response to the White Paper that they expect there to be continual demand for checks on those working with vulnerable adults which it might be difficult to meet during the agency's early period of work. However, they say that they will be prepared to consider the possibility of extending enhanced checks to that group once experience has been obtained of the value of the new arrangements. If that is the force of the argument rather than an objection in principle or an objection about the definition of vulnerable adults, so be it. However, I put it to her that the extension to vulnerable adults should not require further legislation. In other words, in whatever form the Bill passes, it should allow the extension to vulnerable adults to be carried out by resolution or by administrative action rather than require new legislation.
Baroness Blatch: It is not just about practicalities. Of course I had to bring in the fact that we are increasing the number of people to whom this part of the Bill will apply. I have given some indication that the number will be approximately above 1 million and so it cannot be disregarded as an issue. I was also addressing priorities. We are looking at the most vulnerable and we are looking at that group of people who will have access to, and work in an unsupervised way with, young people.
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They become the category of people on whom this part of the Bill must bite. Therefore, it is a question of priorities, practicalities and of course cost.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I thought that was roughly what I was saying. I understand the need for priorities. I understand the need for practicality. We must not let the Bill go through in such a way that there is no provision when resources permit for protecting vulnerable adults. If that has to be done by putting a provision into the Bill now and providing a different commencement date, that would be better than nothing. What we cannot do is have a Minister coming back afterwards and saying, "We can do it but only when legislative time permits".
Lord Swinfen: I should like to read what my noble friend said because she said a good deal on these two amendments. Between now and the next stage of the Bill I should be grateful if she would reflect seriously on the position of someone who would be regularly involved in appointing, dismissing, managing or supervising a person or persons regularly involved in any relevant activity. He would be in a position to cause a great deal of mischief. He could be the leader of a paedophile gang, for lack of a better example, or someone who was going into individual vulnerable elderly people's homes and stealing from them.
I shall not press the amendment today but will be happy to come back the issue at a later stage in the Bill. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Swinfen Lord Swinfen moved Amendment No. 111:
Page 41, line 15, at end insert ("or
(ii) of persons whom the Secretary of State may, by order, designate as vulnerable or otherwise requiring special protection,").
The noble Lord said: I may not be a good draftsman, as I am sure many members of the Committee would point out to me, but I realise that, with the difficulties that started with the Child Support Agency, there could well be difficulties in putting the Bill into effect. Therefore, I have worded this amendment in such a way that the Secretary of State may, by order, at some time in the future, bring in gradually, when practicable, different groups of vulnerable people who in my view need the same protection as vulnerable children. There is a danger that we could all sink back into childhood as we become elderly. In no way am I likely to be exempt from that.
I have had a number of letters of support on this amendment. I have before me one from a director of a voluntary organisation that runs a home for elderly people. It says:
"We are extremely concerned that there could be substantial numbers of people moving from job to job who have histories of abusing people in their care but whose references do not necessarily show this. This situation is encouraged by the fact that it is often not in the employer's interest to carry through disciplinary procedures or indeed to report people to the relevant authorities since this is likely to create publicity that could be damaging to the employer's business".
The letter goes on:
"I appreciate that the Bill is aimed mainly at carers for young people, but if it were possible to build in a further provision for old people and adult disabled people, this would be helpful".
The British Association of Social Workers has written to me, saying:
"Your proposed amendment to the Police Bill to enable police checks to be made on care workers is supported by this association. We do believe that this measure can only be effective within a wider framework of social care regulation".
I have before me an article from the Guardian dated 17th August 1994 which reports:
"A child sex attacker who left prison under an assumed name and began preying on elderly and psychiatrically disturbed women was given two life sentences for rape yesterday … Bannerman's past as Henry Walker was revealed through a fingerprint check at Scotland Yard. His identity was confirmed again when a warder at Strangeways Prison, Manchester, saw a police picture of him and found an almost identical shot in prison files recorded under the name of Walker and taken while he was serving eight years for the rape of a Manchester woman".
I do not know whether any noble Lord saw the programme on BBC Television North East on Thursday evening entitled "Close Up North". It detailed the rape of an elderly woman by a care worker. It also referred to an earlier case where a man was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for the rape of a female demented resident in a home. There are numerous examples that I can give to the Committee, but it is getting late and I shall not do so. I am very anxious to hear what my noble friend the Minister has to say on this particular amendment. I beg to move.
7 p.m.
Lord Rix: What I have to say has already been said. I am obviously in support of this amendment because my name is attached to it. I spoke in support of Amendments Nos. 110 and 117 because of the possibility that Amendment No. 111 would fall if the others had been carried. The vulnerable people to whom I am referring, as I am sure the Minister knows and recognises, are those with a learning disability. The numbers are considerable—well in excess of 1 million people, of whom certainly over 50 per cent. are adults. I hope that this amendment, or a version which might be put forward by the Government and which will be acceptable, will be carried.
Baroness Blatch: We need to consider, first, the practical implications of extending checks to vulnerable adults, particularly for the police who will need to undertake the most complicated and time-consuming part of the check. How vulnerable adults are defined will be important. Depending on the definition, they could overwhelm the police with applications for enhanced checks when the new arrangements come into operation just at a time when they are in any event likely to be coping with an increase in enhanced checks on those working with children.
Nevertheless, I have sympathy with the amendment and with the arguments that have been put so persuasively by my noble friend, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and, I believe, probably by others in the Committee. Therefore, we are considering how best to
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amend the Bill in order to extend the provision for enhanced criminal record checks to vulnerable adults. There are a number of options, but we intend to bring forward an amendment for this purpose at Report stage. On that basis, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Swinfen: That is very good news indeed. I am delighted that my noble friend proposes to bring forward an amendment of her own. However, I am rather a nasty character and I shall probably put down an amendment of my own if I do not see one fairly soon in the Printed Paper Office. I have given this warning often in the past and I have carried it out. I also hope that the remarks I made as regards the last amendment about the supervisors of people working in close contact with vulnerable people will also be borne in mind. With those words, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Earl of Courtown: I beg to move that the House do now resume. In moving this Motion, I suggest that the Committee stage begin again not before 8.5 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Allocation of Housing Regulations 1996
7.4 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham rose to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations, laid before the House on 31st October, be annulled (S.I. 1996/2753).
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am praying against these regulations against a background of a disastrous Budget for housing. Given the changes in procedure, we no longer have a social security uprating statement. It is perhaps worth mentioning that as a result of the Budget the Housing Corporation budget has been slashed from £1.8 billion three years ago to £1 billion this year and to only £650 million next year; so the number of new socially rented houses will fall. Also in the Budget we see the other side of the pincer movement: in the private sector after next autumn the capacity of single people to find alternative accommodation will be severely damaged by the fact that they will be eligible for housing benefit only for a bed-sit.
I want to spend just a moment on that because it has implications for the workings of the Housing Act and therefore for the regulation that we shall be discussing in a moment. The Budget has stated that widows who after next autumn need housing benefit for the first time, carers who have lost their parents and need housing benefit after next October, for the first time, divorced men who have lost their jobs and need housing benefit after next October, for the first time, if they are in privately rented self-contained one or two-bedroomed flats, will now find that housing benefit does not cover them and they will lose their homes as well.
I hope that the Minister can identify with this problem: that vulnerable, middle-aged women recently bereaved, may have to leave a home of 30 years in the private rented sector and move into something which is sometimes squalid, often dangerous and always insecure—that is to say, bed-sit accommodation—sharing a kitchen and bathroom down a corridor with men who may be alcoholic or have a record. I was approached on just such a question on Sunday morning in Norwich. Fortunately, the man was living in a council flat and therefore the situation will not arise.
Therefore, in housing terms, in the Budget the Government have created the very worst sort of welfare dependency in which a man, who, if he loses his job, will have to lose his home as well. If he or she loses the partner, he will lose the home as well. It is the worst aspect of an entire Budget producing real misery for a quarter of a million people a year.
To the dire effects of the Budget—such as losing your partner, losing your home, losing your parents, losing your job if you are single and under 60—are now added the ugly detail implied in the regulations of the Housing Act 1996. These regulations fill in, by secondary legislation, key provisions in that Act.
Your Lordships will recall that the Housing Act laid down that only people who are on the waiting list may be allocated local authority housing and, as sudden homelessness often occurs before the family has reached the top of the list, how the local authority shall discharge its duty towards them. Broadly, Statutory Instrument No. 2753 relates to Part VI of the Act and determines the structure of the waiting list required for access to local authority housing. Statutory Instrument No. 2754 covers those who are ineligible for assistance under homelessness provisions.
Within the context of the Budget, I repeat: why am I bringing these regulations to the attention of your Lordships' House by praying against them? It is because, as convention will have it, we shall not be moving to a vote. Therefore, why am I seeking to air these issues?
The first is the problem of timescale. With a Bill that was only completed late last summer and with a code of guidance, on which this Act is heavily dependent, not being published until barely four weeks ago, local authorities were supposed to reorganise their entire waiting list structures by January. The protest of local government and the threat of judicial review sensibly made the DoE think again and implementation is now under the still tight timetable of April 1997.
I ask the Minister to think again and to see whether it is possible to extend that timetable to July 1997. For local authorities the work involved is huge and the Government's delay in issuing consultation papers, the draft and the final guidance, has meant a heavy bureaucratic workload in terms of the paper involved, which will have to be condensed into a very narrow timetable indeed. It is important that local government gets it right and avoids unnecessary appeals against improper decisions. Even an April timetable does not permit full and proper scrutiny.
The second area of concern is that considerable issues remain unresolved, especially the problem of referrals from social services and other agencies, the procedures on rights of review, the issues of affordability of accommodation, and the fact that so far there has been no guidance at all on the groups which are to be excluded from assistance under Parts VI and VII of the Act. Can we at least have an assurance from the Minister that the problem that we identified in Committee, involving that ugly phrase "the silting up" of half-way houses and hostels, which means that people cannot move on, which means in turn that others cannot move into those places, will be speedily addressed by the Government in the near future? On 19th June 1996, the noble Lord, Lord Mackay, accepted the principle of what we were trying to do but said that he would use not primary legislation, but regulatory powers, to that effect. Where are those regulatory powers? When can we expect them?
Thirdly, I turn to the detail of the regulations. I refer first to the first regulation and to Part VI which deals with the waiting list. As noble Lords will recall, the Housing Act 1996 stated that the only route to the allocation of a local authority house was through the single waiting list. Our first concern is for those who have immigration status—in other words, who are subject to immigration control or who fail the habitual residence test and who, under the regulations, are ineligible for the waiting list. This entire area is now a minefield of misery—and these regulations will make it far worse.
Just as the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 excluded most asylum seekers from social security benefits, so the Housing Act, in parallel, excluded them from the housing list and therefore from local authority housing irrespective of their housing need. As I am sure that the Minister will acknowledge in all candour, there has been chaos since Section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration Act came into force in mid-August. Some local authorities turned people out on the streets without notice. Others were unclear about what to do. Still others went to the courts—and the charities and the Churches were left to pick up the strain. Now we find that the judges have deemed that Act illegal and have said that local authorities have a continuing duty not only to families under the Children Act, but to single people and couples under the National Assistance Act, which was passed in 1948 by the Labour Government who were elected in 1945 determined never again to tolerate the indecency of people starving on our streets. But then, coming out of the Second World War, with two-thirds of all our overseas investments sold to fund the war effort, we must have been a rich country and could afford to be generous; now, after 17 years of this Tory Government, we are so poor that apparently we cannot afford that.
Even more ambiguous is the exclusion from housing of those who fail the habitual residence test. That test already applies to those seeking income support or housing benefit. Under the regulations, it is now being applied to eligibility for local authority housing waiting lists. However, there is no statutory definition of the habitual residence test. I speak from personal knowledge

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when I say that it is a subjective test—a member of my family was subjected to the test—which is determined by such criteria as where you keep a suitcase of clothes and what societies and organisations you belong to. It was a test meant to stop benefit tourists—I think that the Secretary of State had "layabouts from Spain" in mind—instead all our experience of the test shows that it has been applied to Commonwealth families living in Britain with family ties abroad, who find that after visits to their overseas relatives they incur considerable difficulty in re-establishing their right to social security.
Applying the same test of habitual residence to the right of access to the council housing waiting list, and therefore to rented social housing, may severely damage the eligibility of a young Pakistani family or a West Indian nurse to join the waiting list although they normally work, and are resident, in the United Kingdom. Local authorities, which have spent many months over the past decade patiently training their staff in anti-racist procedures and non-racist bureaucracy, will now have to ask the same staff to interrogate people on the habitual residence test which disproportionately weighs heavily on ethnic minority communities.
Our second bundle of concerns about the regulations relates to the issue of non-statutory succession. At the moment local authorities can respond flexibly and compassionately where, for example, the only statutory succession (that from a husband to a wife on death) has already taken place. If the couple are joint tenants, their daughter may be protected. If the mother dies first and the husband is left in the house, the tenancy may pass to the daughter. However, if the husband dies first and he is the sole tenant, the middle-aged daughter, who may have lived with her parents for many years as their carer and without whom they may have been in expensive local authority care, has no right of statutory succession although she may have known no other home. In practice, at the moment local authorities would grant her the tenancy.
The same applies to same-sex partners. A same-sex couple may live together for many years. One partner may nurse the other who is dying of AIDS, but on his death, after 20 years together, the surviving partner may find that he has no right of statutory succession. Again, the local authorities that I know would respond compassionately. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, responded compassionately in reply to a Written Question from the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, on 14th April 1993, when he said that the Government were proposing to issue guidance to local authorities that they should grant joint secure tenancies to same-sex couples and that discrimination on grounds of ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation or disability was not acceptable and was not a decent and civilised response.
The test of a stable relationship was to be 12 months, as with heterosexual couples. I understand that that guidance was never issued. Many existing tenancies may still be held by one partner only, but under the Act and these regulations local authorities will now be required to do the opposite of what was suggested in the advice given by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and
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evict the same-sex partner, sending him on to the waiting list where, as a single person, he may have to wait 10 years ever to have a home of his own again.
Under the Act and these regulations, local authorities lose their flexibility to make such one-off allocations in circumstances where, for example, carers and same-sex partners are not entitled to statutory succession. We on the Opposition Benches tried to build the same flexibility of judgment into the Act but that was rejected by the Government. Only if local authorities are satisfied that such people have priority need can they now be granted the tenancy; otherwise, under the regulations, they become homeless.
Similarly, a third category of people is involved. A relationship may break down because of domestic violence. If the spouse who is violent—presumably the male—holds the tenancy and is then served an injunction to leave the home because of his violence, he may then serve a notice to quit on the partner remaining at home and the tenancy must then end. At the moment, a local authority will normally exercise its judgment and transfer the tenancy to the spouse if it deems that the right thing to do because, say, the couple have been living there together for 15 years or more. That cannot happen in the future. In the future, the spouse would have to be evicted; she would have to go on the waiting list and she would be eligible for rehousing only if the local authority gave her priority over others on the waiting list. So, lose your parents, lose your home—just as with housing benefit; lose your partner, lose your home—just as with housing benefit under the Budget. Did the Minister really have that in mind? Why on earth cannot such difficult and delicate decisions be left to those who know the details of the case—the local authorities? Why cannot local authorities be allowed to make their judgment accordingly, without reference to the waiting list?
Local authorities are not likely to waste such accommodation when there are so many pressures on their waiting lists unless they believe that such tenants have a moral right to remain there. Why do we have to churn such people bureaucratically and callously through the system? Why must we assume that the man in Whitehall, the government Minister, knows better than the local councillors and officers?
The Housing Act 1996 was unnecessary. It was introduced because central government had stopped local authorities from building council housing. As a result, waiting lists have grown. As a result, people are waiting longer, and, as a result, the Government decided to finger the homeless for collaring an unfair proportion of the artificially reduced supply of council housing.
In these regulations, in the context of the Budget and its effect on housing benefit, we are witnessing some of the unpleasant aspects and indecencies of the Government's attitude to homelessness and housing need. We are already seeing the effect that this has in fracturing our society. I beg to move.
Moved, That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Regulations, laid before the House on 31st October, be annulled (S.I. 1996/2753).—(Baroness Hollis of Heigham.)
7.20 p.m.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, many of your Lordships who bluntly opposed much of the Housing Act will be grateful to the noble Baroness for continuing the argument. She is quite right not to let it drop. She introduced her Motion in part in the context of the Budget. I hope that if her eloquence fails to persuade the Minister—as I fear it may—she will use it to persuade her honourable friends in another place to vote against the Budget.
I wondered what we were doing dealing with regulations which, on their face, said that they would come into force on 20th January of next year while the substantive provisions would come into effect on 1st April. As the noble Baroness has said, underlying them is the rumpus caused by the Government's announcement of the timetable. There has been a threat of an application for judicial review from two London boroughs of very different political hue. I hope that the Minister will not simply answer the point about extending the timetable, which I support—it is essential that the Government give local authorities an opportunity to deal with the new regulations and procedures in a calm and coherent fashion—but will deal also with how the regulations will relate to the law that is in effect from 20th January until 1st April. I fail to see how the new regulations will interrelate to the law that will apply during that period.
I also wonder what is and what is not in the regulations. Many of your Lordships had high hopes about the regulations. The noble Baroness has referred to comments made by the Government during the course of the Bill about the use of regulation-making powers. We were told that regulations would deal with matters that could not be put on the face of the Bill because of the detailed technical work that would be required. However, many of the regulations read as though they deal with oversights not contained in the Bill when originally drafted; for example, I refer to the points about Scotland and Northern Ireland.
There have been many calls for consultation on the code of guidance on the regulations and many commitments were made during the course of the Bill on matters that would appear in guidance. There appears to have been very limited consultation. The code was not published until the end of October. The noble Baroness has referred to the pressures on housing authorities. I do not know whether the Government understand the procedures that housing authorities will have to follow. Each authority will have to consult resident social landlords and secure tenants and then deal with its computer software. I doubt that I am the only Member of your Lordships' House to have encountered problems in installing new computer software. The authority will have to prepare new procedures, train its staff and collect information from those who are currently on the waiting list and reassess their priority. As a matter of good manners, if nothing more, it will have to tell those people what its assessment is.
These matters cannot be done overnight. Information still remains to be issued: regulations on referral from social services and other agencies, procedures on new
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rights of review, and so on. There is no guidance on groups to be excluded from assistance under Parts VI and VII and on those areas for which regulations are awaited. Is it not important to deal with various regulations in one batch? Are we not running headlong into even greater difficulties if we deal with matters in little parcels, failing by perhaps a genuine oversight to see how they interrelate? I cannot support this as a sensible way of trying to deal with important matters that are fundamental to people's welfare and their very lives.
I see these regulations as another example of the centralising hand of government, restricting the ability of housing authorities to allocate on a one-off basis. The noble Baroness has referred to a number of examples. I need not take up the time of the House by repeating them. I very much support what she has said. I have been given assurances in the course of the Bill about the areas to be covered by guidance. I then find a recent circular which outlaws one-off allocations, and the situation is further exacerbated by the fact that housing benefit for all single people under 60 is to be paid on the basis of shared accommodation only, irrespective of their needs and circumstances. Therefore, this is not something with which I wish to be associated.
Your Lordships will be aware of the damning comments of Mr. Justice Collins in October. He ruled that authorities had a duty to provide shelter, warmth and food to asylum seekers who had no other support. That received well deserved and widespread publicity. The noble Baroness has referred to the massive confusion and hardship since February when the Government removed benefits from almost all asylum seekers. We thought then that the voluntary organisations and Churches would be the ones to pick up the pieces. Now we see that the very limited resources of social services departments are being diverted.
The Association of London Government reports that the cost of dealing with this exercise in London will soon reach £40 million. The estimate of the cost in the next financial year is of the order of £190 million if the Government lose their appeal in January. If the Government succeed on the other side of the balance sheet, over 1,000 people, including victims of torture, will be left homeless. Leaving aside the moral issues—I feel very strongly about them—these problems and costs are caused by a government who are always telling local authorities to organise themselves more efficiently. Frankly, they do not set a good example. I believe that the demands for transparency alone show that this is the wrong approach.
In preparing for this evening I have been concerned to read evidence provided by some local authorities that as a result of all this—although I accept that it is not solely as a result of this; the new provisions must provide a catalyst—refugee communities are being targeted for abuse. I witnessed a minuscule example of this quite recently. At a meeting in my local borough to discuss the budget for next year the implications of the new procedures and their possible costs to the borough were explained. That provoked the reaction in one or two people—which I am happy to say was sat upon

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pretty hard by others who attended the meeting—"Why should we have to pay for this?". That was a very nasty reaction, but it provides a tiny example.
The noble Baroness has dealt comprehensively and movingly with the effect of these regulations. I support the Motion.
7.28 p.m.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, I should like to deal briefly with the effects of these regulations on one group—namely, asylum seekers. It is fairly clear that in recent months since the passage of the asylum Bill and the Housing Bill into law the Government's policies in regard to asylum seekers have been thrown increasingly off course. I do not want to repeat the debates held in the summer when the main legislation was passing through the House. However, it is fair to say that no other country in Western Europe treats asylum seekers in the way that we do and in which they will be treated as a result of the regulations. No country in Europe allows asylum seekers, or a significant proportion of asylum seekers, to become destitute on the streets of its cities. It is clear to everyone that, were it not for the Herculean efforts of many local voluntary groups, the Churches and the Refugee Council, which have provided night shelters and other support, then many asylum seekers would be sleeping, and would have to sleep, on our streets.
I notice that the regulations are to come into effect on 20th January. I am trying to understand how that relates to the recent High Court judgment, and, in particular, to the fact that the Government, as I understand it, will be appealing against that decision on 13th or 14th January, just one week before the regulations come into effect.
I wonder whether the Minister can indicate what will happen if the Government lose their appeal in the High Court. If the Government lose, will it mean that all responsibility will stay with local authorities—I know that the Government offered them a little bit more money a couple of weeks ago—under National Assistance Act powers? Or is there to be some other method of approach? Or perhaps the Government believe that the regulations are not covered by the recent High Court decision and therefore that they are different from social security provision, income support, and the like. It would be useful to know that.
I understand that local authorities are finding it difficult to cope. I recently had a meeting with some local authority staff at a London town hall. They worked in housing and social services. They explained to me the difficulties they were having in dealing with a confused situation as a result of the recent changes, High Court decisions and so on. Although I understand that some guidance has gone out from the Government, it is not clear to local authority staff exactly what is expected of them. The details are complicated, and they are having to improvise as they go along because they lack full guidance.
A further point is that, if the Government have to rely upon the National Assistance Act and local authorities to deal with people who will be left adrift of any other support, it is inevitably more costly for local authorities
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to have to provide support for asylum seekers under that legislation than it would be if they were covered by a proper system as was the case before the regulations and the main legislation. Local authorities have to deal with everyone on a one-off basis. They have to make particular decisions for an individual asylum seeker or family, particularly those with children. From the information I have, it is clear that that is a more costly process than the method which existed before the Government embarked upon these measures.
I do not believe that it will save money: it will save the central government money, because if they go on like this they are just passing the responsibility from the Exchequer to local councils. That will impose an extra burden on the council tax. That is not a satisfactory position. I wish that the Government would withdraw the regulations and wait to see what the High Court decision is before they go further down that path.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, this kind of debate is always a sensitive matter. I understand when your Lordships feel that the Government are not doing all that they could or should to deal with homelessness, asylum seekers, or people who require housing.
Any government which takes on those responsibilities and makes changes is inevitably construed as being uncaring, unhelpful, and not having regard to the people who are most affected. Whenever one makes the changes some people are likely to be affected beneficially and some people will not be so affected. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is concerned about these things, but she went, if I may say so, just a little bit over the top when she said that after 17 years of Tory government we are so poor that we are prepared to see people starving on our streets. That is not the case. It does not help her case to put it as dramatically as that. When she went on to say that the Government finger the homeless as a result of government inadequacies, that is just not true or fair. I hope to be able to explain to her what it is that we are trying to do.
The noble Baroness asked why the regulations have been brought in as quickly as they have been. Well, the Housing Act received Royal Assent on 24th July this year. Local authorities were informed on 31st July that the commencement date for Parts VI and VII would be in January 1997, and that guidance would be issued well in advance of that date. The code of guidance was sent to all local authorities on 31st October. Many local authorities did not start serious planning on how they were going to implement Parts VI and VII until the autumn. Obviously it would not have been in the interests of applicants for a house were authorities to operate ill-prepared allocation schemes or to make allocations which were outside the law. We have therefore deferred the bringing in of Part VI until 1st April 1997 in order to give local authorities more time to prepare their allocation schemes and to adjust their computer systems. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that if one has computers, good though they are, at some juncture they run one into trouble, and very often when one starts using them.

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To give authorities more time to prepare the schemes, we have delayed the bringing in of Part VI until 1st April 1997. However it is reasonable that Part VII should commence on 20th January, as planned, because the homelessness provisions build on existing legislation. The commencement order for Parts VI and VII was made on 26th November this year, and guidance was issued to all local authorities last week. The Government hope to make all the major sets of regulations under the Act before the Christmas Recess.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that certain statutory instruments had not yet been made. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made the same point and asked why we could not put out all the regulations together. The regulations we are now considering are the main ones for implementing Parts VI and VII. We needed to make them in October. We hope that all the remaining regulations will be made within the next few weeks. So that should overcome that problem.
This all comes down to what we are trying to do over housing and the allocation of housing. It is a fundamental change in practice but not in intent. There is a change in practice, but there is no change in intent because we are committed to a fundamental principle; that is, that a decent home should be within the reach of every family. That is best achieved by having a choice of the numbers and types of houses which are provided. We want to have a healthy and deregulated private rented sector, and we want to encourage affordable home ownership.
In order to complement what is a flourishing private housing sector, we want to see a strong social rented sector—one which has good quality homes at a reasonable and affordable rent for those who are in genuine need. The reforms in the Housing Act 1996 mean that a new approach is possible to the way in which the demand for social housing is met.
The noble Baroness said that housing allocations had been slashed in the Budget, but the Chancellor announced in his Budget that public investment in the Housing Corporation will exceed £2.5 billion over the next three years. That is sufficient capital resources to enable an average of about 58,000 to 60,000 new and additional social houses to be built per year over the decade 1991-92 to 2000-01. That is in line with our estimates of social housing need. The £2,500 million-worth of public investment is expected to bring with it £1,800 million-worth of private finance. It is right that public investment should be what is necessary to enable housing associations to provide social housing at sub-market and affordable rents with an increased private-sector investment.
We continue to address the needs of the most vulnerable in society both by helping the homeless and by promoting a fairer scheme of access to social housing. The noble Baroness hoped that we would not end up by silting up the hostels, for example, for rough sleepers. We are conscious of the need to ensure that hostels do not silt up. We expect to cover the scope for the allocation of accommodation for those people outside the housing register in regulations which we will make soon.
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The old arrangements are unfair to those people who are in genuine need but who use their own initiative to find some kind of home for themselves and their families. I refer to those people who spend months or even years sitting on waiting lists simply because they have found some accommodation for themselves. However, those who have done nothing for themselves but have gone straight to the local authority for assistance will have been classified as statutory homeless and so have gone straight to the top of the queue. In many ways that is not fair.
In a few areas, more than 90 per cent. of long-term family housing goes to those who are described as "statutory homeless". Other families who may not be statutory homeless but who may nevertheless have similar long-term housing needs are not subject to the same treatment under the old system. Under the new Act we have introduced new arrangements for the way in which housing is allocated and that will help to ensure that fair treatment is available to everyone.
From 1st April next year, the priority for being accommodated and for long-term housing will go to those who have the greatest need for it, regardless of whether they have been assisted via the homelessness route. The new provisions draw the distinction between those who are homeless as a result of a short-term crisis which, with the right help, they can get through and those who have a genuine long-term need for long-term housing in the social rented sector. Local authorities will be obliged to house for a minimum of two years those to whom they owe a duty under the homelessness legislation. In order to do that, local authorities may use their own housing stock on a temporary basis, or they may use housing offered by other social landlords or housing which exists in the private rented sector. There is no reason to suppose that that will result in frequent moves for those people concerned.
The aim of the two-year duty is to provide a period of stability during which households can have a chance to sort out their own difficulties. Research shows that the average time for securing the tenancy of a council property is 12 months. Therefore, the chances are that during the two-year period the majority of people who have been housed as a result of being technically homeless will have found, or will have been found, a permanent home. One must remember that often people are homeless as a result of an immediate and short-term happening; for instance, a husband or a wife goes off, illness strikes, somebody dies, they no longer have a job and cannot keep up their payments or they have become financially embarrassed. Often those are the reasons for homelessness and that is why the homeless must be found accommodation. But that does not mean that they necessarily have to have long-term accommodation. Our experience shows that within about 12 months the majority of homelessness cases have been resolved. If no permanent home has been found within two years, and if the circumstances of the household have not changed, the authority will have a fresh duty to secure accommodation under the homelessness provisions.

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The difference between the new system which the regulations helped to introduce and the old system is that everyone, whether he or she is technically homeless or has a long-term housing need, will be allocated long-term housing on the basis of the same criteria. The homeless will be properly and immediately catered for but no one will be able to gain a short cut into long-term tenancies at the expense of others who may be in equal or possibly greater need.
The Government believe that advice and assistance can help many households to keep their existing homes or to find suitable alternative accommodation. Local authorities will have new duties to ensure that this advice and assistance is provided to all residents who request it. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was concerned that the authorities will have less discretion in allocating housing. I do not believe that that is so. The language of the 1996 Act requires authorities to give "reasonable preference" to certain groups, which is no different from the language of the 1985 Act. Authorities will still retain considerable discretion.
The noble Baroness was also concerned that provision should be made to ensure that people of the same sex, or carers who are residing with tenants, should be given the right to succeed to tenancies as those accorded to a member of a tenant's family. She asked why a government Minister knows better than a local authority. Of course government Ministers do not know better than local authorities. Local authorities have a duty to carry out their responsibilities, which they know best, under a framework which Parliament provides to ensure the best available housing for the people in their locality. The code of guidance was issued by the department in October and it restates Circular 7/96. It encourages authorities to create joint tenancies and to grant tenancies to people who reside with tenants who have no succession rights. Therefore, the position remains the same. Such allocations are at the discretion of the local authority and it can continue to allocate its houses sympathetically in those cases.
The noble Baroness was also concerned about the housing benefit measures in the Budget. There is a need to constrain housing benefit expenditure and to ensure that social security benefits do not provide incentives to people to set up an independent home unnecessarily. The purpose of the housing benefit is to assist people to meet the cost of adequate accommodation, which this policy continues to ensure.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, was concerned what would happen if the Government lost their appeal as regards the National Assistance Act. These regulations would not be affected. They restate the provisions on asylum seekers which were made in August under the housing provisions in the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. I know that the noble Lord is concerned about asylum seekers but, as he said, we do not want to go over the details again. As he will remember from the debates, the fact is that a very large proportion of people who say that they are asylum seekers are found, when taken to have their case proved, not to be genuine asylum seekers. He will
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know as well as any noble Lord that the whole purpose of what we are trying to do under asylum seeking is to grant asylum to genuine asylum seekers but not to grant the benefits of asylum seeking to those who are not genuine asylum candidates.
Under the regulations, we are trying to ensure that a fair method is introduced—that is, a method by which anyone who wants long-term housing should be able to get it by being on the housing list and that the housing list should not be either circumvented or closed up by those people who have had a short-cut route into it. Those who are statutorily homeless will still be catered for and will be catered for properly and adequately.
I hope your Lordships will agree that that is the right thing to do. I have no doubt that, in the course of making such changes, there will be occasions—as, indeed, there always are when changes come about—where the shoe pinches. If that is so, it will be up to all of us to ensure that adjustments are made and that sympathy and understanding are given to those people. I do not believe that there is anything in the regulations that will prevent that from happening. Therefore, I hope that your Lordships will agree to allow the regulations to proceed.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, will he take back to his colleagues in government a thought which I do not believe is mine alone? When the Government are making their Budget and taking financial decisions and they decide that they cannot afford a particular payment—in this case, housing benefit to allow people under the age of 60 to continue in similar accommodation—will they bear in mind that those people who are affected would prefer the Government simply to say, "That is not our priority; we have set our priorities. We do not believe that we can afford this within our priorities"? They would prefer that rather than be told that it is inappropriate for them to continue in the sort of accommodation to which they have become accustomed, which, in many cases, will have been really quite modest.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, well, that is the noble Baroness's interpretation of it. I do not believe that the Government put all these things into a graduated form of priorities. Obviously, when one is looking across the board at all the work that is done and at all the money that is paid to deserving causes, periodically one has to make cuts. Indeed, everyone knows that and it is very disagreeable when that happens. It is certainly not a question of saying that certain people are so undeserving that the Government consider that they should not be remunerated.
7.53 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, we have had a brief debate on some most important issues. I should very much like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for spelling out very effectively the workload entailed for local authorities by the timing of the regulations and for making the point that by

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getting our regulations piecemeal—in the way that the Government seem to do—it is very difficult to see what the effect on local government will be, given the fact that so much of the Housing Act 1996 is carried out by its regulations. It would be helpful if they could be brought together so that we could see their interaction. Otherwise, it is rather like having a major piece of legislation and being allowed to deal with one clause per month and not knowing what the other clauses are until you get to the next month. That is what is happening with this Act.
My noble friend Lord Dubs made a point which bears repeating: this country now has the distinction of treating asylum seekers more harshly than any other European country. I hope that that is a record of which the Government feel proud.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness; indeed, I do not like to do so. However, the noble Baroness will also recognise that this country has the reputation of being one of the most generous countries to which people should apply for asylum.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: No longer, my Lords. The Government have done their best to tarnish a reputation which in the past we all cherished.
A noble Lord A noble Lord: A soft touch.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I believe that the Minister just said, "A soft touch". I may come back to that when we deal with asylum seekers. That was a rather illuminating intervention by the Minister. It reveals that, far from being concerned about compassion, he is more concerned about exploitation and willing to have 10 people starve rather than have one person inaccurately receive benefits—
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Baroness cannot get away with that. I said that I did not want to interrupt her, but she must not make accusations in which she knows perfectly well there is no vestige of truth.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, in that case, why did the Minister interject from a seated position the words "A soft touch" when I alluded to asylum seekers? If his remarks do not bear that interpretation I shall, of course, withdraw what I said. But surely the context of what he says suggests that that was the case.
I turn now to the detailed points made by the Minister in response to my Motion. The first concerned timing. The noble Earl said that because the Act was passed on 31st July, local government has had plenty of time to deal with it. However, the detail of how this Act must be addressed on the ground by local government is carried in a code of guidance which was issued barely four weeks ago. It would have been foolish for local government to have anticipated that final code of guidance by starting preparations before local authorities had the document. Nonetheless, it means that, although Part VI has been deferred, Part VII will
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still come into effect in January, which is barely three months after the Government issued their code of guidance.
The Minister blithely said that they hoped to make all the necessary arrangements from the Government's point of view before the Christmas Recess so that local authorities will be able to bring them into play on 20th January. Knowing the workload involved, I believe that the Government are putting a quite unreasonable and unnecessary burden on local government. If there are hiccups, as I fear there may very well be, the Government will have only themselves to blame because they have delayed their part of the procedure and at the same time they have refused to delay the implementation date for local government. That is quite unreasonable.
The Minister defended the Government's position—I believe I have a note of his words—by saying that what the Housing Act 1996 did was make,
"a fundamental change in practice but not in intent".
If we are to have, as the Minister said, a fundamental change in practice, that surely makes the point argued by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and myself—namely, that local authorities need more time if they are to make such a change in practice. However, the Minister went on to say that there would be no fundamental change in policy because government policy had two main strands to it. First—and I quote his words—there was the fact that the Government want,
"a healthy, deregulated, flourishing private rented sector";
and, secondly, they want a strong social rented housing sector. In that case, why has government policy since 1989 consistently subverted both of those intentions? On the flourishing private rented sector, I should point out that government decontrolled the private rented sector and allowed rents to soar, with the then Housing Minister, Sir George Young, telling the House of Commons—and, therefore, this House—that housing benefit would bear the strain, which it did. But, when it did, the Government promptly cut housing benefit and asked tenants to take the strain. As the Minister revealingly said, it means that housing benefit will no longer,
"finance somebody in setting up an independent home unnecessarily".
Those were the Minister's words. Is the noble Earl really saying that someone who is 45, 50 or 55 is not entitled to,
"an independent home unnecessarily"?
Who will be in the next category? The Government first applied the housing benefit changes to 19 to 25 year-olds. They have now extended them to 60 year-olds. Is the next proposal to extend them to pensioners? Will we see them brought within the scope of these housing benefit changes?
If the first part of the Government's policy was to have a flourishing private sector, that has been subverted by what they have done with housing benefit which will distort hugely the private renting sector. The second element was to strengthen the Housing Corporation. His words notwithstanding, will the Minister confirm that this current year the Housing Corporation is enjoying

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£1 billion and that next year it will enjoy an investment programme of £650 million? Will the Minister accept that that represents a cut in cash terms, let alone in real terms? Further, is the Minister not trying to conceal that as the Chancellor of the Exchequer tried to conceal the health cuts by trying to put them through over a three-year programme?
The Minister referred to silting. He said that these regulations were necessary because people were spending years on the waiting list, and that was unfair. Will he consider why people were spending years on the waiting list? Could it faintly have something to do with the fact that local authorities have been prevented from building council housing, while council housing was sold off, and therefore there is a huge shortage in supply and, consequently, a lengthening queue? Does the Minister accept that whether he is talking about sugar, sports cars or homes, if one cuts the supply one will lengthen the queue, and that all he is doing is moving people around on the "Titanic"?
The Minister said that under the two-year duty everyone would be offered housing on the basis of the same criteria. I can only assume he has never been a member of a housing committee dealing with homeless families. Does he not understand that homelessness is untidy; that it is hugely distressing; that it differs from family to family; and that to insist on some criteria when families risk sleeping in cars is bureaucracy gone mad?
The Minister in referring to the points made by my noble friend Lord Dubs on asylum seekers said it was the Government's intention to stop those asylum seekers from claiming benefit because a large proportion were not found to be genuine. Does he accept that the port of entry test, as the Government have currently devised it, ensures that more people who are subsequently refused asylum status gain benefit than are refused it? Does the Minister accept that the port of entry test—at which point people obtain benefit—produces fewer "real" asylum seekers than the in-country test? Therefore the port of entry test, and the attachment of benefits to it, is deeply and utterly perverse as well as inhumane. No other European country has such a test for the good reason that it is artificial, perverse and discriminates not against those who are genuine but against those who are less than competent.
Everything that the Minister has said tonight allays my concerns—and, I suspect, those of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—not one inch. We have heard the old complacent, indifferent and well insulated response to the distress of people who will face Christmas on the streets. This Government should be ashamed of themselves. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until five past eight.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 8.3 to 8.5 p.m.]

Police Bill [H.L.]
House again in Committee on Clause 102.
[Amendments Nos. 112 to 117 not moved.]
Clause 102, as amended, agreed to.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Baroness Hilton of Eggardon moved Amendment No. 118:
After Clause 102, insert the following new clause—
GUIDELINES FOR CHIEF OFFICERS
("The Secretary of State shall publish, and from time to time may revise, in accordance with section 108 below, guidelines as to which factors might properly be taken into account, and which should be ignored, by the chief officer in responding to a request from the Secretary of State under section 102(4) and (5) of this Act.").
The noble Baroness said: This amendment concerns the enhanced check and the factors that should be taken into consideration. The amendment states that the Secretary of State should publish,
"and from time to time may revise … guidelines as to which factors might properly be taken into account".
There is a real danger that irrelevant information will be released. Inevitably each of the 43 forces in the country tends to hold slightly different information in slightly different forms. Certainly over the years that procedure has improved. Nowadays there is more uniformity of police practice than there used to be. However, it would be extremely useful if the Secretary of State published guidelines about which factors should appear on the enhanced check. He should also make it clear—this is particularly important—which factors should not appear on the record of the applicant. That is particularly relevant as regards acquittals. It is extremely important that acquittals are not disclosed, even though they may suggest that a particular pattern of behaviour exists. Where someone has been found not guilty of an offence, it is contrary to our justice system that that fact should appear on the person's record.
I refer in particular to cases of domestic violence. Injunctions for domestic violence might be relevant to a person's application. That, however, is not a finding of guilt against a man or woman who has assaulted a spouse. However, it might be thought that an injunction for domestic violence might be a relevant factor. It is extremely important that acquittals should not be considered relevant information. This amendment seeks to establish clear guidelines as to the factors that might be disclosed, and the factors which would not be disclosed. I beg to move.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: I support what has been said by the noble Baroness in moving the amendment. She referred—as does the amendment—to guidance to help chief officers. I hope she can help the Committee, and more particularly myself. I am ignorant of some of these matters and trying my best to learn. I do not know what sort of information might be relevant in the opinion of a chief officer. If the Secretary of State is to provide guidance—as this amendment requires—and assuming only that the Minister says that the Secretary of State will not be incapable of providing guidance because he does not know what that guidance

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ought to be, I would find it helpful, as possibly would the Committee, if, without in any way committing herself on what form the guidance would take, the Minister could indicate what sort of information it is likely that chief constables would be expected to provide. A fear in many of our minds is that with the best will in the world they might provide information based upon hearsay, prejudice, or suspicion of behaviour where there is no way of ensuring that acts have been committed. It will be helpful if the Minister will guide the Committee on the issues which may arise under this heading.
Lord Renton: We have to be careful not to get into a slight state of confusion. My noble friend may be very sympathetic to the issue of guidelines. However, I have a feeling that what is proposed could overlap the power given to the Secretary of State under Clause 108 to publish a code of practice and to revise it from time to time.
Guidelines do not require the consent of Parliament. I should have thought that the Secretary of State has power to issue guidelines without it being written into the statute. After all, the Secretary of State appoints chief officers of police. Strictly speaking, he is answerable only to those in the City of London and Greater London. We must be careful to confine ourselves in this and every Bill to what is necessary in making statute law.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may ask him this. Do I misunderstand the matter? Clause 108, to which he referred, relates to the use of information provided to registered bodies. We are addressing Clause 102 which relates to the provision of information and what that information should be.
Lord Renton: That is true, but the provision overlaps the power given to issue a code of practice. The two cannot be entirely separated.
Baroness Blatch: Guidelines have already been published as to the kind of information which may be disclosed from local police records when the new arrangements come into effect. These were drawn up and agreed with the Association of Chief Police Officers and are set out in Annex B to the White Paper On the Record.
First, I refer the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, to Annex B of the White Paper. To give the noble Lord a flavour of what is contained in Annex B, paragraph 2 states that,
"The information may include details about known associates where the association gives rise to concern. It may also include details relating to decisions not to prosecute an individual or acquittals where the circumstances of individual cases give cause for concern, and where the information has not been discredited".
It continues:
"It should not, however, include details of allegations which cannot be substantiated".
I leave the noble Lord to read Annex B for himself.
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It would not be possible to provide more detailed guidance than this as the content of the local information available will vary according to local practice and the individual case involved. The published guidance already makes clear that it must be possible to substantiate any information disclosed. That is an important safeguard. It will be the responsibility of the employer or licensing body to determine whether the information disclosed which might be relevant is in fact relevant.
I therefore do not see a need to legislate in this area. We believe that the amendment is unnecessary because of the safeguard already agreed with ACPO and published in Annex B of the White Paper.
8.15 p.m.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: A White Paper is a paper for discussion. It is not part of regulations and does not form formal guidelines. The safeguard may have been agreed with ACPO but the nature of a White Paper means that it is a matter for discussion.
Baroness Blatch: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for allowing me to intervene. Perhaps I may repeat what I said. Guidelines have already been published as to the kind of information which may be disclosed from local records when the new arrangements come into effect. They have been agreed with ACPO and are set out in Annex B to the White Paper. Therefore it is our intention that that should be the case.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I am grateful to the Minister for that information. I was rather disturbed by what she said about acquittals being matters which could be disclosed. In a court of law, as regards acquittals, theoretically at least, the case has been shown to be disproved. The evidence has not been found acceptable to a jury. Therefore I cannot understand how acquittals can form part of someone's criminal record. That the acquittal was wrong is an opinion that all police officers feel subjectively when a case has been dismissed. But that does not mean that the acquittal has any force as part of someone's record. I am puzzled by what has been said about acquittals. I shall be grateful if the Minister can clarify the point.
Baroness Blatch: I am not a lawyer, but it is now possible under the law to commit someone for a retrial. The information about an acquittal may be relevant; it may not. It will be for the chief officer to judge and decide whether information on an acquittal should be included.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I urge the Minister to reconsider the point. Acquittals are surely matters for the judicial system of the country and cannot be used as part of someone's criminal record. I do not believe that it is a matter for the opinion of the chief officer, however compelling the Police Service may consider the evidence. If a court has found that someone is not guilty, to all intents and purposes that person has been found innocent of that charge. I do not understand that that can be a matter of opinion for the police.

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I shall read with considerable interest the Minister's reply and may return to the matter at Report stage if I continue to be unable to understand the issue. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 103 agreed to.
Clause 104 [Disputes about accuracy of certificates]:
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Baroness Hilton of Eggardon moved Amendment No. 119:
Page 42, line 28, at end insert—
("( ) A new certificate shall be issued to the individual applicant and where necessary to the registered body.").
The noble Baroness said: Amendments Nos. 119 to 123 were intended to be helpful in tightening up the provision. I am the first to accept that the wording of this series of amendments is not necessarily as it should be. However, it provides explicit safeguards about the issue of certificates, and the manner in which they are issued. In moving Amendment No. 119, I speak also to Amendments Nos. 120 to 123.
The intention is that new certificates should be issued to the individual applicant and, where necessary, the registered body so that the individual applicant will be aware of what is contained in the certificates.
Amendment No. 120 ensures that the new certificate will be issued as soon as is reasonably practicable, so that in relation to volunteers, who are often hired for short periods at particular times of the year, it is important that there should be no great delay in issuing certificates.
Amendment No. 121 relates to payment where a new certificate is issued. We suggest that there should not be payment again for a new certificate.
Amendment No. 122 is extremely important; we come back to the matter later. If information on a certificate is inaccurate and could be a libel on an applicant, an applicant may have failed to obtain a job because the certificate contains inaccurate information, it is important that compensation should be payable.
Amendment No. 123 relates to the possibility of disputed, inaccurate information. We suggest that a criminal records tribunal should be able to adjudicate on such an appeal. People have lost jobs through inaccuracies in relation to data records on credit. People have been unable to obtain mortgages or credit on goods because their names have appeared inaccurately on credit registers. The same may well apply in relation to criminal record certificates. Therefore this amendment is intended as a safeguard and to provide the applicant with a reasonably effective remedy if the information about him or her is wrong. I beg to move.
Baroness Blatch: The first three of these amendments are unnecessary since it is implicit in the clause that, if a new certificate has to be issued, it will be issued to the individual applicant and where necessary to the registered body; it will be issued as soon as is reasonably practicable and no payment will be due.
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The fourth amendment proposes that the Secretary of State shall compensate an applicant if it is shown, on the balance of probabilities, that he has been prejudiced by inaccurate information on his certificate. That should also be unnecessary. Individuals will be able to contest the information provided on a certificate and have it corrected if it is wrong. In the case of criminal conviction certificates if the individual believes the information is correct the matter can be resolved before anyone else sees the certificate. For criminal record certificates and enhanced certificates disclosure will be simultaneous and, unlike the current situation, the individual will know what is said and will be able to challenge it. The question of prejudice should therefore not arise. The only situation where that would not happen would be when the police disclosed information from local records which could hinder a continuing or subsequent investigation and where the decision would have been taken at a senior level and with due regard for any consequences. I hope that noble Lords opposite would not wish in this way to compromise the success of those investigations.
The question of prejudice will always be difficult to assess, particularly where information about ongoing investigations is involved. We must remember that these proposals greatly improve the transparency of the arrangements for criminal record checks in that in future, save in the most exceptional circumstances, individuals will know what information is supplied and can have it corrected. Any dispute about the accuracy of a certificate will be considered quickly and there is an obligation on the Secretary of State to correct any inaccuracies.
We will be issuing guidance to employers about good practice in relation to the relevance of previous convictions during recruitment. We will include in that guidance advice on the importance of employers providing a reasonable time for individuals either to obtain a criminal conviction certificate or, in the event of inaccuracy, to challenge a criminal record or enhanced certificate. We expect the situation to be very rare in which a certificate is challenged and the matter is not resolved within a few days. A cumbersome and no doubt expensive statutory compensation scheme seems unlikely to assist in the speedy resolution of disputes, which must surely be our primary objective.
Although I understand the motive that lies behind the final amendment in this group, I am afraid that I cannot accept it. In the first place, no new certificate will be issued if the Secretary of State is not of the opinion that the information on the original certificate is inaccurate. Secondly, there is no such body as the criminal records tribunal and we do not propose to set up such a body. If a dispute as to the accuracy of a certificate cannot be readily resolved—for example, by checking that the information provided was correct and that it had been accurately entered into the system—Clause 105 provides for an individual to be offered the opportunity of a fingerprint check to provide definitive proof of identity. The applicant will have to pay for a fingerprint check but that will be refunded if the original certificate proves to have been incorrect. No information will be included on certificates which cannot be properly substantiated

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by the police. Information on criminal conviction certificates and criminal record certificates will be a matter of record; therefore checking them should be a relatively simple matter.
Similarly, on enhanced certificates the vast majority of information will be about convictions, cautions or bind-overs. Again, these are a matter of record. It will be in only a very few situations that other information will be provided, such as where a prosecution was not brought, perhaps because a child was too young to testify. The guidance that is being prepared should ensure that that is fully substantiated. That, again, is a very important safeguard. The information will be released only after consideration by a senior police officer who will be well aware of the need to be able to justify that his or her decision was in the public interest and necessary to prevent crime.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I thank the Minister for that detailed response. However, I do not feel that I have received an adequate response in relation to Amendment No. 122 which relates to the question of compensating an applicant if he or she is found to have been prejudiced by inaccuracy of information in the first place. If one imagines people before a job interview and one of the applicants at the interview has an inaccurate certificate which he may well challenge at the time, nevertheless the applicant may not get the job because of the doubt about the particular certificate. In those circumstances the possibility of compensation should still be available. However, I shall be arguing that point more thoroughly in relation to Amendment No. 24. Therefore I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 120 to 123 not moved.]
Clause 104 agreed to. Clause 105 agreed to.
Clause 106 [Sources of information]:
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Baroness Hilton of Eggardon moved Amendment No. 124:
Page 43, line 10, leave out subsection (5).
The noble Baroness said: This is intended as a probing amendment. It seeks to discuss the issue of removing from the Home Secretary any responsibility for the inaccuracy of criminal record certificate information. The intention of the amendment is to remove the subsection which states that the Secretary of State cannot be held responsible for any mistakes which would raise the issue as to who is to be held accountable. I referred to the matter in relation to Amendment No. 122.
Errors in certificates can come from more than one source. In relation to minor criminal offences, neither police nor courts verify the identity of convicted and cautioned individuals. Therefore, if individuals pay a fine promptly, it is very easy to get away with a false identity.
Information that is being assembled for the national criminal records database has often been through several stages. Some of the data will be extremely old and may
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have been stored under previous computer systems. There is also the possibility of errors in the transcription of court files and in converting microfiche information, on which at present a lot of criminal record information is held, to readable data on computers. There are concerns about the efficiency of the new computerised system. A report in The Times on 16th September this year, for instance, stated that the project,
"has been crippled because millions of records cannot be put on to the computer".
Apparently, currently only a tenth of the records are on the database, and some records are unintelligible when they emerge.
It seems that this subsection of the Bill removes from an individual any ability to achieve compensation as a result of inaccuracies and inefficiencies in the systems. Therefore this amendment seeks to retain the possibility of an individual seeking compensation. As the Bill stands, if no action can be taken against the Home Secretary, it is not apparent that anyone else can be blamed for the current systems, unless the Minister will tell the Committee that the police force or the court supplying the information could be liable. We therefore feel that this particular subsection should not remain, because it removes from an applicant the possibility of seeking compensation.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I support the amendment for broader reasons than those expressed by the noble Baroness. While it is important that applicants should be properly compensated if false information is given about them, I believe the intent of subsection (5) is to prevent proceedings being taken by people who rely on the certificates provided but who may not be the applicant themselves. So an employer who relies upon a certificate will presumably be unable to recover damages for any negligence on the part of the Secretary of State or those for whom he is responsible. That makes a great deal of difference to the way in which the employer may be able to rely on the information provided to him.
It seems to me that we are considering not only the interests of the applicant but those of the people who may in various ways rely upon the certificates. For a whole body of people to be denied access to compensation or damages removes one of the great safeguards of the Bill.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Renton: I am glad that the noble Baroness raised this matter because we need to consider subsection (5) carefully. We must bear in mind that if there is a real cause of injustice, we should acknowledge it and find a way of preventing that injustice.
In Clause 106, we must bear in mind that the information being given to the Home Secretary is information which has not been compiled by him or his department. It has been compiled by the police or other people who may have given the information. Unless the Home Secretary forms a new branch of his department to do the work, he would have no opportunity to check

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its accuracy. He must just assume that the chief officers of police and others who provided the information have got it right.
To me it is unthinkable that in those circumstances the Secretary of State could have proceedings taken against him if some of the information turns out to be inaccurate. I should have thought that the person to be sued would be whoever had given the information to the Secretary of State. That is a different matter. I should be interested to hear what my noble friend has to say about the point.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I wish to follow the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Renton. May we have an assurance from the Minister that subsection (5) will not prevent proceedings being taken against chief constables or other providers of information? Perhaps we may have the assurance that they will not be able to shelter behind the certificate of the Secretary of State. It will be the Secretary of State who publishes the certificate on which the employer or some other person may rely. In ordinary circumstances, they would bear prime responsibility, subject to the recovery of damages against the person who provided them with the information, perhaps in legal proceedings, by way of a third party notice or whatever it is.
What is the intent of subsection (5)? Is it to prevent any proceedings arising in relation to a certificate or simply to prevent proceedings against the Home Secretary?
Lord Hylton: Is it not inevitable that mistakes will be made concerning the provision of information by a Cabinet Minister originating from other state-appointed officials? It seems to be quite intolerable that those who are financially and otherwise prejudiced and affected by the information should have no recourse.
Baroness Blatch: I am bemused by some of the remarks by Members of the Committee in speaking to the amendment. The responsibility for determining the accuracy or otherwise of the information is that of the recipient of the certificate in almost every case, with one exception. Perhaps I may explain that. Where the information in an enhanced certificate is sensitive and subject to current investigation, the individual will not see the certificate. Normally individuals will see the certificate and if it contains convictions that they never had, cautions that they were never given or information with which they do not concur, it will be for the individuals under Clause 104 to exercise their right of challenge to ensure that the information is corrected. In most cases it will be a relatively straightforward affair because convictions and cautions are a matter of record. The error should be corrected quickly and before any employer has seen it.
To complete the point, I have already mentioned that we shall encourage employers to give an opportunity for challenged information to be secured and for corrections to be made so that someone may produce a certificate to the individual's satisfaction.
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I think that the amendment might be based on a misunderstanding of this part of the Bill. The criminal record information included on certificates will, as my noble friend Lord Renton said, be completely derived from police records. There will be no way in which the information can be verified by the officials acting on behalf of the Secretary of State. I hope the Committee will agree that it would therefore not be reasonable for him to be held liable if criminal record information received in good faith—as it would be—from the police and included in a criminal record certificate was subsequently found to be incorrect.
The Committee will recall that we have made provision in Clause 104 for a procedure which will enable individuals to challenge the accuracy of certificates.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I am sorry to interrupt the Minister but, with the greatest respect, she is not dealing with my point. Clearly an applicant can look at the certificate and decide whether it is correct. But suppose the applicant realises that the information given is inaccurate; suppose he has a clean certificate which is provided to a prospective employer who acts upon that information. As a result, damage is caused to that employer through serious theft or, in care cases, abuse. Is the employer to have no recompense? Is the abused child to have no recompense? Where does the buck stop, if it does not stop with the Secretary of State who provides the certificate?
Baroness Blatch: I am probably misunderstanding the noble Lord. In all cases, the individual will see the certificate. If I receive a criminal record certificate or have sight of one—and I have a right under the law to have sight of both the enhanced certificate (except for the rare occasions when that would not be possible) and the criminal record certificate, I as an individual see it and—
Lord Thomas of Gresford: With great respect, suppose I am a child abuser with convictions for child abuse and, by mistake, I receive a clean certificate which I can show to the person who is running a children's home. Is the person who runs that home or are the people who are abused within the home to have no recompense as a result of the false certificate which I as the abuser have, of course, accepted, because that is how I get the job?
Baroness Blatch: In that case, if the individual has not only proffered informal information that he has no record but he has a certificate which shows that he has no record, the person who is at fault and against whom the employer has recourse is that individual.
Lord Thomas of Gresford Lord Thomas of Gresford: But I have—
Baroness Blatch: Perhaps the noble Lord will give way. This is the House of Lords and we have rules about engagement in debate. First, the situation would involve

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the individual knowingly submitting a certificate and information to the employer which are plainly wrong. The person who is then in breach is the individual.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: Again, for example, I have no money. I am a child abuser. I am the person with a record and I need a job. I am presented with a clean certificate. I do not dispute it. I say, "Thank you very much", take it to the employer and get the job. The people who then suffer are the children, in the instance I have suggested, and the owners of the home, whether it be a local authority home or whatever. Are they to have no recompense?
Baroness Blatch: I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, how could he possibly hold the Secretary of State responsible, as indeed do the proponents of this amendment, for what is dishonesty and a breach of the law by the individual who has proffered incorrect information and colluded with what might have been an innocent mistake, and perpetuated the dishonesty with the employer in pursuit of a job?
Lord Thomas of Gresford: The principle of an employer being responsible for the people beneath him who do things that are wrong is a basic principle of law. People such as the Secretary of State are responsible for the people who work in their departments. I would like to know if he is to be responsible for the people who provide him with false information as well and, if not, are they to be responsible?
Baroness Blatch: I find it difficult because the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, has not answered the question as to how he can possibly hold the Secretary of State responsible for what might be an innocent mistake, where the complicity has been engaged in by the individual applying for the job. He has not only proffered incorrect information, but has perpetuated the deception by taking a certificate which he wittingly knows is wrong. Therefore, in law the employer could at least be deemed to have done everything reasonably possible. He sought a certificate, he saw a certificate, and therefore culpability would not lie with the employer. The wrongdoing was not on the part of the Secretary of State or the employer but on the part of the potential employee who has misled and been dishonest about his application for the job.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: It is vital to answer the question, so perhaps I may be forgiven if I do. The principle is responsiat superior. Of course in many instances a number of defendants may be sued, but what is the point of suing me, the child abuser, when I do not have any money? The only way in which the person will get recompensed is through the Secretary of State, one way or the other.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: Perhaps I may join in this dialogue. Presumably the criminal records agency has some liability for issuing a misleading certificate in these circumstances. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, for widening the debate on this particular
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amendment. We are only suggesting the Secretary of State has liability because he is presumably responsible for the new agency that is being set up, for the way in which it works and whether it issues accurate or inaccurate certificates. I shall come back to my amendment in due course, but I thought that might be helpful to the noble Lord in the discussion.
Baroness Blatch: I still stand by my original explanation about this. Data about convictions is put directly on to the computer and on to the computer database by the police. It is as accurate as possible and when any error is shown to have happened it is corrected. If an individual receives an incorrect certificate and wilfully—because we are talking about that situation—decides that he is going to accept that certificate, and accept the incorrect information, and not challenge the incorrectness of that information, how can one possibly hold the employer culpable if something goes wrong? The employer has done everything he reasonably could. How could the Secretary of State be held culpable? He cannot possibly be held responsible for the correctness or otherwise of the information which goes into the database. Under the law as it will be the individual will have been given an opportunity—in fact a very good opportunity—to question the data. In most cases, except where there is wilful, dogged determination to be dishonest with an employer—and that is on the part of the individual—most corrections will be made quickly because it will be a matter of record whether somebody had a conviction, whether or not it was spent, whether there had been a caution, or whatever. I simply cannot follow the logic of the argument put forward by the noble Lord at all.
I did say earlier in response to a point made about both the enhanced and the criminal record certificate that it was possible to have it corrected before the employer saw it. Of course, the enhanced record will have been seen by the employer, and therefore any corrections which are challenged by the individual recipient will be sent to the employer as well as to the individual applicant.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: The Minister has asked me a question and I hope it was not rhetorical because the answer to her question—which was, how can the Secretary of State be held responsible for incorrect information which he published?—is, very easily, except for this subsection.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I am grateful to the Minister for picking up the point that, of course, a registered body does get a copy of the inaccurate certificate at the same time as the job applicant, and therefore that is the time at which the job applicant is prejudiced by what the registered body thinks it knows about him or her, however inaccurate that might be. Any of us in the position of an employer who received a certificate about somebody would inevitably have a doubt raised in our minds, even though the job applicant might reject it.

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If nobody is responsible for the accuracy of the criminal records agency, the criminal records agency of course is not—the Minister is again talking.
Baroness Blatch: Perhaps I may say to the noble Baroness, the noble Baroness throughout the day—and I have no quarrel with it because it is important—has conferred with her noble colleague on the Bench because they are working jointly on this Bill. I am working jointly with the Lord Advocate on this Bill, and from time to time, unless I leave the Chamber and adjourn the proceedings, I must be allowed to discuss with my noble friend aspects of this Bill. I do it out of no discourtesy to the noble Baroness, or indeed to any other member of the Committee, but if I am sworn to silence when anybody other than myself is speaking in Committee, I should find it nearly impossible to continue with this Bill.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: Thank you. The point is that sometimes I am trying to put an argument to the Minister and, if the Minister does not appear to be listening to the argument that I am putting, that is naturally extremely disconcerting, and clearly, if she is talking, I feel she is not listening to me. However, I do understand the difficulty of conducting a Bill and one does need to consult with people.
The point I was making was that the registered body receives a copy of the certificate at the same time as the job applicant. If the registered body has a suspicion raised in its mind by the fact that the certificate suggests there is a conviction, inevitably it is going to choose another applicant rather than the one who has the false certificate.
Also this particular Bill, as drafted, merely seeks to absolve the Secretary of State completely from any proceedings in relation to inaccuracy of information. If the Secretary of State is not responsible, who will be responsible for inaccurate information maintained by the criminal records agency when it has been set up? My experience of all large scale computers—and I have considerable experience of police computers, extending back over some 15 years—is that almost every large scale computer does not work on occasion. There have been a series of well known disasters in relation to this. One merely has to cite the central command complex, what happened to the London Ambulance Service and the experiences that the Criminal Records Office has had. Initially, it takes a long time for any large computer system to bed down and get over its initial inaccuracies. If somebody has failed to get a job or if some organisation is liable because it has employed somebody who does not appear to have criminal convictions, then the fault must lie somewhere and cannot just lie with the applicant himself, who may have no money and therefore cannot be sued when some damage may have been caused by him.
This particular amendment merely seeks to stop the Secretary of State being inviolate against what may be gross damage done to some individual by an inaccurate certificate. However, I will, of course, read the discussion we have been having, and in the circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 106 agreed to.
Clause 107 [Registered bodies]:
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 125:
Page 43, line 18, after ("fee,") insert
("(bb) supplies to him the prescribed details of its policy in respect of the recruitment and employment of persons who have been convicted of offences and of its arrangements for the training of its employees in relation to the implementation of that policy and compliance with any code of practice published under section 108 below;").
The noble Lord said: I cannot resist saying before moving Amendment No. 125 that I have some sympathy with the Minister in her need to consult. She will remember perhaps the Hunting of the Snark, where the Bellman, who is the captain of the expedition, adds to the normal order, "No one shall speak to the man at the helm", an additional order: "and the man at the helm shall speak to no one", which meant that there was no communication of any kind. As Lewis Carroll said, during those bewildering intervals the ship usually sailed backwards. We sometimes feel that things are moving in that direction.
In moving this amendment, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 126 and 132A. All those amendments are concerned with the issue of the draft code of practice which was set out very helpfully in the White Paper, On the Record, in June this year. In case anyone should think that in Amendment No. 125 we are putting a new imposition on registered bodies to provide a policy in respect of the recruitment and employment of persons who have been convicted of offences, paragraph 6 of the draft code of practice set out in the White Paper states that organisations eligible for full or enhanced disclosure—that is to say, in terms of the Bill, criminal record certificates and enhanced criminal record certificates
"must have a written policy on the employment of ex-offenders, and a written strategy for implementation of the policy".
So this amendment does not impose anything new on the registered bodies themselves.
We do say that the registered bodies should supply those written policies to the Secretary of State. That would make it possible for the Secretary of State—for the Criminal Records Agency, which is the creature of the Secretary of State—to identify registered bodies which have a satisfactory written policy, recognise the need to employ ex-offenders and also recognise the need, as the amendment says, to train employees about the implementation of the policy and compliance with codes of practice. So it is not at all an additional imposition but it is a protection for the codes of practice and the written policies which the Government themselves will demand in their code of practice. It is important that these organisations should be willing to consider ex-offenders for positions of employment on their own merits and not take extraneous matters into consideration.
Having established, we hope, the necessity for such policies and the necessity, which is acknowledged by

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the Government, for the code of practice, Amendment No. 126 adds that the organisation:
"will abide by the code of practice referred to in section 108(1) below".
We want the Secretary of State to have the power to exercise his discretion and register only those bodies which will conform to the code. Otherwise, the Secretary of State would be forced to register a body which, perhaps in a previous incarnation under a different name or as a commercial organisation, had been guilty of breaches—even serious breaches—of the code of practice.
Finally in this group is Amendment No. 132A, which has been renumbered not because the wording has changed but only because we believe that the placing of it has been improved. Its intention is to introduce safeguards against minor and irrelevant spent offences being held against an applicant. From time to time the Minister says that there is no repeal of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. But, for that to be true on the ground rather than just in theory, it is necessary that there should be guidance in the code of practice to ensure that the contents of a certificate issued under any of the clauses in Part V of the Bill should be relevant, and only considered if they are relevant, to the applicant's suitability for a particular position.
The further consideration which we believe is justifiable is that employers should not go on fishing expeditions; in other words, they should not advertise a job and anybody who applies for the job be subjected to the procedures of Clauses 101 and 102. We suggest that it is much more appropriate for the procedures to be triggered only when somebody is being considered after the initial recruitment process has taken place for the job, not before the short list or indeed the final choice has been made.
In their response to the consultation paper on the White Paper, the Government recognise that as an issue by saying:
"further consultation and consideration will be given to the circumstances in which checks at the short listing stage should be accepted by the CRA".
We had much discussion earlier today about the burden on the criminal records authority. The Minister used as an argument for not accepting that there should be immediate provision for protection of vulnerable adults that there will be a heavy burden on the authority. Amendment No. 132A would reduce the burden of the authority by making sure that checks are called for only when the short listing process has been completed and when there is a definite intention to offer a post to an applicant.
There are, of course, alternative ways of making checks, notably the List 99 which is used for teachers by the Department for Education and Employment. That may be a help in certain circumstances but as a general rule we consider that the checks should be triggered only at the last stage of the recruitment process rather than in the form of a fishing expedition.
All three amendments help to define—I believe, helpfully—the circumstances in which Clauses 101 and 102 should be applied. I commend them to the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I support Amendment No. 132A in particular. The matter that particularly concerns me in relation to the certificates of criminal records is the use that employers may make of them. Day in and day out in all the courts of this country judges are faced with the criminal records of people who have been convicted. By their training and experience they are accustomed to giving the correct weight to a particular conviction, whether it should be ignored, whether it is a matter of marginal relevance or whether it makes a difference to the way in which a particular individual should be treated.
These certificates will come new to employers, who will be looking at certificates and seeing convictions—perhaps serious convictions—which have not been spent and which may date back many years. They will not have the experience to be able to weigh one type of conviction against another. For example, we talked earlier about cautions and the significance of cautions. An employer faced with a certificate which refers to cautions will not know how seriously that should be taken.
Accordingly, a published code of practice which includes guidance on the effect that the contents of a certificate should have on an applicant's suitability would give that rule by which the employer can measure the significance of the certificate that he receives. For a large employer with a personnel department, no doubt these certificates will become commonplace; but the certificate may weigh a great deal more with the small employer who is recruiting individually than it would with the larger organisation. A code of practice which would give guidance to that person would be welcome and, I think, sensible.
9 p.m.
Lord Renton: I appreciate the noble Lord's intention in moving the amendment, but I find a real difficulty with it. The amendment requires the body which wishes to be registered to supply to the Home Secretary,
"prescribed details of its policy in respect of the recruitment and employment of persons".
It may not have a policy. It is not obliged to have one. It may decide to play it by ear, week to week, according to circumstances. If it decides to have a policy, the policy may have to change from time to time, according to circumstances or according to the experience the body may have gained. It may have tried to be open minded, kind and helpful by taking on some people with convictions but found that in relation to its particular kind of work it just did not work.
Furthermore, sometimes registered bodies change their practices. They may find that in changing their practices the type of work that could not have been harmed by a convicted person in the past might be harmed by one in the future, according to the change of the operation of the registered body or the body that

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wants to become registered. I hope that my noble friend the Minister and the Government will not accept Amendment No. 125. It could cause immense confusion. I say that with deep respect because I appreciate the noble Lord's motive in moving it.
Amendment No. 106 is simply a paving amendment for Amendment No. 132A. Amendment No. 132A states:
"Any code of practice published under this Part shall include guidance to registered bodies on the effect that the contents of a certificate issued under this Part should have on the applicant's suitability for a relevant position".
I have to come back to the idea of policy. In order to decide what that effect should be, one would have to consider what the policy was to be as to an applicant's suitability for a particular type of relevant position. That subsection creates something of a difficulty. However, I do not want to exaggerate it. I put it forward as something that ought to be considered.
The second subsection of Amendment No. 132A states:
"Any such guidance shall state that when asking an exempted question the registered body shall not have access to the relevant information until the initial recruitment procedure has taken place".
The noble Lord has a point there. I do not know how the Government will react to it, but it is worth considering.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: As I said on the first day of Committee, I usually think that if I fail to make myself clear it must be my fault. However, when the noble Lord, Lord Renton, questions whether an organisation should have or could have a written policy and suggests that I am creating such a requirement, I have to say to him that in my opening speech, which was already too long, I quoted directly from the Government's White Paper, On the Record. In the draft code of practice, in paragraph 6, it states that the organisation,
"must have a written policy on the employment of ex-offenders and a written strategy for implementation of the policy".
The requirement for a policy does not come from me; it comes from the Government.
Lord Renton Lord Renton: I can but apologise.
Baroness Blatch: Perhaps I may throw some more light on that. We have recognised that there is a need for guidance in this area. As those Members of the Committee who have read the code of practice in the White Paper, as no doubt the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, has done, will know, it contained a number of provisions relating to the employment of ex-offenders. While it remains our intention to issue this guidance to registered bodies, for some of the reasons given by my noble friend Lord Renton, it will not be possible to include it within the provisions of the code of practice.
The inclusion in the code of provisions requiring employers to have a policy on employment of ex-offenders would be tantamount to legislating for a right for ex-offenders not to be discriminated against in applying for employment because the amendment implies that the Secretary of State might refuse to register a body if he was not satisfied with its policy. It
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is not therefore possible to accept Amendment No. 125; nor is it possible to accept subsection (1) of Amendment No. 132A.
However, we intend to issue good practice advice relating to the employment of ex-offenders in conjunction with, but not as part of, the code itself. The guidance will include the importance of considering ex-offenders on their merits, the application of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, and the need to consider the relevance of an applicant's convictions to the post applied for. But it will not require employers to disregard convictions since it is for them to judge the relevance of a particular conviction to the post in question.
Clause 108 provides that any body which has failed to comply with the code may have its registration suspended. That is a powerful measure in the Bill. In drafting the Bill, we considered whether it would be necessary to place a requirement to abide by the code on the face of the Bill. We have decided that it is not necessary as it was implicit in the wording of Clause 108 which provides a sanction of suspension from the register if a body fails to comply with the code. It is an explicit form of words. It states:
"The Secretary of State may publish, and from time to time revise, a code of practice in connection with the use of information provided to registered bodies under this Part".
Subsection (3) states:
"Where the Secretary of State considers that a registered body has failed to comply with a code of practice published under this section, he may by notice in writing to that body suspend its registration for such period as he may determine".
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, referred to an extra burden on the agency. Perhaps I may suggest to him that the extra burden will fall on the police and not on the agency, because it is the police who have to consider the element of local information and it will be the police who carry out the checks and not the agency.
Turning to the second part of Amendment No. 132A, the draft code of practice already states that criminal record checks will only be sought when a conditional offer of appointment has been made, unless overriding time pressures justify seeking such a check at the shortlisting stage. This amendment, on the face of it, is unclear in that it does not define what is meant by "initial recruitment", although when the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, spoke to it I noted that he referred to a much later stage in the recruitment process. But that is not implicit in the amendment. Therefore, the amendment as written could apply to the first sifting of applicants and might permit checks to be undertaken on considerably more job applicants than envisaged in the draft code. Therefore, without a definition, it is difficult to imagine what the noble Lord says pertains if this amendment were accepted.
Lord Renton: Before the noble Lord replies, may I briefly thank my noble friend for vindicating what I said. The truth is that I am not always over-zealous about reading White Papers because I know that they are merely for consideration and that the legislation which follows does not always follow the White Paper. As she

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has been so good as to say what she did, I hope that it will not be considered undignified if I withdraw my apologies.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: I may have failed to understand what the Minister said, in which case I apologise. As I understand it, her argument is that Annex C to the White Paper, as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, said, provides for organisations having a written policy. As I understand her argument, that is sufficient, given that the Secretary of State, where he considers that a registered body has failed to comply with the code of practice, may suspend its registration. What is not clear to me—but this may be my shortcoming—is how the Secretary of State will discover whether a code of practice has not been complied with. If the Secretary of State has no code of practice from a registered body—which I understand will be the position—how does he know that it is not being complied with? If indeed a registered body has such a code of practice, by what measure will that information be known?
Baroness Blatch: It is not the registered body's code of practice; it is our code of practice.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: I understand that. However, the amendment provides for writing on the face of the Bill a policy. I was referring to a policy and I apologise. I was saying that if the registered body is not required, as Amendment No. 125 requires, to provide the Secretary of State with a policy, whatever form it may take, how will he know that the registered body has failed to comply with the code when the code in paragraph (bb) requires a written policy?
Baroness Blatch: I referred to that. We believe that, on reflection, having put the matter out to consultation, including in the code provision for employers to have a policy on employment would be tantamount to legislating for a right—that may be what Members of the Committee opposite have in mind—for sex offenders not to be discriminated against in applying for employment, because the amendment implies that the Secretary of State might refuse to register a body if he was not satisfied with its policy. But there will be a code of practice. If it is found that a company or registered body does not comply with it, there is a mighty powerful measure in the Bill, and that is suspension from the register.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, should have withdrawn his apology because I was still quoting directly from the Government's White Paper. The fact that the Minister has gone backwards from the White Paper is not an issue between myself and the noble Lord. In the hierarchy of legislation, as the noble Lord well knows, one starts with clauses on the statute, one moves to schedules and then down to regulations, followed by codes of practice. Now we have discovered a lower level of hell in that we have guidance issued supplementary
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to a code of practice for material which is not considered worthy of going into the code of practice. That is what has happened to this most important protection for the implementation of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.
I am sorry that the Minister has not only not gone as far as the amendments propose, but not even as far as her own White Paper provided. I do not consider that a code of practice is inadequate unless the Secretary of State is required to issue it. He is required to obtain compliance with it and to have sanctions if it is not complied with. I do not believe that Clause 108(3) is adequate when it refers only to the suspension of registration, when the damage may well have been done. It could have been put right in the first place, and that is what our amendments would do. But I do not wish to press them at this stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 126 not moved.]
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 126A:
Page 43, line 24, at end insert—
("( ) Notwithstanding subsection (2) above, every local authority shall be listed on the register maintained by the Secretary of State for the purposes of this Part.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment is straightforward. Indeed, it is referred to in the Government's response to the consultation paper after the White Paper. The amendment provides that instead of every local authority having to apply separately for registration—after all, there are over 500 local authorities in England alone—there should be automatic registration of every local authority on the register maintained by the Secretary of State for the purposes of this part of the Bill.
In their response the Government appeared to think that that would make it difficult to comply with administrative arrangements, such as updating nominated officers' signatures and monitoring compliance with the code of practice. The Committee should note the phrase, "monitoring compliance with the code of practice", which is what we were talking about a moment ago. Surely if it is accepted that we can cut out a whole layer of bureaucracy by having direct and automatic registration for local authorities, there should not be much difficulty in providing that, for example, the list of nominated signatories should be kept up to date.
The Deputy Prime Minister declares a bonfire of controls—as the Conservative Party does from time to time when it runs short of other arguments—yet the Home Office is creating a completely new bureaucratic process which is totally unnecessary. Local authorities are statutory bodies. Parliament has full control over them in determining changes to their statutory responsibilities. Parliament can take the responsibility for this into its own hands without any loss of any kind and thus remove much bureaucracy. I beg to move.
9.15 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: I have considerable reservations about this amendment. While its purpose is to ensure automatic registration for local authorities, its effect will be to include organisations in the register of bodies eligible to ask exempted questions under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act regardless of whether they will be asking exempted questions or have paid the registration fee. Although the majority of local authorities will be eligible to ask exempted questions, a few will not and they should not therefore have access to the higher level checks.
Registration will be the principal means by which control will be exercised over the disclosure and use made of criminal record information. This amendment, in providing automatic registration for local authorities, would considerably limit the ability properly to exercise this control. For example, any organisation wishing to register will be required to deposit a document signifying acceptance of the code of practice. Registered bodies will also need to supply details of nominated signatories which will be checked against countersignatures on applications for checks received via the registered body. The registration process will be the main method of ensuring that these requirements are met at the very outset by each and every body qualifying for registration. That is absolutely crucial if we are to exercise control over the risk of the wrong people working in such vulnerable situations.
The risk attached to automatic registration is that a local authority might easily forget to, for example, supply its nominated signatures and subsequently find, when applications for checks are submitted, that they cannot be processed. Officials acting on behalf of the Secretary of State could find themselves wasting a considerable amount of time chasing up local authorities which have failed to comply with the requirements of registration—a situation which would be avoided if all eligible bodies were required to go through the registration process. The cost of registration will be kept as low as is reasonable to cover administrative costs. We expect it to be between £15 and £20. Abolishing individual registration would not result in less work for local authorities or in maintaining an up-to-date record of nominated signatures.
Finally, I can see no good reason why special provision should be made for local authorities, and not any other organisation, to be automatically registered. Therefore, I hope that the amendment will not be pressed.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: With due respect to the Minister, that is bumbledom. That was the kind of answer that a Job's-worth would produce in order not to upset what appear to be convenient administrative procedures.
It is perfectly possible for a code of practice to ensure that a local authority has a duty to comply with whatever administrative arrangements the Secretary of State chooses to impose. It is perfectly possible—indeed, it is common sense—to say that each authority should have a named individual responsible for compliance and that the agency can work through that named individual.
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There can be a requirement that if the named individual changes, the agency shall be updated. This is not an issue that is important enough to press. However, all the amendment seeks to do is to cut out a level of bureaucracy. I do not know why the Government find it in their heart to oppose it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 126B:
Page 43, line 24, at end insert—
("(3A) No person may provide services on a commercial basis involving—

(a) the manned guarding of premises;

(b) the manned guarding of cash or other valuables in transit;

(c) the supply and installation of security equipment and of alarm and access systems, and the operation of such systems, or

(d) other related activities prescribed by the Secretary of State, who is not a registered body under this section.

(3B) A person to whom subsection (3A) applies shall, before employing any individual, require, and shall consider the contents of, a criminal record certificate relating to that individual and shall not appoint that individual unless it is satisfied that the contents of the certificate are consistent with that individual performing his duties in the relevant post in a fit and proper manner.").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 126B, to which I referred at Second Reading. I believe that it is of considerable importance and deserves attention. I said at Second Reading that power was required to ensure that private security firms were registered so that their customers, whether in the private or public sector, should have protection. At that time I had not worked out how to draft an amendment of that kind. I am by no means confident that the present drafting is perfect or fully inclusive. However, the local authority associations, to whom I am grateful, have tried to define private security services as those involving the manned guarding of premises, cash or other valuables in transit, the supply and installation of security equipment and of alarm and access systems, and other related activities prescribed by the Secretary of State.
The amendment provides that organisations of that kind which have obligations to their customers should become registered bodies for the purpose of this exercise and should be required to employ only individuals in respect of whom they are satisfied that the certificate is consistent with the performance of their duties in the relevant posts in a fit and proper manner. One could very well extend it. For example, outside London local authorities have an obligation to license taxis. Given the risks to passengers when taxis are driven by people with criminal records, it may be that the provision should be extended to them. However, perhaps we should start with the security industry.
This matter was recommended by the Home Affairs Select Committee of another place in May 1995. That committee said that there should be greater access to national criminal records as part of a vetting procedure and that a licensing system for individuals in the private security sector should be set up. If, as is clear from this part, it is for the benefit of employers that there should

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be protection against people who work in sensitive areas and are unsuitable because of past convictions, that applies very much to the private security industry and to its customers. I beg to move.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: I support the spirit of the amendment. I do not know whether it is the right amendment in terms of wording; nor do I know why it appears here rather than as an amendment to Clause 102. I am also concerned about what checks there are to ensure that a body that wishes to be registered is a legitimate body and that such registration is a proper course to follow. One knows that with most registered bodies there will be no difficulty in deciding that they are fit and proper bodies to be registered and to exercise the powers under this Bill. I believe that some noble Lords have doubts not only about the employees of some security firms but about the security firms themselves. I am not sure what the proposal is either under the Bill or the amendment to ensure that those who choose to register are fit and proper bodies to be registered in any case.
Lord Renton: The fact that the application of the amendment is confined to those who are providing services on a commercial basis rather narrows it; for example, there are times when public bodies have cash and various things that need to be protected. It will not always be possible for the police to provide the manpower to do that. They may wish to provide civilians—if I may call them that—and it is desirable that such people should be chosen carefully. I see the motive for the amendment, and it is a good one, but it needs to be rethought.
The noble Lord and my noble friend may wish to consider whether the Bill already covers the point—it could be said to do so, but we want to be sure about that—or whether it needs to be amplified for consideration on Report so that people, whether or not working on a commercial basis who might be providing this type of service—for example, the manned guarding of premises when a hospital is being built—should be a registered body. That is a point that needs to be considered. It is a detailed and complicated Bill. The clauses we are considering, I must confess, overlap a bit, perhaps inevitably. As it stands, the amendment does not fit in well.
Baroness Blatch: Although I agree with much of what my noble friend said, I hope that my response to the issue, as opposed to the amendment, can be a little warmer.
The effect of Amendment No. 126B would be to ensure that only organisations registered with the Criminal Records Agency will be able to provide private security services. It would also be mandatory for such organisations to request criminal record certificates from prospective employees. Apart from the fact that the definition of the security industry set out in this amendment is rather wide—for example, most DIY stores sell alarms and would therefore be caught by this amendment—under our proposals only organisations
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eligible to ask exempted questions under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act will be able to apply for registered body status. The amendment could therefore only take effect if occupations in the private security sector were exceptions to that Act, but that is not the case at present.
The Government are aware of concerns that the private security industry should be regulated. We are not persuaded that the industry as a whole should be regulated or that it should be made an exception to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. We are though particularly concerned about the claims presented to the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the industry of individuals working in the contract manned guarding sector, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarrybank, despite having criminal records for serious offences which make them unsuitable for such employment.
We will shortly be issuing a consultation paper putting forward proposals for the regulation of this sector based on compulsory criminal record checks of those wishing to work as contract security guards. The issue of whether this sector alone should be made an exception to the Act will form part of the consultation process. That picks up one of the points made by the noble Lord about whether there are other groups.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Taxis.
Baroness Blatch: Should the outcome of these deliberations result in contract security guards being made an exception to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, companies providing such services will be eligible to register and to require criminal record certificates from prospective employees. That is the correct way to proceed and it would not in our view be sensible to pre-empt that consultation process by introducing provision of this kind at this stage in this Bill. I hope again, after a slightly warmer response to that point, that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
9.30 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am grateful to the Minister for that answer. It makes good sense. I understand the point of putting the requirement on individuals rather than on companies. However, the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, has a valid point about criminals who band together to form private security firms. I believe that my amendment would have covered that because it can cover all employees, whether they are managerial or any other kind.
I was amused by the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Renton, who queried the services on a commercial basis. If we took him literally and removed that part of the provision, the police would have to apply for certificates from themselves when undertaking any of these activities, which they frequently do—
Lord Renton: A little while ago the noble Lord's noble friend suggested that all local authorities should be of this kind. This is not very far removed.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I suggest that local authorities should be automatically registered, which

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moves in exactly the same direction. However, as the noble Lord will know, most of these activities of local authorities have been subject to compulsory competitive tendering and are undertaken on a commercial basis. I doubt whether many local authority employees undertake security services.
The promise of consultation is too good to refuse and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 107 agreed to.
Clause 108 [Code of practice]:
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 127:
Page 43, line 28, leave out ("may") and insert ("shall").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 127, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 129 to 132. The amendment has already proved necessary because on several occasions tonight the Minister confirmed that there will be a code of practice. However, it is not as far-ranging as was originally proposed.
Amendment No. 129 provides that the code of practice shall be subject to the affirmative resolution. As we do not have a code of practice and an up-to-date version to consider together with the Bill, that provision seems a necessary precaution for the protection of the interests of Parliament.
Amendment No. 130 refers to arrangements for the monitoring and inspection of compliance by registered bodies. That is in the draft code of practice and I hope that it will continue to apply.
Amendment No. 131 refers to the power to remove from the list those who do not comply with the code of practice. Earlier tonight the Minister confirmed that that would be the case.
Amendment No. 132 proposes as an alternative that there should be a financial penalty rather than removal from the list. As regards taking care of children or old people, for example, in some sectors the removal of a body from the register would be to put it out of business. It might be better to deal with a breach in a less destructive way by imposing a financial penalty on it in the first instance in the hope that that will ensure compliance.
Some of the measures in the code of practice have been put into the Bill. For example, Clause 106(5) deals with proceedings against the agency for inaccurate information, whereas paragraph 2 of the code requires users of information to indemnify the agency against any liability. The boundary between what should be in the code of practice and what should be in the Bill is always difficult to maintain, but we believe that this series of amendments strengthens the resolve of the Government to have an effective code of practice. I beg to move.
Baroness Blatch: I shall refer first to Amendment No. 127. It has always been our intention to provide the important safeguard of a code of practice. However, I am afraid that it is not possible to accept the amendment as the drafting is defective. It would require that the code "shall" also be revised without making
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clear the circumstances in which that would be necessary. Therefore, if the noble Lord will allow me, I should like to bring forward an amendment on Report to the effect that the code "shall" be published and "may" be revised.
As regards Amendment No. 129, it is right that the code of practice shall be properly considered. However, the draft code has already been published with the White Paper and has been the subject of a detailed consultation exercise. Views on the draft code were invited from employers, regulatory bodies, the police and voluntary organisations, as well as from those working with ex-offenders and from civil liberties groups. About 250 responses were received. Many useful drafting suggestions and points of detail were raised, some of which have already been incorporated in our proposals. We have sent a summary of the responses, and our comments on these, to all those who took part in the consultation exercise. The code of practice will need consolidation and further consultation and it is intended that this will be taken forward as part of the implementation phase of introducing the new arrangements. In view of this detailed and continuing consultation exercise, we expect that the final version of the code of practice will address the concerns raised by interested parties. For that reason, we do not believe that it will be necessary to make the code subject to affirmative resolution, although it will be laid before both Houses of Parliament before publication. The Select Committee on Delegated Powers has considered this proposal and has not queried whether our proposals in relation to the code are appropriate. I would therefore suggest that the arrangements which we are suggesting will provide sufficient scrutiny.
I turn now to Amendment No. 130. We have made provisions for sanctions should organisations or their employees fail to abide by the code of practice. As I said earlier, Clause 108 makes provision for the Secretary of State to suspend the registration of registered bodies which he considers have failed to abide by the code. In addition to this, sanctions exist in Clause 109 against individuals who breach the code by disclosing conviction information to those not entitled to it. A criminal offence will have been committed for which the penalty will be a level 3 fine, currently up to £1,000 or a term of imprisonment, or both.
We are attempting to introduce a simple and straightforward procedure which is as cost-effective as we can make it. Introducing an inspection and monitoring regime would add significantly to the red tape, the number of staff employed on the work and the overall charges. We are talking about millions of applications every year from thousands of organisations. I believe that the safeguards we have put in place will ensure that we have a way of dealing with abuse of the system and I am not persuaded that a complicated system of monitoring would be practical or indeed desirable.
However, I am rather puzzled by Amendment No. 131. If a registered body fails to comply with the code of practice, its registration may be suspended and it would, in effect, be removed from the register. Whether its name is deleted from the register or flagged

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to the effect that it has been suspended are administrative details which will need to be considered when the criminal records agency is set up. What is of paramount importance is that organisations which are unable to safeguard the criminal record information that they receive should not be sent any further information until they are able to demonstrate that they can abide by the code of practice. I believe that the clause as it stands makes adequate provision in that respect.
The final amendment in the group would make provision for registered bodies which fail to comply with the code of practice to pay a fine as an alternative to being suspended from the register. Adequate safeguards for the individual whose criminal record is being disclosed are of course essential. We have sought to make provision for these within the Bill. I am not convinced that imposing a fine on a registered body will necessarily ensure its future compliance with the code to the same extent as suspension of registration will.
As I said earlier, this is a very powerful measure. For many organisations, such as care homes, registered body status will undoubtedly be something of a marketable commodity and they would not want to risk losing that. I am puzzled as to how the decision whether to levy a fine or suspend registration will be made and what safeguards will exist to ensure equality in the decision-making process. I hope that some of those practical responses to the suggested amendments will enable the noble Lord to withdraw them.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am grateful in particular for the response to Amendment No. 127. I accept with thanks the commitment of the Government to bring forward their own corrected amendment on that point. As regards the subsequent amendments, I had thought that Amendment No. 130 did no more than recognise what the draft code of practice in the White Paper stated. As I recall, the draft code stated that:
"Any alleged failure to abide by the provisions of the code of practice may be the subject of investigation by the Agency and. if substantiated, could result in withdrawal of access … to criminal record information".
Surely that implies the kind of monitoring and inspection procedures which are proposed in Amendment No. 130.
Amendments Nos. 131 and 132 are alternatives. We are leaving it to the agency to decide whether the strong sanction—as the Minister describes it—of deregistration is appropriate in cases where putting the organisation out of business (because that is what it would do) is the appropriate action to take. In the first instance, a fine might be more appropriate. It might ensure compliance without endangering the services which the organisation provided to young people in particular. However, I can see there is scope for further discussion on the wording of all of those amendments. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 128:
Page 43, line 30, at end insert ("and the use of information contained in criminal conviction certificates").
The noble Lord said: This is a simple amendment. The Bill may not mean what it states. As we have said, Clause 108 refers to the publication and revision of a code of practice but it refers only to,
"the use of information provided to registered bodies".
In other words, it refers only to activities under Clauses 101 and 102. The amendment would extend it to cover criminal conviction certificates under Clause 100. As the draft code of practice set out in the White Paper frequently refers to criminal conviction certificates under the previous main use for them, it would seem appropriate that the code of practice, as set out in the Bill, should also cover them. I beg to move.
Baroness Blatch: It is difficult to see how this amendment would work in practice because criminal conviction certificates will be issued to individuals only and it will be for the individuals to decide whether to show the information to an employer or to anyone else who wishes to see it. Therefore the criminal records agency will have no record of those people or organisations who might be shown an individual's criminal conviction certificate. In view of the potential numbers involved—perhaps as many as 5 million criminal conviction certificates might be issued each year—it is unlikely that a workable system could be introduced to ensure that those requesting sight of a CCC have signed up to the code of practice and complied with its provisions.
If we were to attempt to do this, all organisations would need to be registered, together with their nominated signatories, and the sheer weight of numbers would add to the bureaucracy of issuing certificates and of course to their cost. Nevertheless, I can assure the noble Lord that we intend to issue guidance for employers on the use of criminal conviction certificates. The guidance will be based upon that which is given in the draft code of practice which was published in the White Paper, On the Record, and its associated guidance. It will cover matters such as the need to take account of the relevance of previous convictions to the post in question, the length of time which has elapsed since offences were committed, the age of the applicant at the time of the offence and the career history of the applicant since being convicted. It will also cover matters such as the need to keep information confidential and who in an organisation should have access to it during recruitment.
Again, I hope that that is a practical way of responding to what otherwise, according to the amendment, would be a very bureaucratic procedure to introduce.
9.45 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I was not suggesting that all the code of practice which applies to registered bodies would apply to criminal conviction certificates under Clause 100. But many aspects do so. I refer to the

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fact that a conviction will not automatically debar an individual from employment, and to such factors as whether the conviction is relevant to the employment in question, the length of time since the offence occurred, whether the applicant has a pattern of convictions, and so on. As the amendment suggests, all those should be elements in a code of practice.
If the Minister proposes to downgrade the matter one step in the hierarchy, making it guidance to employers, then that is better than nothing. I assume that the guidance to which the Minister referred may cover, for example, discouragement from use of the Data Protection Act in place of Clause 100. I note that the Liberal Democrat Benches are empty, and the point cannot be made to those who are most concerned with that issue. On the basis of the guidance which has been offered, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 129 to 132A not moved.]
[Amendment No. 133 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
Clause 108 agreed to.
Clause 109 [Offences]:
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Baroness Hilton of Eggardon moved Amendment No. 134:
Page 44, line 10, leave out from ("body") to end of line 13.
The noble Baroness said: The amendment is grouped with Amendment No. 135. They deal with slightly different issues, although the matter of disclosure of information relates to them both.
Amendment No. 134 is intended to probe the situation of the education services and school governors. It may not have been immediately apparent to the Minister that that is the point of the amendment. If it is not clear to her, I should be happy for her to write to me.
The issue relates to whether school governors are people who form a constituent body and, therefore, should be the registered body; or whether the local education authority is the registered body. If the local education authority is the registered body, is it entitled to pass information to school governors when they are selecting school teachers? Should school governors be subject to some form of criminal certificate, as they are quite clearly people who have dealings with young people under 18? It is possible that those issues have not been addressed. Alternatively, the Minister may be able to satisfy us as regards bodies in relation to education.
Amendment No. 135 is much simpler. It states that,
"A member, officer or employee of a relevant police force or any person acting on behalf of the Secretary of State"—
which we understand to be the criminal record agency—
"commits an offence if he discloses information provided under section 101 or 102".
There has been an increasing practice, particularly with ease of accessing records on computers, for such information to be sold to various security firms or people doing unofficial checks in relation to prospective employees. That is quite clearly an extremely undesirable practice. The intention of creating a specific
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criminal offence is to deter police officers and other people who may have access to such information not only in relation to employment checks but also for sale to newspapers and so on. It seemed to us appropriate that there should be a specific offence rather than just having an offence under the police discipline code as at present. I regret that the intention of Amendment No. 134 may not have been apparent. Had I realised, I would have given prior notice to the Minister. She may well wish to take time to reply to that particular aspect.
Baroness Blatch: I find Amendment No. 134 a little puzzling. But I accept the point made by the noble Baroness that it is probing and is a way of flushing out what the provisions in the Bill are.
Clause 107 provides that bodies which register with the Criminal Records Agency may do so in order to seek information on behalf of other bodies eligible to ask their employees to apply for criminal records certificates or enhanced criminal records certificates. The purpose of this provision is to assist smaller employers and organisations which may find it administratively convenient to channel applications for criminal record checks through a lead body which is registered to act on their behalf. Two examples spring immediately to mind. One is the WRVS, which works through a whole network of bodies; and perhaps the scout movement, which has been very much under debate today, where there is already a centralised system governing information which is then used within that organisation, and used entirely properly.
If a registered body is applying for criminal record checks on behalf of another body, it is necessary for the registered body to disclose it to the body on behalf of which it is acting. This amendment would prevent that from being done.
As regards Amendment No. 135, sanctions already exist for improper disclosure of computerised information. A person would be guilty of committing offences under either the Data Protection Act 1984 or the Computer Misuse Act 1990 if he or she obtained unauthorised access or disclosed information to a person not entitled to receive it. The position is rather different in the case of local police records held in manual form since such records are not covered by either of those Acts. However, it would not be practical to make it an offence to disclose information from these manual records since they are being held by the police for purposes other than use in criminal record checks and need to be available for disclosure in circumstances connected with the prevention or detection of crime. Disclosure from police manual records in connection with a criminal record check will be made only on the authority of a senior police officer, and a police officer or public servant who disclosed such information without authorisation would be subject to disciplinary action.
The noble Baroness used the particular example of a governing body. My understanding is that the governing body would not be authorised to pass the information down to other governing bodies; they would be separate institutions. However, I should like to take that particular point away and reflect on it. If I have anything

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more to say to the noble Baroness, I will communicate in writing and make any letter available to all Members of the Committee.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I am grateful to the Minister for that response. Will she also cover the point as to whether school governors will need to obtain certificates?
Baroness Blatch: Did I not say school governors? I meant to say that.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: The Minister said "governing bodies"; however, I was not sure whether that meant that individual school governors would need to obtain criminal records.
In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 135 not moved.]
Clause 109 agreed to.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 136:
After Clause 109, insert the following new clause—
CONSEQUENCES OF PART V FOR POLICE AUTHORITIES
("The Secretary of State shall in respect of each year in which any of sections 100 to 108 have effect, and within three months of the end of the financial year concerned, lay before Parliament a statement as to the financial, staffing and operational consequences for police authorities of the requirements of this Part.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment arises from the financial and manpower memorandum which precedes the Bill. The Financial Memorandum states that:
"The police will be recompensed for their part in the work saving them about £3.2 million".
I believe that "recompensed" is not a definite word, it could be in part or in full. We should like to be sure that they are recompensed in full. Also, the saving of £3.2 million is a saving on what? Is it a saving on existing expenditure or what would otherwise be the expenditure, based on the number of checks which are expected in the phasing-in period and the ultimate full operation of the system?
On public service manpower, the memorandum states:
"Up to 400 staff could be employed providing criminal record information in the first year of operation but it is intended that this would increase in line with demand".
That is presumably the staff of the criminal records agency. The memorandum continues:
"The service to be provided is completely new and there is not expected to be any compensating loss of posts elsewhere".
Surely there should be some estimate of the effect on police manpower, as the Minister has already said that it is the police who would do the work of extracting the information in the first place, and how that will proceed as the system is more fully implemented.
In the amendment we say modestly that the Secretary of State should publish:
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"a statement as to the financial, staffing and operational consequences for police authorities of the requirements of this part".
They should do so within three months of the end of each financial year. As the Financial Memorandum acknowledges, on manpower there are considerable implications, the effects of which are not yet known. It is right that police authorities should have an opportunity to benefit from the Government's assessment of the effect that there will be on the finance, staffing and operations for police authorities. I beg to move.
Baroness Blatch: I am amused by the amendment because it takes on a new significance in light of the amendment passed earlier this afternoon. I suspect that there will be a great deal of interest in the costs, not only those which will now be phenomenal as a result of completely waiving the fees, but where the money will come from to fund them. In a Machiavellian way, I am almost tempted to accept the amendment, but I shall not. I shall act responsibly and say that the police authorities already provide the Secretary of State with a raft of information on operations and resources in their policing plans and annual reports. To require them to supply an additional report to the Home Secretary on the financial implications of the supply of criminal record information will impose a further burden on them which I would be surprised if they welcomed.
Furthermore, I see no good reason why the information need be laid before Parliament, given that this is not the procedure for police authority policing plans and annual reports. While I accept the principle that the Secretary of State should be informed of the financial implications for the police of these new arrangements—and I would expect those to fall in the police's favour, given that for the first time they will be reimbursed for criminal record information provided for pre-employment vetting checks—I should prefer to treat the information in the same way as the other information supplied by the police to the Secretary of State. I should expect that police authorities would wish to include it in their existing annual reports and policing plans.
As I said earlier, I think that the police will be as interested as I shall about where Members opposite suggest the money should be found, as we have now given to a large number of people a concession which I believe cannot be afforded.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If the Minister is tempted to accept the amendment, it will cause no difficulty with us. The amount of additional expenditure and bureaucracy involved in producing such a report is pretty minimal. The object of the amendment is not to inform the Secretary of State but to oblige him to inform police authorities about the implications of the Bill on them. That would be relevant, whether or not Amendment No. 103 and the consequent amendments had been carried. The same position applies. I am sorry that the Minister has not yielded to her Machiavellian impulses, but I beg leave to withdraw Amendment No. 136.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 110 to 118 agreed to.
10 p.m.
Clause 119 [Commencement]:
Baroness Blatch Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 137:
Page 48, line 41, at end insert—
("( ) Any day appointed by an order under this section for the coming into force of section 89, 90 or 91 of this Act shall not be earlier than the day on which a code of practice issued under section 92 comes into operation.").
The noble Baroness said: I spoke to this amendment with Amendment No. 95. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 119, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 120 agreed to.
Clause 121 [Extent]:
Baroness Blatch Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 138:
Page 49, line 9, leave out ("(2) and (3)") and insert ("(2) to (4)").
The noble Baroness said: This amendment was spoken to with Amendment No. 25. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 121, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 122 agreed to.
Schedule 9 [Minor and Consequential Amendments]:
Baroness Blatch Baroness Blatch moved Amendments Nos. 139 to 141:
Page 73, line 10, after ("(2)") insert ("of this section").
Page 73, line 20, after ("(7)") insert ("of this section").
Page 79, line 43, at end insert—
("In section 65A (which was inserted by section 3 of the Local Government and Rating Act 1997 and makes provision about Crown property), in subsection (4)(b) for the words from "or by a police authority" to the end there shall be substituted ", a police authority established under section 3 of the Police Act 1996, the Service Authority for the National Criminal Intelligence Service or the Service Authority for the National Crime Squad.").
The noble Baroness said: These amendments were spoken to with Amendment No. 25. I beg to move the amendments en bloc.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Baroness Blatch Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 142:
Page 81, line 42, at end insert—
("Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992 (c.53)
—(1) In section 7 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992, in subsection (2), after "36A" there shall be inserted "(a) or (b)".

46. In Schedule 1 to that Act, in Part I, at the end of paragraph 36A (which becomes sub-paragraph (a)) there shall be inserted—

("(b) An appeals tribunal constituted in accordance with an order under section (Appeals: Part 1)(2) of the Police Act 1997 (c.00) and an appeals tribunal constituted in accordance with Schedule 6 to the Police Act 1996 as applied by section (Appeals: Part II)(2) of the Police Act 1997.")

The noble Baroness said: This amendment was spoken to with Amendment No. 37. I beg to move. On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 143 not moved.]
Baroness Blatch Baroness Blatch moved Amendments Nos. 144 and 145:
Page 83, line 35, leave out ("section 9(2)(6)") and insert ("section 9(2)(a)").
Page 83, line 39, leave out ("section 54(2)(6)") and insert ("section 54(2)(a)").
The noble Baroness said: These amendments were spoken to with Amendment No. 13. I beg to move Amendments Nos. 144 and 145 en bloc.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Schedule 9, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 10 agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with amendments. House adjourned at four minutes past ten o'clock.