HC Deb 10 March 2003 vol 401 cc68-9W
Mr. Burstow

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much the inquiry headed by Patrick Carter into the Criminal Records Bureau cost. [100165]

Hilary Benn

[holding answer 6 March 2003]: The estimate cost of the independent review of the Criminal Records Bureau is £585,000. This includes the costs of various consultancies in support of the review.

Chris Grayling

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what his policy is on the vetting of nannies by the Criminal Records Bureau. [99552]

Maria Eagle

I have been asked to reply.

Child care workers operating in child care settings regulated by Ofsted or the National Care Standards Commission are vetted through the Criminal Records Bureau. Nannies or other child care workers who care for children in the child's own home are not regulated by Ofsted, and therefore, are not vetted by the Criminal Records Bureau.

However, parents wanting to secure a nanny who has been vetted by the Bureau can go to a registered agency offering to supply such a nanny.

Bob Russell

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many volunteers have requested checks through the Criminal Records Bureau; how many have been processed; and when he expects the backlog to be cleared to meet the processing time target. [99651]

Hilary Benn

The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) has received 160,000 applications from people in the voluntary sector. To date 135,000 have been processed and a percentage of the outstanding applications are under three weeks old.

The latest figures show that 51,857 of all the applications being processed are older than three weeks, that is to say, outside the published service standard of three weeks. This figure does not include incomplete or incorrect applications that have had to be sent back to the customer before they can be processed.

I am unable to confirm exactly when the backlog of outstanding applications will be cleared. It is, however, falling steadily and equates to less than two weeks' output. When compared against the number of outstanding applications in October 2002, 115,483, and the last week in January 2003, 62,687, there has been a steady improvement in performance.