Children: Abuse of Trust (Hansard, 25 January 1999)

§ Lord Williams of Mostyn

We have today placed a copy of the report of the interdepartmental working group in the Library. This follows its interim report on abuse of trust which we placed in the Library on 25 November last year.

The working group has made a number of recommendations in principle for establishing an integrated scheme to help prevent unsuitable people from working with children. Following a written consultation exercise, it undertook initial discussion of the emerging proposals with a number of organisations outside government before making its report and received their broad support. The report acknowledges there is much work to be done on the scheme, including further consultation. The detailed elements of the scheme will need to be worked up before firm proposals can be made.

The Government welcome the report as the basis for an integrated scheme to provide greater protection for children and, in due course, vulnerable adults. We have asked the working group to work up the proposals as a matter of priority with a view to bringing forward detailed recommendations. Primary legislation will be required to put the new scheme in place.

The integrated scheme envisages a central access point for three sources of information: criminal records (with certain offences attracting a ban on working with children); List 99 (maintained by the Department for Education and Employment); and the Consultancy Index (maintained by the Department of Health). This central access point would be the Criminal Records Bureau. The Protection of Children Bill currently before Parliament makes provision for the necessary amendment to Part V of the Police Act 1997 for the bureau to act as a one-stop shop able to receive and pass on information from List 99 and the Consultancy Index. This should allow work on this wider role to form part of the work now under way on establishing the Criminal Records Bureau.