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Criminal Records Bureau

28th July 1999

Response to the Report of the Home Office Interdepartmental Working Group being published 0001 Hours 29 July

PREVENTING UNSUITABLE PEOPLE FROM WORKING WITH CHILDREN Criminal Records Bureau

The Scout Association welcomes any moves to make it harder for adults with criminal records for offences against children to gain further access to young people.

Making it a criminal offence to apply for, accept or actually work with children, when an individual knows they have been banned, should act as another valuable deterrent. This will apply to paid and unpaid work in the public, private, and voluntary sectors.

Making it a criminal offence for an employer (or organisation) to use a person they know, or could be reasonably be expected to know, is banned is also welcomed. This offence will however have consequences for voluntary organisations.

Organisations working with young people will wish to make sure that they have carried out checks to check that an individual is not banned. This information will be available from the Criminal Records Bureau which the Government is establishing.

However the Government has proposed that there will be a charge for the checks.

The Scout Association, together with other voluntary sector youth charities, has already expressed its concern arising from Government proposals to make a £10 charge for Criminal Record Bureau checks. (more)

All organisations recruiting volunteers are finding it harder and harder to recruit suitable adults. There are many reasons but it is particularly hard in areas of social exclusion. It is in these very areas that more volunteers are needed to work with local children. The £10 fee will be required at the very point of motivating a volunteer to give their time freely to help with the charitable works. Volunteer recruitment is challenging enough without imposing the disincentive of a £10 joining fee.

Each year The Scout Association alone vets 65,000 adults, each of who will have "substantial unsupervised access" to young people. The vetting includes confirming the veracity of local references, an interview for suitability and a series checks of Scouting's own extensive national records (which are UK-wide). The records include newspaper reports of individuals who have been convicted of crimes against children and the Department for Education and Employment's list of those unsuitable to work with children (List 99).

The process already costs Scouting well-over £100,000 each year. To add the £10 charge for each of those 65,000 checks, plus all the inevitable associated administration, will require a further £750,000 each year, every year. The impact of an additional three-quarters-of-a-million pounds of expenses poses potential major cuts in services for young people.

Many other charities will face similar financial difficulties. The Government could help by using its powers to provide free checks. It has been argued that providing free checks would be an unsustainable burden on the public purse.

If the costs are seen as unsustainable by Government, then it is hard to see how they could be sustainable by a charitable voluntary organisation.

The Government has said also that CRB checks are not mandatory but parents (and indeed liability insurers) are likely to expect an organisation to use every method available to check if an adult is suitable to work with children. In practice, any responsible organisation will have to carry out a CRB check. (more)

The Scout Association has an existing and vigorous vetting and recruitment process. The national vetting process typically takes about one week If CRB checks were to take months, rather than days, then the potential volunteer might well start to feel undervalued and unappreciated at which point they will probably withdraw their offer.

The Scout Association urges the Government to provide a reliable, fast and free system that enables voluntary organisations to establish if a person has a criminal record or not.

Note To Editors

Criminal Records Bureau

The CRB will be based in Liverpool, operated under the same administration as the Passport Office. It will open in 2001, in only 18 months time, and it will employ up to 1,200 people. The Government has recently withdrawn its Charter mark from the Passport Agency following delays in issuing passports.

It is being proposed that the CRB will provide three different types of order:

A Criminal Convictions Certificate which an individual could choose to show an employer. It will show all convictions not spent but will not show spent convictions or cautions.

A Criminal Records Certificate which will be required for all those who have regular contact with under 18 year olds, the elderly, the sick or those in sensitive professions. This will show all convictions and cautions, even those spent.

An Enhanced Criminal Records Certificate required for those who have regular care of under 18 year olds and in sensitive appointments. It will show all spent and unspent convictions and cautions as well as information from police files including any suspicions. (This is the Certificate - the most expensive at £10 - that the Association believes will add significantly to preventing unsuitable adults from gaining access to young people).

When an adult indicates an interest in working with young people, an application will be made to the CRB to see if there is any record indicating unsuitability.

28 July, 1999

The Scout Association Baden-Powell House London SW7 5JS Tel: 0207 590 5163

For further information contact: Public Relations (Public.Relations@scout.org.uk)