Safeguarding a sinking ship
Are there really 11.3 million adults in the UK who could pose a risk to children?
Yes, if you work for the Independent Safeguarding Authority and believe that every adult is a potential murderer or paedophile.
At a very late stage – after the passage of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, after the consultation over details, after the setting up of the authority – people have finally woken up to the implications.
A powerful reason for that has been the astonishing figure of 11.3 million people who will have to be vetted and registered because they come into contact with children or vulnerable adults “frequently” or “intensively”. Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, has ordered a review of what these terms mean – as if civil servants have not already spent months writing a 149-page document, Guidance for the Vetting and Barring Scheme, that tries to explain them.
Curious about how the 11.3 million figure had been reached, I emailed the ISA, who replied saying that my request had been passed to experts who either knew the answer or could refer me to a document explaining it. They promised to reply within ten working days. But I’m not sure I can wait that long.
Others have been this way before - notably the Manifesto Club, which has campaigned against the scheme from the very beginning. The club has produced a series of briefings that explain how the huge total of suspect adults has been calculated.
The Act contains no definitions of some of its key terms, which was remiss of Parliament, but the guidance suggests that “frequently” means once a month or more on an ongoing basis, “intensively” means three days at a time, and “overnight” means betweeen the hours of 2 am and 6 am.
Anyone who has care, supervision, teaching, training or instruction to children under 18 (16 in employment settings) or vulnerable adults that meet these conditions has to be vetted, cleared, and on the ISA database.
Further, the 149-page document on further guidance, still unpublished but seen by the Manifesto Club, defines “an ongoing basis” to mean at least three months – so “frequently” means three times within three months. If you help at a Sunday school once a month, you need to be registered: if you help only once every six weeks, you don’t. It will be up to the individual to work this out for themselves, and notify the ISA when the threshold is crossed. Failure to do so risks sanctions which could amount to a £5,000 fine and a criminal record.
And what about a taxi driver who has to transport under-18s to catch an early flight? If the journey is before 6 am in the morning, he needs to be vetted and cleared. Just writing this down makes it clear how absurd it is.
Until these definitions were clarified, it was impossible to calculate how many adults the Act would cover. In January 2006 the Department for Education and Skills estimated 8.5 to 9.5 million people. But as the work progressed, the number increased to 11.3 million.
So did the cost. Estimated in June 2006 at £16 million for setting up and an annual running cost of £12-15 million, the current figure is £84 million to set up, and £49.2 million a year to run. So the cost over five years has increased from £91.6 million to £330 million. The scheme was originally intended to start last autumn, but after concerns about data security, the launch date was postponed to 12 October – assuming Mr Balls’ review doesn’t find further cause for delay.
There is already a vetting scheme in existence through the Criminal Records Bureau. In addition checks have been possible through List 99 ( which covers schools and lists sex offenders and those deemed unsuitable by the Department of Educatuion and Skills for other reasons, such as dishonesty) PoCA (a list of people sacked for misconduct towards children) and PoVa (roughly the same for vulnerable adults). List 99, PoCa sand PoVA checks have abeen subsumed into the ISA scheme already.
By definition, the scheme can only filter out those who have given grounds for suspicion, or have actually offended. Many others will be given clearance, only to become first-time offenders once they are on the list. Repeat offenders who have not been caught, and those who have offended abroad will also be listed as safe. No estimate has been made of the likely number of children saved from abuse or violence, nor is there any estimate of the number of adults discouraged from volunteering, or the cost to clubs and societies of implementing the system.
The whole act and its implementation has been carried out without any proper evidence to show that it is proportionate, or cost-effective, or has any statistical backing for the claims it makes.
Martin Nairy, chief executive of Barnardo’s, told The Guardian: “If the vetting and barring scheme saves just one child ending up the victim of a paedophile it will be worth it”.
That is nonsense. All social policy must be justified by its cost-effectiveness. Unpleasant as it is to put a cost on a life, it is done every day by the NHS, by NICE, by traffic engineers, by those who determine vaccine policy, and by many others. It is the only way of striking a balance, which this piece of legislation has conspicuously failed to do.
The irony is, as Josie Appleton points out on Spiked, many of those who supported the legislation through thick and thin have now changed their minds. "Not one politician or children's charity spoke out against it over the past three years" she says.
Anonymous (not verified) wrote,
Mon, 28/09/2009 - 09:21
This is symptomatic of the increasing nationalisation of the family by the state that has crept onto the statute ever since the Children Act first emerged in 1989. All measures that are cunningly phrased to ensure the 'safety and wellbeing of all children' whereby the state in all it's guises firmly believes it can freely violate the Human Rights of every Family, both parent and children to organise and choose their own private Family arrangements and 'Life'. We see it: here with the Independent Safeguarding Authority; today 28th September 2009, we see yet another example via the Childcare Act of 2006 in which Ofsted has suddenly decreed 2 policewoman (yes, policewoman !) are acting illegally by looking after each others children (for no financial gain) whilst the other is on shift; we saw it with the need for some quite eminent authors now to have to register in order to continue with reading to children, we see it in the rapid increase of social services trying to take children into care following the Baby P case, we see it everywhere ! Rather than tinkering with the statute on a purely 'reactionary' basis as this government has so often done, what is needed and has long been called for in many quarters is a good and proper root & branch reform of the whole of the UK Family Law legislation & system, inclusive of the introduction of very large doses of 'common sense' and the establishment of an open, proper and proportional basis for all UK legislation. The time for repealing a lot of the nonsense that has reached the statute is long overdue, for the sake and wellbeing of every child !
Anonymous (not verified) wrote,
Wed, 10/02/2010 - 15:22
Whilst agreeing that costs are high I am highly offended and appalled that saying “If the vetting and barring scheme saves just one child ending up the victim of a paedophile it will be worth it” is "nonsense"!
Could a parent or family member put a price on someone’s life, let alone a child’s. It is all well to say these statements from the comfort of a computer but in reality Martin Nairy was absolutely correct in what he said in my opinion. The way things are run and administered must be looked at to be more cost effective, however, to openly suggest that money is of more importance than life de-values our society.
Anonymous (not verified) wrote,
Tue, 08/06/2010 - 11:37
"If the vetting and barring scheme saves just one child ending up the victim of a paedophile it will be worth it." This is indeed overly emotive nonsense and very obviously so.
According to the NSPCC (who one would expect to use as wide a definition of the term 'sexual offence' as possible since their funding depends upon us all worrying about this sort of thing) there were 21,618 sexual offences where the victim was under 18 last year. Using the population statistics, there are 12,890,430 people under 18 in the UK. The annual risk to a child in percentage terms is therefore about 0.17% (or a 1 in 596 chance). Remember the term 'sexual offence' includes pretty much anything from rape to someone making an inappropriate comment to them in an internet chatroom, which is probably far more common.
Compared to an annual risk of a child ending up in A&E following an accident in either the home or during a leisure activity (I estimated this at 17.9% or 1 in 92 using figures for under 15s available from RoSPA) and the risk from mythical perverts lurking in bushes doesn't seem so scary. However, advertising this is unlikely to have us all ringing up to donate "£2 per month or whatever we can" to the NSPCC so relative risk is never mentioned in their advertising.
Every parents worst nightmare is having a child murdered - this is actually so unlikely that the risk is miniscule. There were 68 murders of children under 16 in 2007 (the rate having actually gone up that year) which considering the 11,662,770 under 16's living in the UK gives an annual risk of 0.0006% of being a homicide victim (or 171,511 to 1 chance). These murders include children killed by their own family or people close to them and gang related killings such as knife crime committed by other children. Therefore the risk to a child of being the victim of an Ian Huntley is infintessimally small.
So does spending £330 million pounds on this scheme really stack up? The majority of sexual offences are committed by people with no previous convictions for sexual offending. Sex offenders as a group are second only to murderers as being the least likely group of offenders to be convicted of a further offence (despite the fact that they are given much more scrutiny post conviction than drug dealers, burglars, car thieves etc). Also the majority of serious further sexual offences are committed by people whose previous convictions are not for a sexual offence! So the chances that someone who would actually be barred from working with children would actually commit an offence against them are not even that certain. The majority of people sexually abusing children with whom they come in to contact through 'regulated activity' will almost certainly not have been barred as the result of previous convictions or cautions. So what is the point when just giving people who work with children decent advice on how to remain vigilant against abuse could achieve the same outcome at a fraction of the cost!!!
Think how many £5 mosquito nets to prevent malaria in Africa you could buy with just a fraction of this money and how many children that such a policy would DEFINITELY save from a painful undignified death. Puts this stupid 'child protection' scheme into perspective really doesn't it! Mr Nairy if this scheme saves just ONE CHILD it almost certainly ISN'T worth it!!!