A leaked document from the Cabinet Office proposing the abolition or merger of 180 quangos has included the controversial Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA). However, the exact fate of the ISA hangs in the balance, as its ‘reform’ is listed as ‘still to be decided’.
The ISA was set up under the Labour government as a measure to try to protect young people and vulnerable adults by placing around a quarter of the UK’s adult population on a database. The ISA’s Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) received severe criticism from many quarters and from diverse perspectives, including:
- a community perspective (‘vetting breaks down informal relations of trust and judgement between adults and children, and ultimately damages child welfare’);
- a civil libertarian perspective (‘vetting is an unjustified intrusion of a centralised state, and assumes all adults are guilty until proven innocent’);
- a financial/ workability perspective (‘no estimate has been made of the likely number of children who will be saved from abuse, and the money could be better spent on improving social work’); and
- a security perspective (‘if (unproven) database information is released in error, it will be personally, socially and financially ruinous for individuals’).
Despite the disadvantages of the VBS, some of those involved in private tuition saw it as a useful measure to replace the so-called CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) disclosure certificate which, although generally accepted as valid for 3 years, is by its nature out-of-date the moment it is issued.
An alternate bureaucratic measure now being rolled out across the UK is the enactment of what the media have termed ‘Sarah’s Law’. In the words of the government guidance on this, the so-called ‘child sex offender disclosure scheme’ means that ‘If you are worried about someone in your child’s life, you can get them checked by the police to see if they have a record of child sexual offences’ and that ‘anyone can ask for a police check on someone they are worried about’.
On the face of things, this may seem like a reasonable alternative for parents to check the background of a tutor before employing them. However, I can see three major flaws in such an approach:
- for parents to actually make an application, they have to visit their local police station in person with some ID (such as a passport or driver’s licence) – how many parents are seriously going to want to do that?
- the government guidance on this consistently states that the system is set up for individuals to enquire about ‘someone they are worried about’. A private tutor you’ve never met before is not someone you are worried about – he or she is simply someone you don’t know about. How many police forces up and down the country are going to be happy about processing possibly multiple applications on a single tutor on a ‘just in case’ basis, when they are no grounds for suspicion in the first place?
- the final, related and perhaps most important point is that all enquiries about an individual will undoubtedly be recorded by the police. Are innocent tutors really comfortable with the idea of multiple checks being processed on them by the authorities? Since the system is set up for the investigation of those whom members of the public are ‘worried about’, any application is likely to result in bureaucrats deciding that the activities of these individuals may need to be monitored. In an even stronger sense than with the VBS – because this new disclosure scheme is an active rather than passive process – innocent people may suddenly find that they are under suspicion.
Ultimately, as we pointed out in our interim statement on child protection in the private tuition industry, the vast majority of child sex offenders are not known to the authorities at all. This means that bureaucratic measures such as the VBS or Sarah’s Law will always be comparatively weak tools in the fight against abuse. Concerned parents must instead take responsibililty themselves for the welfare of their children. Measures such as asking for two references from a tutor and following them up, and sitting in on lessons or leaving the door open are a sensible start.
Concerned parents are encouraged to read our Safety Advice, the link to which is prominently displayed on our homepage. Further advice on this topic will be available soon, but in the meantime, we recommend the Stop it Now! campaign, including their 5-minute introductory video.
