Parents who ferry children to clubs face criminal record checks, reports the Guardian.
Parents who regularly ferry groups of children on behalf of sports or social clubs such as the Scouts will have to undergo criminal record checks — or face fines of up to £5,000, it was disclosed today.
They will fall under the scope of the government’s new vetting and barring scheme, which is aimed at stopping paedophiles getting access to children.
Other interesting quotes from the article:
A total of 11.3 million people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are expected to register with the ISA.
All 300,000 school governors, as well as every doctor, nurse, teacher, dentist and prison officer will have to register because they come into contact with children or “vulnerable” adults at work.
And
Unlike previous lists of barred individuals, everyone registered with the agency will face continuing monitoring, with existing registrations reconsidered if new evidence is disclosed.
And
Martin Narey, the Barnardo’s chief executive and former director general of the Prison Service, said: “If the vetting and barring scheme stops just one child ending up a victim of a paedophile then it will be worth it.”
I do not know if this will actually come to pass. The proposal is massively unpopular on all sides of the political aisle, judging from the comments to this Guardian article and indeed the comments to this Daily Mail article, and this BBC Have Your Say forum. But a moribund Government can convulse in strange ways; they may not care very much about popularity.
Where has the reporter been lately? Us school governors already go through the extended check, and we may be around the students a whole hour or two in a year! If the gov’mint wants me to “register” and take any samples from me, they can place that idea right up their dark tunnels, alongside the ID Cards.
Prison officers? Must be those “vulnerable” convicts they have to guard….
Pig, In Flight
this is a “prove you aren’t bad ” tax, nothing less.
Oh, what a wonderful way to encourage people to get involved in their community.
The proposal is massively unpopular on all sides of the political aisle, judging from the comments to this Guardian article and indeed the comments to this Daily Mail article, and this BBC Have Your Say forum.
Means nothing. It’ll likely be passed into law, and even though there may be some sort of protest or defiance every now and then, the Poms will largely take it lying down, like they usually do.
I wonder if the people with whom it’s massively unpopular are the same ones who raved about how Ian Huntley shouldn’t have been allowed near kids because it was obvious there was something a bit funny about him.
I bet they are. Bet you anything. It’s like all those “libertarians” with their “leave families alone” rhetoric who suddenly snapped into “why didn’t the State do anything about Baby P, the poor little mite?” ranting across the blogosphere.
Can’t have it both ways. You can leave people alone, then some children will get raped and abused and killed. Or you can live under intensive surveillance, which will reduce (though not to zero) the numbers of children raped and abused and killed. People need to decide which evil they prefer, because there isn’t a “neither” option.
It’d be both cheaper and more effective to register and monitor only those people who there’s good reason to believe are a danger to children – just the bad apples, not the entire barrel.
I fear that no-one took any notice when the original provision for enhanced CRB checks was introduced. There was a little fuss when the first ones delayed teachers starting terms. That is now forgotten, and a system that was only introduced in 2003 is regarded as completely natural and normal for everyone employed in education or health.
People like me have been making a fuss about the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, since it was merely an empire-building proposal(Link). To no effect. The current fuss is being raised about a bureaucratic handover, before the regulations start gradually to bite. I’m not sanguine about a rebellion.
Journalists and the public have short memories and no foresight. Officialdom never relents and never wants to do less. A rebellion is no longer sufficient. We need a revolution.
IanB said:
“I wonder if the people with whom it’s massively unpopular are the same ones who raved about how Ian Huntley shouldn’t have been allowed near kids because it was obvious there was something a bit funny about him.
I bet they are. Bet you anything. ”
You can wonder and bet as much as you like – simply claiming that people you disagree with are hypocrites on the presumption that they would have taken a different stance on Huntley is lazy and, indeed, presumptuous.
I certainly find the current proposals massively over the top and my views about Huntley were nothing like what you quote. That’s one bet you would have lost. you then go on to say :
“It’s like all those “libertarians” with their “leave families alone” rhetoric who suddenly snapped into “why didn’t the State do anything about Baby P, the poor little mite?” ranting across the blogosphere.”
Which libertarians are those then – I’ve not come across them – names and references please.
And as for “Can’t have it both ways. You can leave people alone, then some children will get raped and abused and killed. Or you can live under intensive surveillance, which will reduce (though not to zero) the numbers of children raped and abused and killed. People need to decide which evil they prefer, because there isn’t a “neither” option.” There’s some shaky logic in here (surprise, surprise) but anyway it isn’t an either/or choice – your use of the word “intensive” actually defeats that claim. The issue is how much state involvement/surveillance is neccessary – what response is proportionate. Between the two extreme reactions you posit there is a range of options and choices of mechanisms.
The gov. has made a bad choice and chosen inappropriate mechanisms.
Who exactly are you talking about? Any libertarians ranting about Baby P case were almost certainly ranting about how if even with all those state agencies and regulations this could happen, these agencies should be scrapped… not they are ineffective therefore they should be expanded.
If it is true that up to a quarter of adults end up being effectively treated like criminals for simply having anything to do with kids, then hopefully (!) this might increase resistence to the Database State. But I am not holding my breath. As Natalie Solent says, a dying government might take the view that it wants to pass as much cretinous legislation as can be done.
And of course this creates yet another Quango. Nice work, if you can get it.
I remember, from last evening’s BBC news, some person being quoted to the effect that if this rule saves only one life, it will be worth it. And there is the problem in a nutshell. If you can claim that the life of one child/other will be saved by this or that intrusive law, then it is seen to disable all rational debate. The truth, as must be acknowledged, is that we balance the risks of living in a free society against the costs of an intrusive, Big Brother state, all the time. An honest politician might accept this.
As one commenter said, this is going to discourage folk from getting involved in voluntary activity unless they become part of a state monitoring service. As far as the folk pushing this stuff are concerned, this is a feature, not a bug.
Yes, that would have been the rational thing to say. As it was, a large swathe of the UK “libertarian” blogosphere- what we might politely term the cuntmongers- turned into the Daily Mail with tourettes.
@ Blacque Jacques Shellacque,
It has been law for years now. What happens these days is that enabling ‘framework’ legislation is passed, giving ministerial discretion over the whole scope and substance of the powers required, frequently including the power to amend other primary legislation as the Secretary of State sees fit. The timetable of coming into force and the detailed substance of the legislation is then a matter for regulation.
‘Martin Narey, the Barnardo’s chief executive and former director general of the Prison Service, said: “If the vetting and barring scheme stops just one child ending up a victim of a paedophile then it will be worth it.”‘
What a pr!ck Martin Narey is. Two things:
1) There is no evidence whatsoever that this absurd scheme will stop a single paedophile molesting a single child.
2) Even if it did stop “just one child” being molested that would not make the case. The costs are huge: less volunteers to work with children, the corrosion of trust between adults and children, the huge personal impact of the inevitable false positives, to mention just three.
What has really annoyed me about the coverage and debate in newspapers and on news shows is that point 1 seems to have been conceded without any discussion. Once you get the proponents of the measure to address this point you can move onto the costs v benefits argument.
I see no necessary contradiction between believing (a) that all the social workers should have done something about Baby P or similar cases, and (b) we should not adopt the vetting procedure mentioned above and should dump some (or all, but that’s looking too far ahead for most people) of the monitoring, vetting and legal oversight of families that exists now. And the social workers.
Given that here and now we do have all these social workers, is it asking so much they do their jobs and look at what’s in front of their noses? And to help them along with looking in front of their noses let us expunge some of the paper pushing that takes up most of their time and attention. I don’t believe just that this system of everybody spying on everybody else will not save a single child, I bet it will help kill dozens. It already has snowed under the poor bloody social workers with flow charts and liaison meetings and created a culture that makes them think, “we’ve ticked the boxes and gone through all the procedures so it must be alright.”
There are situations where honesty should compel us to say, yes, what we propose will kill more people but it’s worth it for other benefits. Most people already accept that with respect to speed limits. However this is not one of those situtatons.
Indeed, Robert Scarth, and what a case Barnados itself is; a classic case of a formerly venerable charity now hollowed out and colonised by the state. (As have been all the largest children’s charities in England and Wales.) It is very largely a state contractor, uses large quantities of funds on lobbying, and is a bearer quite literally of privilege, having special powers over information sharing granted to it in regulations under the Children Act 2004.
See
http://fakecharities.org/pages/posts/barnados137.php for a cursory analysis, or read its own publications for the full horror.
I seem to recall that all the procedures to flag up Ian Huntley as a potential danger were already in place at the time but no one bothered to carry them out. A North Lincs. police dept. was panned for not having kept the records properly but if they had it would have made no difference because no one asked to see them. I know that I may have some of the details wrong but the point is that I don’t believe that all this intrusive vetting will do any good.
Ian,
Sorry. I think you are wrong. What these rules do is destroy civil society. They actively discourage any “civilian” doing a godamn thing about a child being ill-treated such as even calling the fuzz. It is now of course the sole province of the SS. It is the nationalisation of childhood these fuckers are after. It is exactly the same mentality which lead to a “City Acadmey” recently being built with no break times for free-association of the inmates. They hate the Scouts or independent dance schools or village football clubs because it’s us proles doing it by ourselves which is to become verboten.
For the true socialist future our society has to be atomized fisrst so that we are made entirely reliant on the state. And they have done it very well. A few years ago I walked past a little girl alone and crying in the street. I was scared of getting lynched or nicked for trying to molest her so I didn’t even speak to her to ask her “Where’s your mummy?” I walked on by and at that point I knew with crystal clarity that our society was broken.
And I’m sorry I wasn’t braver.
She would have been safe with me (I am not a peadophile) but who knows who might have come down the road next? My point there is that this control freakery not only isolates us from each other (why do you think they are persuing policies obviously designed to shut down pubs, clubs and even now the Scouts?) but it is actively harmful to the safety of children.
As to Baby P. That was from the word go a police matter. It had nothing to do with the SS who only muddied the situation and that is why libertarians (and a whole load other folks) got pissed-off. It was not being Daily Mailish because enough of them are convinced that there is a pederast behind every bush and that that is a bad thing because it’s reducing the value of their home. As to readers of “The News of The World and Jordan’s Tits” I suspect they are now convinced that every single adult male other than themselves likes it young and very tight.
Well fuck ’em. We have got to take civil society back and I will be bent backwards over an organic milk churn and reemed senseless by Jaqui Smith wearing a strap-on and a basque (if they do those in orca size) before I, a 36 year old married adult male whose sexual history only includes adult women with like tits and hair “down there” and everything else has to prove I’m not Gary Glitter before I can have any contact with kids.
One of my jobs requires I have to have contact with kids. It also on occassion has required physical contact with them to prevent them drowning themselves.
Nick, I’m not sure what you think I’m wrong about. I’m utterly opposed to these measures. But then I was utterly opposed to the Sex Offenders Register too, which was the start of the slippery slope.
The point about Baby P was that the hue and cry was all about how the social workers should have done something; that is it was a call for more rigorous interventionism. If that’s what you want, this kind of thing is what you get. Likewise Ian Huntley hadn’t actually been convicted of any crime. If people say there was sufficient “smoke” about him, and something should have been done beforehand… well, the ISA is what you are going to get.
It’s no good crying rivers about how the state didn’t do enough, then complaining when it sets up a system to Do Something. If it’s the job of the State to proactively weed out “bad eggs” before they do whatever dastardly deed they are programmed by nature to do, then the State will need some kind of system like this.
Either you leave people alone until they do the unspeakable, or you try to isolate them preemptively. I’m in favour of the former, but very few other people are. Most people want a system that fucks other people up but leaves themselves alone. They generally refuse to accept that that is impossible.
Anyway, the obvious next step to this- wait for another headline grabbing crime to create strong demand for it- will be to deny anyone on the ISA register the right to have children of their own. It obviously makes no sense to have an enormous apparat identifying crypto-paedophiles then letting them breed their own victims. In future, you will need a procreation license from the state. A few people will get upset at the time that law is brought in, and then it will just become the norm. Such is progress.
… and here come the threats towards those who won’t play along:
“Chris Keates, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said schools might be “quite suspicious” if volunteers dropped out because of the new vetting procedures.
“I just think people would express suspicion if parents had been working with children for quite a while, then said ‘well I’m not going to do it because I’m going to be checked’ because people who do volunteer understand the need for safeguarding.”” (From here(Link))
Ian,
I was arguing that the state is not the solution and in fact detracts from the solution which is essentially neighbourlyness (sp?). A thing I think the state is actively trying to destroy.
The logical conclusion from this (and bear in mind that enjoy using reductio ad absurdum as a device of reasoning), is that, in fairly short order, it will be necessary to pass a criminal records bureau check, to become a parent – in the event of failing such a check, any offspring under 18 will be immediately taken into care.
As someone without children, who does not need to interact with children either, I wonder whether I would be viewed with suspicion by an employer or customer, by not having to have been subject to such a check…
As a Christian, I naturally believe that evil lies in the hearts of men, and no matter what kind of pressure (either societal or governmental) is put on people to behave, there will always be the evil ones out there.
Having said that, I also believe that the government should butt out of this. I don’t know which is the chicken and which the egg, but the two problems we face is the mass abdication of parental responsibility towards their children and the mass expansion of government regulations regarding people interacting with said children.
I believe neighbourhoods – and people – were much safer when they policed themselves. When you had the Miss Marples, so to speak. When everyone looked out for everyone in a friendly, neighbourly fashion. When parents could cane the children for acting stupidly (I certainly learnt not to repeat the actions, or at least not to get caught).
Of course, some people are against this kind of nosiness and busybodyness. But it’s probably better than having the local constabulary and SS stormtroopers – oh, sorry, employees – inconveniencing everyone. At least you can tell Miss Marple to MYOB.
Gregory, as an atheist, I also naturally believe that evil lies in the hearts of men, and no matter what kind of pressure (either societal or governmental) is put on people to behave, there will always be the evil ones out there… that is precisely why, given my views of the inherent fallibility of man, I am profoundly opposed to seeing fallible men with so much force backed political power over people.
I’m confused. This is a check of criminal history, right?
Other than crimes against children, domestic violence, and maybe cruelty to animals, what crimes serve as predictors of crimes against children?
It’s entirely right and proper that people in certain professions should have background investigator’s crawling up their asses with magnifying glasses and alternative light sources to try to predict and prevent future wrongdoing. But I would have applied this standard to police officers and legislators, not the guy who has to drive a half-dozen of his childrens’ classmates on a school field trip twice a year.
F***ing social service people. Plenty of time to ask rude questions about who in a household is genetically related to who else, but when I need to place a child at 3AM who was in the back seat of a car driven by a tweaker who blew .152 and I can’t find a next of kin, they can’t be bothered.
Perry, you’re preachin’ to the choir here. You haven’t seen government until you mosey on down to my part of the world.
But you cannot have both ways, it would seem to me. If we are to have govt butt out, then we must needs have the nosy neighbours. Since force needs to be used, the force of public opinion and censure is surely better than the force of the State. Plus, it’s reversible.
“If we are to have govt butt out, then we must needs have the nosy neighbours.”
Mill, On Liberty, 1859.
Pa Annoyed, I totally hear you. But then, what mix of answers would we have? The only possible solution I can see is eternal vigilance, and you still have to put up with the nosy neighbours or the pestilential government.
You guys do remember that we were kicked out of Eden/Rose Garden with no right of return?:-)