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Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton): I have been asked to speak to the media about almost every other subject that has been raised this week. The private security industry is the one issue on which I have not been asked to represent the view of the Government or anyone else.
Mr. Maclean: My hon. and learned Friend makes a valid point. I have run a check, and to my knowledge--I shall apologise to the House if I am wrong--no media outlet asked a Home Office Minister to talk about the security industry on the wireless this morning. I should have been delighted to do so, but no bid was received by any Home Office Minister.
Mr. Straw: Of course I accept what thehon. Gentleman says, but does he not think it improper for a special adviser in the position of a temporary civil servant to put himself in the position of a Minister and speak for the Government, as Mr. Francis Maude did this morning?
Mr. Maclean: Not the way I heard it. The deregulation unit has a point of view; so has the Select Committee;
so has the BSIA; so have the police. In that sense, they are all legitimate pressure groups with a legitimate point of view. There is no question of Francis Maude's having pretended that he spoke for the Government. The Government will make their views clear in due course. [Interruption.] Of course Mr. Maude does not speak for the Government.
Mr. Gordon McMaster (Paisley, South): Who does he speak for, then?
Mr. Maclean: He speaks for the deregulation unit, and for his point of view. We shall listen to his suggestions, as we shall listen to all other suggestions.
Mr. Straw: The Minister has come out with a very bizarre comment. He said that Mr. Maude spoke for the deregulation unit. Is the deregulation unit part of the Government?
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Before we continue, let me point out that this is a relatively short debate. It would be interesting for the Chair if hon. Members debated the subject in hand.
Mr. Maclean: I have made it clear that various organisations have views about what should be done about the private security industry, or the manned guarding sector. I have also made it clear that the Government will reveal their view in due course. Let me explain what we propose to do.
The private security industry is a large, diverse industry encompassing a wide range of activities. In most of it, there is not the slightest suggestion of a problem. For example, the alarms sector, accounting for a large part of the market turnover and employing some 33,000 people, has no problems. The big sectors comprising locksmiths, safe manufacturers and cash in transit have no problems either, and the in-house sector--estimated to outnumber the contract sector by more than two to one--is sound. We are left with the contract manned guarding sector, comprising some 24 per cent. of the industry's employees, as the only part of the industry that may merit special attention. None of those employees has the powers that a police constable has, and none can carry out what we have identified as core policing functions.
Calling for a bit of regulation and a bit of control, as the hon. Gentleman has just done, is very easy, but we must consider the machinery that is required for regulation. The Select Committee identified problems of standards, training and criminality within the contract manned guarding sector which it considered to require Government intervention. It proposed an agency to run new arrangements both for licensing individuals and for ensuring that companies fulfilled certain minimum criteria.
Licensing would involve the checking of criminal record information, and the exercise--presumably by an independent body--of an element of discretion to ensure that there was no unfairness. For companies, common minimum standards would have to be laid down,
minimum levels of training specified and arrangements made for its provision. There would then have to be regular inspections to check compliance, and recourse to the criminal justice system in the event of non-compliance. All that could have a considerable impact on smaller companies. As paragraph 86 of the report acknowledged,
What is the justification for all that change? First, it is claimed that standards are low; but low in comparison to what? Is there some objective standard? The majority of buyers of private security guarding services are other companies, and it is for them as customers to weigh the relative cost and quality of services offered.
Secondly, the commonest argument in favour of regulation is that many of those employed have criminal records. Figures submitted to the Committee following a study by the Association of Chief Police Officers seemed to indicate a high rate of offending among security guards. Further examination of those figures showed that57 per cent. of the offenders were bouncers, accounting for 68 per cent. of the offences. Night club bouncers are a distinct category, and it is a distortion to include them in the manned guarding sector.
We recognised some time ago that certain parts of the country had experienced problems with bouncers, and discussed with the police and other interested parties how we could work together to combat the problems. Local schemes set up by the police and local authorities were monitored and found to be successful in reducing the number of incidents; we have therefore drawn up and issued best practice guidelines to assist others in setting up schemes. As recommended in the report, we shall--with the help of the police--monitor the effectiveness of existing and new schemes.
Mr. Ian McCartney (Makerfield):
I was a member of the Home Office working party that investigated the industry. I thank the Minister for allowing Opposition Members to be part of that body, which sat for almost four years. Does he realise that the Select Committee report was issued before the working party had considered it? At its final drafting meeting, the working party concluded that the report's recommendations were inadequate to meet the needs of the industry. The private security industry, its associations, chief constables and representatives of the licensing trade and the brewing industry unanimously agreed that the Government's proposals were inadequate. As a result, the working party was not reconstituted. The report has been published without the working party's authority.
Mr. Maclean:
The point is that the guidelines are working, they have been welcomed throughout the country and they are dealing with problems associated with night club bouncers. There is little evidence of criminality across the board.
Mr. Roger Stott (Wigan):
The right hon. Gentleman may not be aware of the great interest that my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) and I take in the matter. Since the town of Wigan, which is in both our constituencies, has more local authority-licensed night clubs than Blackpool, we have had personal experience of
Mr. Maclean:
The hon. Gentleman makes the point that the system is working perfectly because of a voluntary scheme in his area. Rather than wanting to duplicate that scheme around the country, he wants compulsory regulation to force it on others. We have developed guidelines to deal with bouncers, and they are working very well. There is no reason why such schemes cannot be spread through the country voluntarily, with the help of police, magistrates and local councillors. If the hon. Gentleman's scheme is so good--I have heard that it is good--it should be a model for others to follow voluntarily. We have issued guidelines and I understand that they are working.
If bouncers are excluded from the manned guarding sector--bearing in mind that we have issued guidelines to deal with them--the number of ex-offenders employed in the industry is considerably lower than is claimed. Nevertheless, the industry is growing and private security guards are increasingly present in areas where they have frequent and close contact with the public. It is vital that public confidence in them should not be misplaced. It is therefore important to ensure that the bad reputations of a few unsuitable individuals or poor companies should not tarnish the reputation of the industry as a whole.
Those calling for action to root out criminals have in mind the removal from the industry of those with past convictions for all or certain offences. To do that, they are seeking access to information about criminal records. Employers and customers in many occupations might envisage benefits for themselves and the public arising from greater access to criminal records. Such checks are, however, not the only way in which to establish the suitability of applicants for jobs. Security companies, like all employers filling positions of trust, should ensure that they check carefully applicants' employment records and references.
At the moment, there is no legitimate method of obtaining information from criminal records other than by putting pressure on individuals to exercise their rights under the Data Protection Act 1988 for access to the information on convictions that is held on police computer systems. The problem is that that circumvents the safeguards available to individuals under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, which aims to strike a balance between giving offenders a chance to re-integrate themselves into society and the need to protect society from those who might offend again. It allows convictions which have become spent through the passage of time and the individual's subsequent good behaviour to remain unknown to prospective employers.
Some groups are exceptions to the Act, but they do not include any part of the private security industry. I know that parts of the industry would like that to be changed. That was also one of the Select Committee report's recommendations.
In deciding whether it is right to accept that recommendation, we need to consider very carefully the safeguards that the Act provides to individuals who, by subsequent good behaviour, have lived down their past errors, against the need of employers to ensure that their employees are fit and proper persons. Designation of jobs in part or all of the industry as exceptions to the Act would mean that those who apply for such jobs could be asked to reveal convictions that were spent under the Act.
A conviction becomes spent only when the rehabilitation period laid down in the Act has passed. That means, for example, that a conviction of more than six months would remain unspent for 10 years, and convictions incurring prison sentences of more than30 months would never become spent. Few if any serious offenders are therefore likely to slip through the net even without an exception to the Act. The Government believe that a case cannot be made for accepting the recommendation for the vast majority of the industry, and in any event it needs to be put in the context of the more general matter of pre-employment vetting.
The whole subject of pre-employment checks of criminal records has concerned the Government for some time. At present, criminal record checks are carried out by the police only for certain groups of employees. Most checks take place to protect vulnerable people such as children, while others are necessary for the purposes of national security or for probity in the administration of the law. The number of checks has grown over the years. Now, more than 1 million checks take place each year and significantly more than 600,000 are made on people seeking to work with children under the age of 18. That work places a considerable demand on the police, diverting resources from other tasks.
The Government have therefore been reviewing very carefully the current arrangements for vetting. Towards the end of 1993, we issued a Green Paper "The Disclosure of Criminal Records for Employment Vetting Purposes", which posed 12 questions that had arisen from the Home Affairs Committee's deliberations on vetting. For example, what should be the broad criteria for authorising criminal record checks and what level of checks would be appropriate in each case? Who should handle the checks? Is there a role for a central agency and, if so, what should its functions be? What are the implications of the checks for the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act?
More than 180 responses were received. They confirmed that there was a wide demand for checks not only from the private security industry but from financial organisations and those who work with vulnerable people other than children, such as elderly and disabled adults. The Government have therefore been considering a new approach to vetting. In doing so, we have taken into account the Home Affairs Committee's report on the private security industry.
"the pattern of the impact within the industry must also be considered if regulation is successfully to target weak companies rather than small companies."
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