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Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow): Does my hon. Friend agree that we should take care with the one in 60 figure because of the range of offences that it covers? Obviously, it refers not just to abuse but to any sexual offence, including some that are now legal following a change in the law on the age of consent.
Mr. Connarty: I take that point, although we should still acknowledge the scale of the problem and the clear information deficit.
Mention has been made of the Australian experience. I, too, spoke to people out in Australia about some of their experiences. There has also been the recent Belgian scandal, and some nearer to home. The internet is polluted with people who use it to transfer paedophiliac information, and to consort with others, in a sense, to gather strength and protect themselves.
I should like to take up the negative comment about the concept of a big brother. Big brother is also often the person who protects smaller children from bullies and abusers. We must strike a balance in the use of the term. I would rather have a big brother who cared for me, than not have one to protect me when I was being attacked.
Mr. Forth:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
Mr. Connarty:
No, we are short of time. Expanding on such a philosophical point would not necessarily add to our discussion.
We need a very close concordat with the new Scottish Parliament on how information from lists can be transferred quickly. Everyone who works for a public authority--all authorities named in the Bill are public authorities--in Scotland must already agree to undergo a Scottish Criminal Records Office check. The SCRO has become part of the public sector. Unfortunately, the check is not applied to many parts of the voluntary and private sectors. I noted the clear definition of an United Kingdom-wide working relationship in legislation that set up the Scottish serious crime squad, passed in the previous Parliament. We must establish such a relationship in this Bill as quickly as possible.
I have personal experience of the deficit of information in this area. On the second anniversary of the disappearance of Vicky Hamilton, a constituent of mine, I raised in an Adjournment debate the problem that, at that time--and probably not even now--there was not a United Kingdom missing persons register. From speaking to Mrs. Lamplugh, the mother of Suzy, I know that it is one of her concerns that information does not transfer. Someone can go missing in Scotland, but information to enable a search will not readily appear on any other register. We must do something about that.
Lists that are compiled nationally must be operated locally. I take the point of my hon. Friends the Members for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) and for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) on the problem of the length of
time that it takes to find those who may have some record that would exclude them from having contact with children. They can easily be allowed to escape from the net. Following the Cullen report, most authorities in Scotland seem to be taking a one-door approach, with child and family units, the police, social workers, education services and the voluntary sector working together very closely. I hear that that approach has much improved their responses.
In considering this Bill, and this whole area--I found the same when considering the Children (Scotland) Act 1995--and as an ex-teacher and a father of a 20-plus son and a 20-year-old daughter, I find the concept of breach of trust and abuse of power difficult to comprehend. I agree with the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) that it is a privilege to be given a position from which one can help, nurture, support, protect, defend and reconstruct the lives of children in one's care in education or, after a negative experience, through social work. However, the evidence tells us that that abuse of power goes on. We must deal with it firmly.
Questions still remain in my mind. First, at what age does someone cease to be a child? The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 answers that by saying, at 18 years of age in some circumstances--which is quite old. Secondly, what are the scope and range of the risk situations, and do we cover all of them? Obviously, the Bill does not do so. Does it do enough?
The potential exists to extend the terms of the legislation to those with mental impairment. For a long time before I came to this place, I taught in a secondary school for children with learning difficulties, and I believe that they need to be protected in many ways when they leave that environment. I often told the children, "You are not special when you leave here; you are special only when you are here." Sadly, in society that is the case.
Should the protection of the Bill be extended to other vulnerable persons? The elderly were mentioned and perhaps we should consider other categories.
Will what was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) as bad practice be covered by the concept of incompetence, when that incompetence is an act of commission, not omission?
In Committee, we should consider how to cover all those questions--or whether we can cover them, and whether instead we want to cut the remit of the Bill at a certain point and make it a useful addition, but not comprehensive.
Some deficiencies sprang to my mind from situations with which I am familiar. The name of a foster carer may not be on a list, but he or she may have a relative who has a record that makes that carer unsuitable. For example, if a foster care home has a parent or a former parent who is an abuser who may have contact with that family, that becomes an unsuitable environment. The person with the criminal record is not necessarily the foster carer, and his or her name may not appear on any list. Should it appear on the list? I would err on the side of saying that it should; it is an unsuitable environment when someone in the family at the same address, or likely to have contact with the family, has an unsuitable record.
I am concerned about two groups of people who work for contract companies who have contact with children through those contracts: taxi drivers and bus drivers. I know of a situation in central Scotland where a bus driver
keeps popping up on contracted-out bus routes that take children to and from school--in one case, the school where I used to teach. He can be dismissed by a company when he is found out, only to turn up, a few months later, on another bus company's contract, doing the same thing. The exclusion of voluntary organisations also causes me great concern.
I urge members of the Committee to study the Cullen report and the situations involving Thomas Hamilton in central Scotland. He ran his own scout group of which he was the leader. He saw himself as an alternative to Baden-Powell. In all that he did, he had obviously been grooming children for years. As a council leader in Stirling, I refused him the right to hire halls from the council. He then tried to hire halls from the education authority and was turned down. He took the education authority to the ombudsman, who found in his favour and criticised the local authority for not giving him halls in which to run his youth club.
Photographs that emerged later showed that Thomas Hamilton had all the children in little black shorts which he supplied, and he took photographs of them constantly. He was never proven to have done anything that was child abuse, but obviously that, connected with his other behaviour, should have caused the police to list him as an unsuitable person--and yet they did not do so. That shows that paedophilia and child abuse can quickly spread in voluntary organisations. We should consider that closely.
I was also amazed to find that, if I interpret clause 12 correctly, subsection (3)(b) basically says that anyone working at an independent school cannot be considered to be offering child care unless it is a private school that is a children's home. Are we therefore saying that private schools are excluded from the protection offered by the Bill? That is such a glaring omission that surely we must consider a way of bringing those schools within the Bill's ambit.
I wish to illustrate some of the dangers. Sir William Utting referred to "soft information". He referred to the scheme of the Department of Health and stated:
The problem is that there is no appeal against false provisional inclusion. If that inclusion turns out to be incorrect there is no guarantee, given the bureaucratic
powers that are to be found in certain systems, that it will ever be removed. A person may go into retirement with a false accusation having been made against him and be branded for the rest of his life. We should examine seriously how we should deal with that.
"It is the only system available for dealing with soft information cases which is valuable."
He went on to express the hope
"that its future operation will preserve the balance of probabilities"
as the
"standard of proof."
That shows that, in dealing with soft information, we are in a dangerous area. For example, false accusations are sometimes made against teachers where there is malicious intent. Having been the president of a teachers' union in central Scotland, I have seen teachers break down as a result of the pressure that results from a false accusation. They have then to retire because their health has genuinely broken down. They will be on a provisional list. It is--[Interruption.] I see the signals that are being sent by some of my hon. Friends, but I did not make the mistake of printing the names at the end of the Lawrence report, an issue which took up about an hour of our time this morning. I must get on with what I wish to say. I must return to Scotland almost immediately for a surgery, which I hold every Friday night. However, I hope that my remarks will be taken in the spirit in which they are intended because they are designed to be helpful.
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