The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chairman:
Dr.
William
McCrea
Blunt,
Mr. Crispin
(Reigate)
(Con)
Campbell,
Mr. Alan
(Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's
Treasury)
Clegg,
Mr. Nick
(Sheffield, Hallam)
(LD)
Coaker,
Mr. Vernon
(Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
the Home
Department)
Farrelly,
Paul
(Newcastle-under-Lyme)
(Lab)
Field,
Mr. Mark
(Cities of London and Westminster)
(Con)
Garnier,
Mr. Edward
(Harborough)
(Con)
Gauke,
Mr. David
(South-West Hertfordshire)
(Con)
Goodman,
Helen
(Bishop Auckland)
(Lab)
Gwynne,
Andrew
(Denton and Reddish)
(Lab)
Hunter,
Mark
(Cheadle)
(LD)
Jack,
Mr. Michael
(Fylde)
(Con)
Jones,
Lynne
(Birmingham, Selly Oak)
(Lab)
McCarthy,
Kerry
(Bristol, East)
(Lab)
Morley,
Mr. Elliot
(Scunthorpe)
(Lab)
Osborne,
Sandra
(Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
(Lab)
Taylor,
Ms Dari
(Stockton, South)
(Lab)
John
Benger, Committee
Clerk
attended the Committee
Sixth
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Tuesday 5
December
2006
[Dr.
William McCrea in the
Chair]
Draft Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) (Amendment No. 2) (England and Wales) Order 2006
4.30
pm
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
(Mr. Vernon Coaker): It is a pleasure to serve
under your chairmanship, Dr. McCrea. I think that this is the first
time that I have done so, and it is a privilege.
A draft of
the order was laid before Parliament on 16 November. The
Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 allows ex-offenders not
to disclose certain old, spent convictions in an effort to improve
their employment opportunities and reduce reoffending. The 1974 Act
grants the Secretary of State the power to exclude the application of
those general rules in relation to questions by particular employers,
bodies and proceedings. That is intended to ensure that employers and
bodies that offer positions, professions and licences of a more
sensitive nature can assess an applicants full criminal history
before making a decision.
The power was exercised in
1975, when the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order
1975 came into force. The 1975 order has been amended periodically to
ensure that the criminal disclosure regime keeps pace with changes in
employment and public risk, and the most recent amendment was made in
July 2006.
The current
amendment will make minor changes that relate to football. In September
2005, Ministers gave a commitment to exempt some in-house football
stewards from the need to be licensed by making regulations under
section 4 of the Private Security Industry Act 2001. Those regulations
could be made only where suitable alternative and equivalent
arrangements were in place to require Criminal Records Bureau checks to
be undertaken on behalf of the football authorities. The 1975 order was
therefore amended in July 2006 to give the CRB the power to undertake
checks on football security staff on behalf the Football Association
and the premier league for the purposes of granting that
exemption.
After
undertaking a public consultation over the summer via a partial
regulatory impact assessment on the regulation of sports and events
security staff, Ministers decided to exempt in-house football security
staff by primary legislation. That was done in response to an amendment
to that effect to the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, which was tabled by
Lord Pendry and covered a number of sports besides football. Some of
those sports could not be granted an exemption by regulation because
they did not have equivalent arrangements in place. By contrast, the
exemption
proposed by Lord Pendry did not require equivalent arrangements to be in
place.
Having
considered the responses to the consultation, we decided that football
should be treated in the same way as other sports. The full regulatory
impact assessment was published, and copies were placed in the
Libraries of both Houses on 16 November. Football security staff are
now exempt from the licensing requirement under section 4 of the 2001
Act, as amended by the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, rather than by
regulations made under that section. That provision came into effect
when the 2006 Act received Royal Assent on 8
November.
Even though
the amendment to section 4 of the 2001 Act does not impose a
legal requirement on the football sector to have suitable alternative
arrangements in place, the sector has none the less undertaken to work
voluntarily to the standards that would have applied under the
exemption regulations and, therefore, voluntarily to undertake CRB
checks. An amendment needs to be made to the 1975 order to enable such
voluntary checks to take place.
The only other small change is
that the order that was made in July gave the CRB the power to
undertake checks on behalf of the Football Association and the Football
Association premier league, and we have now also added the Football
League to the order.
4.34
pm
Mr.
Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): I join the Minister in
welcoming you to our Committee, Dr. McCrea. I know that you
and many other members of the Committee had hoped to see a premier
division debate. I have read columns 1016-17 in
Hansard
for 4 December in the other place and I find Lord Bassam of
Brighton, the Minister, gave reasons for the order almost identical to
those given by the Minister this afternoonthough they are none
the worse for that. My noble Friend Viscount Bridgeman was commendably
brief in his remarks, and I shall quote only one aspect of them before
I sit down. Right at the end of his speech at column 1018, he said,
We support the order. So do
we.
4.35
pm
Mr.
Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD): I think that I can be
briefer still. I should, however, like to mention my noble Friend Lord
Dholakias citation of another of my noble Friends, Lord
Addington, who commented on Report, when amendment No. 55 to the
Violent Crime Reduction Bill was being
debated:
We
are talking here about correcting one of the cock-ups of
history.[Official Report, House of Lords, 16
October 2006; Vol. 685, c.
636.]
That seems a somewhat
exaggerated, almost apocalyptic description of what I understand to be
a logical and straightforward tying up of loose endsnamely that
there should be provision for voluntary checks by the CRB in the
football sector, and for the Football League to be included in the
provisions. With that caveat to my noble Friends breathless
rhetoric, I support the motion.
4.36
pm
Mr.
Coaker: I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam for
most of the points that he made and for his general support for the
order. I also thank the hon. and
learned Member for Harborough for the most brilliant speech that I have
ever heard.
Question put and agreed
to.
Committee
rose at twenty-three minutes to Five
oclock.