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Lord Rix: I identify myself with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen. However, I wish that he would delete the word "idiot" and substitute the word
"naiouml;ve" with regard to insurance companies. I wish, too, that he would add "vulnerable adults" to the word "children". That is the subject of Amendment No. 111.With those two provisos, I identify myself completely with the noble Lord's remarks. I must declare an interest as regards MENCAP and its leisure arm, Gateway. With 50,000 members, 700 clubs and over 20,000 volunteers, they will be subjected to an enormous cost if the Bill goes through as drafted. Without question, insurance companies and trustees will wish to ensure that those checks have been carried out in all instances, whether they involve children or vulnerable adults. I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Weatherill.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: When the Statement on the Culham Report was made in this House, I asked the Minister whether the Government would consult organisations such as the Scouts, Guides and Boys Brigades. The Minister replied that they would be consulting such organisations. When the noble Baroness replies to the amendment, will she tell us whether the Government have consulted those organisations; and, if so, what they said.
I apologise to the Committee and to the noble Lord who moved the amendment that I did not hear the whole of his speech; the train was late. In discussing the amendment we are discussing many different types of organisations. For example, leaders of Scouts, Guides and Boys Brigades are not employed. They are simply members of the organisation who, as the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said, may have grown up through the organisation. They undertake a leadership role. They are not employed; they are paid nothing. It costs the leaders quite a lot of money. The organisations are funded almost entirely out of the young people's membership subscriptions.
One has to be careful. The leaders of these organisations come and go. The organisations are taking on new people. At the same time those organisations are often the most vulnerable. The leaders go camping; they go on expeditions with the young people. Such an organisation must be absolutely certain that those leaders are reliable. That is very difficult to do as regards boys' organisations.
I hope that the Government are considering the issue carefully to see whether they have got the position right. It could be a very big problem. I can understand their desire to have a self-financing system; it will be quite an expensive business. But for the organisations to which I refer, it seems a large potential burden. I agree with those noble Lords who said that it will be difficult not to obtain a certificate. If you do not have one and something goes wrong, there will be trouble. Those of us who have worked in the organisations about which I speak have felt the responsibility very heavily upon us. I could describe a number of awkward moments when there were doubts about people. It is difficult to shed them. The certificate will be desirable for the
organisations. I shall be interested to hear what my noble friend tells us about the cost and whether the Government see a way of paying for it.
Lord Renton: Perhaps I may briefly follow up what my noble friend said. The only issue is whether the prescribed fee should be paid by the general body of taxpayers or by the various charities. With a small charity there would not be a great turnover requiring many new applicants to be considered each year. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Rix, said, with the large charities it could come to a considerable sum each year because inevitably there is a considerable turnover. It seems to me that it is more a matter of arithmetic than of any legal principle. When my noble friend Lady Blatch replies, it will be interesting if she can give us some indication of the arithmetic.
Viscount Brentford: The noble Lord, Lord Murray, rightly said that many volunteers are taking early retirement. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, touched upon the large number of undergraduates. They are unable to pay the fees. They have to do their utmost to meet the cost of fares to wherever the activity takes place, when they give one week of their time in a year. I hope that that point will be taken into account by the Government. I support the amendment.
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh: I declare an interest. I speak as a patron of SENSE. It is a charity which deals with the deaf-blind. Not too many people appreciate how many are born deaf-blind. It may be congenital and last through puberty, adolescence and adulthood to the end of their lives. They do not see or hear in full. Sometimes they are unable to walk. Since they cannot hear, they cannot talk. However, they have an animal sense. They were born male or female and they therefore have the ability to reproduce. Intimate and close attention has to be paid to these people to help them to understand--because they are totally unaware of the consequences of the talent with which they were blessed at birth.
The noble Lord, Lord Rix, has mentioned vulnerable adults. He and the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, will raise the issue in Amendment No. 111. The vulnerable adult's impairment has an adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. The effect of his or her disability is substantial and long term. This same disability significantly impedes his or her ability to communicate. I refer to close and intimate contact as regards the volunteers and those people who are hired by SENSE to look after those vulnerable adults. As I said, the disability may be congenital; but it may result from the inevitable ageing process in the long term--what we call old age. Millions are affected and fall within that bracket. I disagree with the belief held by some that those working in close, unsupervised contact with those over 18 constitutes a relatively smaller class--with a growing number of people living longer it is fast becoming a marginally smaller class of employees.
As I said, I have the good fortune to be a patron of SENSE. In a conversation I had with the manager of a residential home, he raised the following points. This information comes, as it were, from the rock face. He said that, first, it is important that police intelligence is sought for all his contact employees. Secondly, it is vital that such intelligence is supplied speedily. He had found that to be a problem up to now and said it would be a greater problem in the future, if more and more bureaucracy is involved, speedily to avoid any staff shortages in such a sensitive area as duo-sensory caring. Thirdly, SENSE takes those in its care on holidays each year, and those holiday parties "survive" off volunteers. He said fourthly that he was finding it increasingly difficult to find volunteers who would attend on a regular basis. That is vital for those who are deaf-blind since they rely so much on the smell and touch of the person who is associated with their care. His fifth point was that, should a potential employee be made to pay for his or her police intelligence report and then not get the job, that was a disincentive when applying for a similar position elsewhere. His sixth point was that there must be a designated list of past crimes which will forbid certain volunteers from taking roles in certain charities dealing with vulnerable people.
We spoke about finances, and his seventh point was that the enhanced criminal certificate could be financed through the lottery fund--not the charities or volunteers. Despite the denials that we have heard from so many sources, it is recognised that the purchase of lottery tickets has affected the voluntary donation made to charities.
Perhaps the Committee will bear with me for a few seconds longer. If noble Lords would like me to sit down, I will; but I should like to make one final point. I am a Cross-Bencher, supporting a Cross-Bench amendment. With all the political parties trying to command the moral high ground, it would be immoral and unjust for the Government and Parliament to tax those who volunteer their time and their privacy to act in a moral and Christian way, to help those who cannot help themselves. I support the amendment.
4 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: I understand why these amendments have been brought forward. There are many millions of people in this country who act as volunteers. The Government recognise the valuable part that volunteers play in the community. It is a role which this Government have sought to encourage and extend. We have no wish to discourage volunteering and we do not believe that the proposals in this part of the Bill would have that effect. Until fairly recently I was the Minister with principal responsibility for the voluntary sector. I know how much work is going on in that sector and the degree to which it impacts on all our communities throughout the land.
One of the main reasons why we introduced these proposals was in order to meet the widespread demand there has been within the voluntary sector for access to criminal record checks on prospective employees and volunteers on the same basis as already exists for the statutory sector. At the moment the police service
carries out over 1 million criminal record checks, mainly on those who work with children, free of charge. But the checks cost money and neither the police nor any agency could increase the number of checks which they undertake without extra resources. In the case of the police this would mean diverting them from core policing activities. The only way to increase the availability of checks was to find an alternative way of funding them. Rather than place an additional burden on employers and voluntary organisations, we decided that the fairest way of spreading the burden was for individuals to pay for their own checks.We estimate that there are between 8 million and 20 million volunteers in this country. It is difficult to be more precise given the wide range and often informal nature of volunteering opportunities. But it is clear that there could potentially be a huge number of volunteers who might qualify for a free check if these amendments were adopted. Even so, when preparing the proposals in the Bill, we did give very careful consideration to the possibility of free or subsidised checks for volunteers. Both options having been carefully considered, they were rejected for reasons of equity and practicality.
It would only be possible to provide free checks on volunteers working for charities and voluntary organisations if, as my noble friend Lord Renton said, someone else met the costs. We do not believe that it would be right to require the taxpayer or voluntary organisations to pick up the bill. Costs should be met by those who wish to use the service. This means that the cost of providing free or subsidised checks for volunteers would have to be met by other users. We estimate that free checks for volunteers would at least double the cost of criminal record certificates and enhanced certificates for those who had to pay for their checks and who are left outside the scope of this amendment. In some circumstances that includes the unemployed.
The increase could be even higher if, for example, the fact that the checks were free meant that there was a significant stimulation of the demand for checks for volunteers. Subsidised checks would have a similar effect on charges depending on the level of subsidy. It is surely not right to expect those seeking checks for employment or other purposes, many of whom will be unemployed or low paid and so less able than many volunteers to pay the fee--not just the fee but double that amount or more--to meet these additional costs.
But the practical difficulties of free or subsidised checks are even more formidable. There would clearly be an incentive, all the greater if fees were higher, to obtain a check free of charge on the basis of being a volunteer. The voluntary sector in this country is large and diverse. A complex system of controls would be necessary to establish whether applicants claiming a free check were in fact entitled to do so. Without such safeguards, the whole system would be wide open to abuse and understandable public concern. Sophisticated, verifiable systems would need to be put in place. It would also produce a more expensive system to operate with the result that the fees for those who had to pay would be pushed even higher.
I believe that those are powerful arguments against providing free checks for volunteers as these amendments propose. We must not assume that checks provide a guarantee that volunteers are suitable for the post they are seeking.
The noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, said that the checks could create a false sense of security. We have made the point in the code of practice that we specifically do not wish that to happen. The checks must not be taken as the only guarantee that anybody being employed in the voluntary sector or anywhere with access to children is safe. They should not be the be-all and end-all. It will be no guarantee that such people are safe. It will certainly eliminate some of the worst effects of employing people, but there is no substitute whatsoever for proper systems being put in place. Much was said about the scout, brownie and guide movements and the Red Cross. From experience, I can tell the Committee that those organisations have some pretty good systems in place for checking on the people they recruit to work for them and who therefore have access to young people.
Voluntary agencies as much as others must ensure that they make other inquiries and are discriminating in their use of and reliance on checks. The existence of a fee for a check will encourage voluntary agencies to think properly about whether a check is needed--a point made by my noble friend Lady Rawlings--and, if so, what value it will add to the other recruitment procedures. Many volunteers will not require checks because the type of work they will perform does not justify it or because they are well known to the organisations for whom they seek to work.
Where a check is needed, many volunteers will be well able and willing to pay for the check. Many of us volunteer in the knowledge that we may incur additional costs; for example, for the purchase of uniforms, materials or travelling, as well as giving up our time. If a check is genuinely necessary for those undertaking voluntary work, I believe that the vast majority of volunteers will be happy to pay the fairly small level of fee which we envisage, provided that the costs are spread fairly across all users. I should also point out that, in the case of a criminal conviction certificate, once it has been obtained, the individual concerned may also be able to make use of it for other purposes such as job applications. It is not clear why such uses should also effectively be subsidised.
A point which I made at Second Reading and repeat now is that although there will be no requirement on the voluntary organisation to meet the cost of checks for individuals wishing to work for them, some have a very low turnover of staff--again a point made by my noble friend Lord Renton--and might be willing to meet the cost for those individuals who genuinely feel unable to pay the fee themselves. Alternatively, they might recover the cost from the individual over a period of time, particularly--as I mentioned--as the individual might be able to make use of the certificate for other purposes unconnected with volunteering.
Compared with the difficulties of principle and practice with providing free or subsidised checks for volunteers, we believe that the right approach is to
spread the costs across all users and so keep the fees as low as possible. On that basis, we expect that the fee for a criminal conviction certificate or a criminal record certificate will be about £5 or £6, with an enhanced criminal record certificate costing between £8 and £10. Those sums are considerably less than most people were expecting. I do not believe that they are unreasonable amounts for most volunteers to meet or that they will act as a serious disincentive to volunteering.I was asked to give figures and I shall do so. However, perhaps I may preface the statistics with this remark. I personally have worked in the voluntary sector and can name a few of the organisations with which I have worked: the citizens advice bureaux; the Women's Royal Voluntary Service; youth clubs; I have been a Sunday school teacher and have worked with the Macmillan nurses. I am president of the National Benevolent Institution. All I can say is that my volunteering activities go back a long way. There are thousands and thousands of people in my position who would willingly have met this cost rather than have it fall on the voluntary organisation. If we accept that the amendment would cover my obligation to pay the fee, we all know that if something is free then very few people volunteer to pay for it. It is true that a substantial number of people are well able to meet the fee and it is my view that they will.
On the point made by my noble friend Lady Rawlings, large numbers of people work in the voluntary sector at a local level. They are well known, they have come through the organisations within which they volunteer, their antecedents are known, and whole families are known. The idea of carrying out enhanced checks on them is nonsense and is inconsistent with the code of practice. So that is another group of people who can be taken out of the equation. Of course, a small number of people who come into the voluntary sector and wish to give time and energy to it will not be able to pay. For them, it could be spread over a period and, especially where there is a low turnover, it is possible that the money could be found to help them. However, the amendments go all the way. They ask for the fee to be waived for all those people.
I finish with the figures. Everyone who has spoken in support of the amendments today, like the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, and others, argued strongly that there would be so much pressure that checks would have to be done on everyone. I take all the figures that have been used by Members of the Committee in the course of the debate as to what the checks will cost voluntary organisations. My range of figures is from 8 million to 20 million volunteers. If I take the most conservative of those figures--and this is not inconsistent with some given for individual organisations--with 8 million volunteers the enhanced check would cost anything between £64 million and £80 million, using the £8 or £10. With £8 it would be £64 million, and with £10 it would cost £80 million.
If we use the figure of 20 million volunteers, the costs become £160 million to £200 million. The figures will be somewhere between £64 million and £200 million on the enhanced check. However, I take an even more
conservative look at the figures. With the 8 million volunteers, if one does no enhanced checks, merely the full checks, at £5 per check we are talking of £40 million and at £6 per check £48 million. With the figure of 20 million volunteers, we are talking of £100 million to £120 million.In anyone's language, those are substantial sums. Depending on the check that is done, at the lowest, the costs are between £40 million and £200 million, whether we take 8 million volunteers or 20 million volunteers. I say to noble Lords opposite that this is a real commitment to public spending. My noble friend Lord Renton made the point that it is incumbent on all of us not to say that these are trivial or, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, a "modest sum of money". The sums are substantial and it is particularly incumbent on this House to give another place an indication of where we believe the money will come from. I believe there are only two places: one is the taxpayer, the other is all those residual people who are not included in the amendment. I do not believe that that amount of money can be afforded and therefore we fall back on what we said at the outset. Having considered the matter carefully, we believe that an even spread and a modest fee for that important information which will enhance the effectiveness of the voluntary sector and make vulnerable groups safer in the community is the fairest way forward. Then it will not become an unreasonable burden on individuals and/or the taxpayers.
4.15 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I know that the Committee does not wish the debate to be prolonged, but I must come back on the figures given by the Minister. They are completely in conflict with what is stated in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to the Bill. It states that:
- "It is expected that up to 2.5 million checks will be carried out during the first year of operation with turnover estimated at about £18 million".
The memorandum started by saying that:
- "up to 8 million checks a year might be needed when the service is fully operational".
Presumably the cost of that would be 18 times 8 divided by 2.5. In other words, it would be of the order of £40 million to £50 million at most, compared with the £200 million mentioned by the Minister. Does she seriously say that the Financial Memorandum did not consider the cost of checks on volunteers as part of the costing of the Bill? If so, it was grossly inadequate. Everyone, including the Minister, has agreed that checks on volunteers will be required.
Before the Minister answers, perhaps I may put one final point to her. When the Government responded to the Cullen Report on Dunblane, they quite rightly congratulated themselves on the number of Lord Cullen's recommendations that were accepted by the Government. The only change that they made--in my view quite rightly--was to be tougher about gun control than Cullen recommended. On everything else, the Government said, "We are accepting Lord Cullen's recommendations". Did not Lord Cullen recommend specifically that the vetting and supervision of adults
working with children and young people should be kept within the limits of what organisations could afford and therefore be subsidised by the Government, if necessary? If the Government were going to respond honestly to Cullen, should they not have said that they were not accepting that recommendation?
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