Protection of Freedoms Bill

The “Protection of Freedoms Bill” is a Government Bill. It had its first reading on 11 February and is likely to be law by the end of 2011. It covers a variety of matters, including placing restrictions on wheel clamping of cars, use of CCTV and removal of restrictions on times for marriage and civil partnership ceremonies. From an employment law angle the most significant part of the Bill is Part 5, headed “Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups, Criminal Records etc”.

This Part of the Bill will try and strike a sensible balance between protection of vulnerable adults and children on the one hand and counter-productive, often unnecessary and expensive, authorisation requirements and CRB checks on the other. After the Soham murders, public disquiet about the ease with which a paedophile could get a job in a school led to the Bichard inquiry followed by the passing of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006. It soon became obvious that the pendulum had now swung too far in the opposite direction – for example the vetting and criminal records checks required for almost anyone other than close family to have contact with school children made it impossibly difficult for some perfectly sensible activities to continue: school play groups were affected as was the ability of parents to club together to arrange for collecting children after school.

The Protection of Freedoms Bill aims to get a better balance. It will retain some parts of the present system so it will continue to be an offence for a barred person to work with vulnerable groups in regulated activity roles. It will also still be an offence for an employer or voluntary organisation knowingly to employ a barred person in a regulated activity role. However the requirement for registration will be scrapped and there will be no ongoing monitoring. The Criminal Records Bureau and the Independent Safeguarding Authority will be merged. The new regime will retain current arrangements for referrals to the state barring body (currently the ISA) where individuals have demonstrated a risk of harm to children or vulnerable adults and, where relevant, barring will continue to apply to both paid and unpaid roles – barring will be automatic where a serious offence which provides “a clear and direct indication of risk” has been committed.

There is a useful official explanatory note on the Bill on a government web-site.