Scandals have anniversaries, too, and another has just passed. In January 2006, it emerged that the Education Department (DfES) had authorised Paul Reeve — a man who had a police caution for viewing child pornography and was on the Sex Offenders Register — to be employed as a PE teacher in a school in Norwich.
In May 2005, civil servants advised Kim Howells, an education minister at the time, that the man should be given only a warning, was not a risk to children, had not been convicted of an offence and that no child had been harmed. Reeve had not been put on what is still called ‘List 99’, the department’s blacklist, even though he was on the Sex Offenders Register. More cases were quickly uncovered.
At the heart of the scandal was the government’s astonishing failure to act quickly and with political will upon the recommendations of Sir Michael Bichard. His inquiry, published in June 2004, investigated the murder by Ian Huntley of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham two years earlier. Sir Michael recommended a new ‘central register’ that unified all the lists of those who could be a danger to children. He also suggested that an independent body, rather than politicians, should decide who should be barred from working in schools.
Last November, the government finally passed the 2006 Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act in response to Bichard. But — to parents alarmed by almost daily headlines about sex offenders on the loose — only one question matters: three years on from the Bichard report, are the promised independent body and unified list up and running, or not?
I call the Education Department press office. When is the Independent Barring Board (IBB) expected to start? Answer: an independent panel led by Sir Roger Singleton, the former head of Barnardo’s, currently advises on every barring decision. This doesn’t answer my question. What of the IBB? I look at the ‘joinIBB’ website. Applications for the £80k job as IBB chairman were still being submitted as late as 22 December.
Another department is helping the DfES to set up the board. The trouble is that it’s the Home Office, which has a fair amount on its plate at the moment. I call them anyway. Answer: the board will not be up and running until 2007–08.
Still, at least an independent panel of some sort is in place. Back to the DfES. When will all the lists be unified? Answer: I’m referred to the ‘latest update’. This turns out to be a parliamentary answer from the Secretary of State last year. It contains no answer to the specific question, but according to a government website the new vetting and barring system will be ‘phased in’ during autumn 2008.
Of course, no unified list or vetting body can provide a complete guarantee: Ian Huntley was not on a register (although there are grounds to believe that he should have been). That is not the point, however. Having promised a flurry of ‘eye-catching initiatives’ during the Reeve scandal, the government has now restored the question to Whitehall’s quiet back-burner.
Central failure makes for local paranoia, unnecessary red tape and muddle: such are the wages in practice of a system that does not work, and generates more heat than light. A friend who teaches at a secondary school in southern England tells me, ‘Supply teachers have to have multiple checks because they keep moving from one job to another.’ But his school is going beyond the official rules too. Not only do teachers have to wear photo badges at all times, a huge fence is being built around the premises ‘even though the people wandering on to the premises around the back are usually the kids who’ve been expelled’.
In the online forums of ukclimbing.com, an internet reference tool for climbers, those who teach youngsters complain of the inefficiency and burden of multiple tests. ‘How many [checks] has this “sensible system” awarded you?’ asks one. ‘Six, but I lost count recently. Might be more!’ answers a woman. ‘It’s frustrating that each time I apply for another part-time job no one seems to want to use the current [check]. It’s a crazy system,’ concludes a man with six checks. Another man says he has had 14 and ‘I’m only 22!’ The whiff of panic measures at local level in response to bureaucratic chaos in Whitehall is very strong.
So how easy is it find out how many sex offenders are presently barred by the Education Department? The DfES says that for every ‘List 99’ case ‘where there has been a conviction or caution for a sexual offence relating to children, the outcome has been a bar’. But they don’t say how many and I’m referred to that ‘latest update’ again. Here, one is relying on figures drawn from a single Ofsted report, which says that 700,000 Criminal Records Bureau checks were carried out on employees in 2005. But that does not tell me the number of sex offenders who are on the Education Department’s blacklist. Either the department does not have the figures I want, or refuses to publish them. They won’t say which. I’m told by a spokesperson that the department ‘gives regular updates to Parliament’. Not of the figure I’m looking for, they don’t.
With such statistical black holes, perhaps it’s not surprising that the public is increasingly convinced that unmonitored sexual predators lurk round every corner. I try the Home Office: a press officer says that for 2005–06, 2,801,028 checks were made. This is double the number checked in 2002–03. A 2006 Mori survey of 300 organisations that are registered with the CRB for regular checks revealed that 6.5 per cent of all such checks show ‘information about the applicant’ which includes criminal convictions and/or cautions. Of these, only 10.53 per cent had their job application to work in education turned down. Out of all those who had their job application turned down (to work in education and elsewhere), 2 per cent were turned down because they were barred under the Protection of Children Act (PoCA).
But that still doesn’t answer the question: how many of the 6.5 per cent are actually barred from working in schools because of a sexual offence against children? Those statistics ‘aren’t available’ from the Home Office. That’s a question for education officials. It’s their job to record this on ‘List 99’. Back to the Education Department.
Answer: I’m referred to that ‘latest update’, an answer which is becoming Orwellian in its familiarity. But our old friend the ‘latest update’ doesn’t happen to contain any latest ‘List 99’ statistics. The DfES website says that 4,045 people are on this list. But this still doesn’t tell us how many are for sexual offences against children.
The combination in this story of intermittent hysteria punctuating a normal pattern of snail’s-pace reform is deeply worrying. It should not be this difficult to obtain such obviously important information about the number of sex offenders presently barred from schools. Under fire, ministers promise supremely efficient vetting and then — once the media scrutiny has subsided — normal service is resumed.
The ever-expanding vetting system for all adults working with children and vulnerable groups aims to cover about 10 million people — a fifth of the adult population. What are the odds that it will be able to cope?