The Manifesto Club has launched a Briefing Document, welcoming the scrapping of the Vetting Database. We are delighted that five years of campaigning has paid off.
Changes for the good…
- The Vetting Database has been scrapped: individuals will no longer have to register with a state body, or submit to constant monitoring, in order to work or volunteer with children. This represents a major restoration of basic civic freedoms, and a return of the principle that we are innocent until proven guilty.
- There has been a reintroduction of basic checks and balances in barring decisions – including the reduction of the use of soft information, and a limitation of automatic barring. This will help to reduce many of the blatantly unfair decisions we have seen from the ISA.
And the bad…
- Four million people will still be vetted by law. In addition, there will be an optional system for ‘updating’ CRBs, which in practice would mean constant monitoring of those individuals.
- There will be little real limitation on over-cautious CRB checks.
- The cost of CRBs will rise. This cost rise is the result of the ceaseless bureaucratic fiddling that gone on in ‘safeguarding’ policy since 2002.
The way forward…
- We will now focus on taking on the culture of vetting, supporting individuals who are standing up against unnecessary checks in their organisations. We will particularly tackle vetting encouraged by state-linked institutions, such as local authorities, Sport England and the Charities Commission.
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