CRB Checks

From Freebrighton

The Vetting and Barring bill is a piece of legislation that is due to come fully into force by 26 July 2010. It is a centralised scheme that requires all adults that come into regular contact with children to be subjected to criminal record checks at their own expense.

This scheme was developed in response to the Soham murders of 2002, purportedly as a way of protecting children. However, far from protecting children, they transfer responsibility for child protection from the individual to the state, allowing individuals themselves to pass the buck. Provided the "correct procedures have been followed" and the correct forms have been filled in, headteachers and youth-group leaders are no longer responsible for whom they employ. Decisions about people's lives have instead been deferred to a set of computer-based, procedural rules based on information held in a central database.

We at Free Brighton vehemently oppose this legislation. We believe that it will lead to a bureaucratic "computer says no" culture which will lead to arbitrary decisions being made about the lives of children and carers alike. This legislation would not have prevented the Soham murders or the Dunblane killings.

Such legislation dehumanises relationships and trivialises child protection, reducing it to a set of tick-box policies rather than a balance of human judgements.

See http://www.manifestoclub.com/hubs/vetting for further information on the Vetting and Barring scheme.

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