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Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo instrumental in vetting database climb-down
Laws forcing the 11 million people who help out in schools and nurseries to undergo criminal record checks to prove they are not paedophiles are to be dropped following a massive outcry. Millions of adults who volunteer to work with children will no longer be forced to undergo criminal records checks after the Government watered down its new vetting system.
The U-turn by Schools Secretary Ed Balls means that leading children’s authors, who said they would stop visiting schools in protest at the new rules, will not now be required to register on a database designed to protect children from paedophiles. The complaint by authors including Philip Pullman, Anne Fine, Anthony Horowitz, Michael Morpurgo and Quentin Blake, was first revealed by The Independent in July.
Ed Balls ordered a review of the 2006 safeguarding vulnerable groups acts by Sir Roger Singleton, a former chief executive of Barnardo’s, who will publish his report tomorrow. Last night, a spokesman for Balls said he would accept all of Singleton’s recommendations in full. The law will be amended as soon as possible.
This will mean that someone working with children will have to undergo vetting only if he or she has contact with the same group at least once a week, rather than once a month as stated in the act. People, such as authors, who go into different schools or similar settings to work with groups of children, should not be required to register unless their contact with the same children is frequent or intensive.
Posted: December 15th, 2009
Author: Lee
Categories: Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman
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