Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, the amendment that stands in my name refers to further education colleges. I am afraid that it is an inadequate amendment because it refers to FE colleges and to children. The principles that I will talk about refer equally to sixth-form colleges, which are a separate category, and to vulnerable adults. The principles are exactly the same there. I thank the Minister for the careful consideration that he has given to the issues that my noble friend Lady Walmsley and I have raised with him. I also thank him for his very helpful letter. I am grateful that he has agreed to a further meeting before Third Reading. My noble friend has already quoted extensively from that letter. When I met the Minister, I used two examples of people who would not be in a position of supervision, but who would be in a position to build up a relationship of trust, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has just mentioned. One would be a learning assistant. Such assistants are in constant contact, but they are virtually never in a position of supervision. It was pointed out to me by the Minister that if they were dealing in any way with care for young people and vulnerable students, they would be subject to vetting and barring. But not all are in that position by any means. My second example was used extensively last week in debate here in the Chamber—that of IT assistants. Noble Lords need to understand how teaching and learning take place in a modern further education college. I spent 23 years teaching in further education. It is not a simple, classical situation. A great deal of learning takes place, for example, in a learning resources centre, where there might be between 50 and 100 computers. There would be a supervisor—who would be the librarian or the learning resources administrator—but there would be an IT technician there to help. I can assure noble Lords that young people aged 14 to 16 develop a close relationship with IT technicians and regard them very highly indeed. It is that kind of position that could be exploited. Young people do not understand who is in charge—they relate to the people who are friendly with them, have a lot of contact with them and help them. They could not care less who is the boss in the set-up. We have to be very clear that, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, mentioned just now, that makes the situation very complex when we are dealing with this kind of problem. The Government offer reassurance that enhanced criminal records checks and certificates will be available for posts previously covered by the definition of regulated activity but that now fall outside it. I am very pleased that the Government have agreed to consider including staff in further education colleges dealing with children as requiring enhanced certificates. If they decide to do that, it will be in regulations in due course. However, that does not by any means solve the whole problem. It does not deal with the basic point, which is that schools, sixth-form colleges and further education colleges should be treated in the same way. There is no logical reason why they should not be, because there is such an overlap between them. If schools, for example, have a more stringent regime than colleges, the clever and devious people who target young people will look to the colleges to get the kind of employment that will enable them to establish a position of trust with vulnerable young people, rather than working in schools. This puts colleges at a disadvantage. In his letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, the Minister points out that employers will still be able to request enhanced CRB checks, and that in most cases this will contain the information that led to any barring decision. However, we know—as the noble Lord has just reminded us—that there is no police record in one in five cases of barring. Therefore, the enhanced CRB check will not throw up that situation. In the example my noble friend gave just now, the ““pervy caretaker”” does not have a police record, so it would not come up on an enhanced CRB check. The Minister said in his introduction that it would be disproportionate to put this burden on further education colleges because they deal primarily with adults. However, they deal of course with many vulnerable adults, who should be considered in the same category as young children. They also deal with many thousands of children. Further education colleges are extremely large—although you might say that only 0.5 per cent of their students are 14 to 16 year-olds, that is a very large number of young people. I have done a little asking around in the last few weeks, and found that most colleges have at least 100 young people in that category coming into their premises on a weekly basis. That number is larger than for many primary schools, yet we are saying, ““Of course, primary schools have to have this protection””, while young people in further education colleges will not have the same level of protection. I urge the Government to take these issues on board and to think again. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, proposed half a solution. There is further work to be done, but it is a very good start to how we look at this for the future, and I look forward to the opportunity of meeting with the Minister prior to Third Reading.