Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Thursday 20 May 2010

"Vetting and barring scheme" - review promised by coalition

I am working my way through the coalition programme for government at the moment and have just noticed the following:


"We will review the criminal records and vetting and barring regime and scale it back to common sense levels"

Now of course this is quite vague on vetting and barring (a piece of legislation I have railed against in the past) but at least a promise of a review is there. I would like to know what form this review will take and whether the public will be allowed to input into it. If anything, I would suggest that this horrible piece of law could be a candidate for total repeal as one of the laws that the public may think should go.

3 comments:

John said...

will it get an airing as part of the `public reading` days?

Kalvis Jansons said...

Certainly a good sign, at least!

Hywel said...

It is an illustration of the problems of demanding total repeal of whole acts though.

It is clearly sensible that some people in positions of responsibility for young/vulnerable people have some checks made on their suitability.

The problem is the scale to which this has extended (not always by legislation)

Generally there needs to be some care in calling for the repeal of whole acts that you don't remove some desirably legislation as well. I once attacked the BNP who were demanding the "repeal of the politically correct 1984 PACE Act" by pointing out that if they did so they would also repeal the police power of arrest!