Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [HL]

My best response to the noble Baroness is to say that wherever we refer to a stick in the Bill, it is done notwithstanding the many carrots that are also available to encourage and incentivise precisely the culture of care and safeguarding referred to. It goes almost without saying—I will say it because the noble Baroness has raised the issue—that none of the checks and protections we are putting in place will be effective unless they go hand in hand with a culture of care and safeguarding on the part of employers as they put appropriate measures in place. I say that because a point made frequently in our debates is that a very substantial area in which the risk of harm will be high is among those who have been perfectly and properly cleared by the current processes and the checks to be put in place with the establishment of the IBB. Often a culture of abuse, of which we have had all too much evidence in various cases over recent years, has developed while people are in employment, not as a result of a failure of checks that could have been made when those individuals changed their employment. Vigilance on the part of employers is vital, as is their proper training. As I said at Second Reading, we are now putting in place significant resources to make available appropriate training for employers. Nothing in the Bill should be seen as in any way weakening those important elements in ensuring a culture of care and safeguarding. However, we believe it important that there should be proper statutory protection, including a requirement that individuals engaged in regulated activity with the permission of the regulated activity provider are subject to monitoring. While the noble Baroness is right that the fines alone will not provide the incentives or the disincentives to act, they are none the less a statement of the importance Parliament attaches to these issues and they will have a big effect on the reputation, or the potential reputation, of employers in fulfilling their proper duties. What we do in this place is often as important for the signals we send out as for the precise content of the measures themselves. I should add that an offence will not be committed by a regulated activity provider who uses an individual for regulated activity who is not subject to monitoring where the regulated activity provider began to employ that person before the commencement of the clause until such time as the Secretary of State specifies by order in the way I described in my response to the previous amendments spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. We intend that where existing employees who have not been checked come within the purview of the scheme, this will be done in a proper and orderly way, so as to manage the increased obligations on employers. Clause 10 creates important incentives for regulated activity providers to ensure that the individuals they permit to engage in regulated activity are subject to monitoring which, in turn, will ensure that the scheme works to protect children and vulnerable adults from those who present a risk. While I entirely accept the point about the wider factors which create a positive culture of care and safeguarding, we believe that the clause should stand part.