Education and Inspections Bill

We regard this as a serious issue and we look forward to further discussions, which my honourable friend will lead next week, on this difficult issue. Our concern is to ensure that allegations are investigated and dealt with speedily and confidentially. These are the two prime requirements that teachers and carers can legitimately expect from a system when their whole livelihood and future are at stake in the consideration of allegations. We have sought to improve guidance and materials to schools on how to deal with cases. Last November, we issued new guidance on this issue to schools and to further education institutions in England. This April, the revised version of Working Together to Safeguard Children provided overarching guidance on allegations against anyone working with children in any setting. Our guidance states that every effort should be made to maintain confidentiality while an allegation is being investigated, unless and until a person is charged with an offence. It also seeks to promote expeditious investigations. The aim is for at least 80 per cent of cases to be resolved in less than one month—this would be an increase on our latest figures, for 2003-04, which show that 55 per cent of allegations were resolved in less than one month—and for all but the most complicated cases and cases that must go to court to be dealt with in less than three months. At present, the latest figures, for 2003-04, show that 22 per cent of cases took up to three months to complete and that 10 per cent of cases took up to a year, which we regard as an excessively long time. We have also put in place a network of 15 allegation management advisers, who are based in government offices in England and who work with local safeguarding children boards to ensure that effective arrangements are in place for dealing with allegations of abuse against everyone who works with children—that is, not only teachers but other staff and volunteers in schools and further education institutions. Part of the work of the advisers will be to help organisations to prevent allegations from arising in the first place, particularly in the circumstances mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, through safe recruitment processes and advice on staff behaviour when working with children. We are keen to explore next week the question of whether we can go further, but I shall not disguise the fact that we have encountered difficulties on further statutory protection, not least in the read-across to other public servants and others who quite legitimately expect similar protection. We are wrestling with these issues, and I hope that we will have more information to make available to noble Lords in the meeting next week so that we can at least have a stronger shared understanding of how to proceed satisfactorily on this issue.