Good news for volunteers

[MrGongGong]

Mine expires next month

Where is the expiry date ?
the one i'm looking at has

Disclosure number
Date of issue
Employment details

but NO expiry date

[Lateralthinking1]

The presentation of this news story is fascinating. Headed "Duplicate crime checks for volunteers abolished", it isn't until paragraph 6 that the article says "the changes also affect people who need to be vetted for their jobs". Is it designed to conceal a softening of approach to employment vetting or does it indicate an acceptance that most work these days is expected to be done unpaid?

There is a reference in this thread to a "national database". It isn't held by the Government but Capita. That is to change as the responsibility is soon to move to another company. The public will have no say on where it goes and there is no information about any requirements on Capita to destroy the information it has held now for some 10 years. The new company could well be Tata Group which is a multinational conglomerate based in India, details of which are here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Group.

CRB is generally understood to be a system for protecting children. Actually it applies to vulnerable adults too. The latter category includes everyone over the age of 65. Here are examples of people in the vulnerable group category with special protections - Paddy Ashdown, Lord Prescott, Chris Patten, Rupert Murdoch, Ronald Biggs. If that were not sufficiently ridiculous, there is plenty of other nonsense that accompanies it. As others have remarked, it is hardly guaranteed to protect anyone when very serious problems often occur within families and, in any case, there isn't a curfew on anyone. An axe murderer could be on any bus. What it does do is protect employers to some degree from costly litigation. We blame the US or the EU but this was all the UK's idea.

If I ran a volunteering organisation, I wouldn't have the gall to treat willing applicants as if they were criminal. We have discussed ex-prisoners in the context of voters' rights but this policy is very detrimental to rehabilitation. Additionally, anyone entering this country may have acquired convictions annually since 1953 and there is no means of checking. It has been interesting to see how the Coalition has really dragged its feet on reform and then done it so half-heartedly. In particular, it is another example of Nick's non-conviction politics. Much was said about removing red tape. Why then still a sledgehammer to crack a tiny number of nuts?