Written by Ellen Barnes Sunday, 13 September 2009 11:14
Dinner party conversations tend to be comfortingly familiar. For years, the 'ludicrous' rise in the value of the family home was discussed in terms of mock horror. Now that one's a definite dead duck, the new topic could well be the even more ludicrous need for perfectly well meaning people to undergo a Vetting and Barring Scheme check.
'Have you been done?' 'Who did they ask about you?' 'How long did you have to wait for the all clear?' 'Who's taking the kids to rugby meanwhile?'
With ten round the table, the conversation could see them through starters, main course and half way through pudding.
If we had any sense, we'd rise up en masse and tell the Department of Children Schools and Families to stick its Vetting and Barring Scheme and concentrate its resources on known offenders, children on the 'at risk register', training and supporting social workers - and leave the rest of us alone.
The government cites over and over the Baby Peter and the Soham murders as a grave warning and to justify a database they expect will contain details of one quarter of the adult population.
Baby Peter's plight was well known to social workers and medics and Ian Huntley was a school caretaker who took the precaution of giving a false name when he was police checked for his job.
Apart from the gross infringement of the civil liberties of perfectly innocent and well meaning people, the damage done to children will be irrevocable. Once mistrust is implanted in their minds it will remain as a given until proof to the contrary is provided.
Anyway, left to their own devices children are quite as capable of sorting out the 'wierdos' from James' dad as a faceless civil servant with a database that depends for its accuracy upon a motley crew of inputters.
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