Background to the Act

The Act provides for Scottish Ministers to maintain a List of persons unsuitable to work in a “child care” position (as defined under Schedule 2 of the Act) in paid and/or volunteer posts.

The List will be known as the Disqualified from Working with Children List.Individuals whose names may be placed on the List by Scottish Ministers will not be limited to those who have been convicted of an offence against a child.

The need to find ways of making certain kinds of non-conviction information available, with stringent safeguards, has been considered for some years. Lord Cullen’s Public Inquiry into the Shootings at Dunblane Primary School on 13 March 1996 (The Stationery Office, 1996) stated that:

“Even if the SCRO [Scottish Criminal Record Office] check reveals nothing of significance it does not follow that there is no risk of abuse. It is common for a child abuser to have offended many times before he is detected. While the SCRO check provides information not only about convictions but also about pending cases it does not extend to other intelligence…… These considerations point to the desirability of finding a means of assembling information which would alert any legitimate enquirer as to information about a person’s past behaviour which indicates his potential unsuitability.” (Para 11:19)

Roger Kent, in his report on Children’s Safeguards Review (The Scottish Office, 1998) called for ways of legitimately processing what he called “soft” information as opposed to hard, factual criminal conviction information.

In July 2000, the Scottish Executive issued Protecting Children: Securing their Safety:

A Consultation Paper which set out the argument for establishing a central index containing the names of individuals who were considered to be unsuitable to “work with” children.

The responses to this consultation were summarised in Protecting Children: The Next Steps Towards Securing their Safety (Scottish Executive, May 2001). In September 2001 the Scottish Executive introduced the Protection of Children (Scotland) Bill which was passed by the Scottish Parliament in February 2003 and received Royal Assent on 19 March 2003.