What is the ISA and the VBS?
Background
After the tragic events in Soham, the Government appointed Sir Michael Bichard to head an inquiry into the failings of the vetting procedures that allowed Ian Huntley to take a role in a school, despite having been brought to the attention of the authorities on a number of previous occasions concerning incidents with minors.
The resulting document, the Bichard Inquiry Report, made 31 wide-reaching recommendations for improvements to cross Government data sharing procedures. The Government accepted the report's recommendations and introduced legislation to enable them to be implemented. This became the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 which received the Royal Assent becoming law on November 8th 2006.
Wales and Northern Ireland will share this scheme whilst under devolution, equivalent or enabling legislation is being enacted in Scotland (Protection of Vulnerable Groups [Scotland] Act 2007). Although this may result in some minor local differences, the aim is that there will be an exchange of information between the relevant authorities such that any outcome is consistent across the UK.
The Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA)
A key aspect of the Act was the formation of the Independent Safeguarding Authority - the ISA (originally referred to in the legislation as the Independent Barring Board – IBB). The ISA is a “Non-Departmental Public Body” set up by the Home Office, i.e. an autonomous organisation run by public servants.
Under the Act anybody placing an individual in a role undertaking "regulated activity" with children and/or vulnerable adults will, by law, need to check that an individual is registered with the ISA before placing them in that role.
The Act also recognised the role of endorsing organisations* who, whilst not being the direct employer, will have the same access to the ISA as employers do.
* an endorsing organisation is generally a professional body that does not directly permit members to have access to children or vulnerable adults, so cannot directly prevent them from undertaking such work, but does lend their name to those members they have checked to work with children and/or vulnerable adults.
What do the ISA do?
The role of the ISA is to :-
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Operate the Vetting and Barring Scheme
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Register individuals who are not barred under the Vetting and Barring Scheme
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Provide employers and other interested parties with a means of checking that an individual is registered (with their permission)
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Notify employers or other interested parties if that registration status changes
The Vetting and Barring Scheme
Another key aspect of the legislation was the consolidation of Government held information relating to an individual's suitability (or unsuitability) to work with vulnerable groups, i.e. children and vulnerable adults.
Previous legislation already required the Government to maintain lists of people deemed unsuitable to work with certain groups, but these were dispersed across a number of agencies. The Department of Education kept "List 99" relating to incidents in schools, the Home Office maintained the Protection of Children Act list and the Sex Offenders Register, the Department of Health kept a list of people involved in incidents in hospitals etc.
Under the SVG Act, all Government data would be consolidated into two "Barred Lists" - one for people barred from working with children and the other for those barred from working with vulnerable adults, which would be held and maintained by the ISA.
The process by which an individual's name is put onto one or both of the ISA Barred Lists is called the Vetting and Barring Scheme