Saturday, January 14, 2006
The Ruth Kelly affair
The Welsh Education Minister has promised to make a statement in Plenary next week on the issue of registered sex offenders working in schools. What is surprising is that Jane Davidson does not appear to know whether Ruth Kelly has sanctioned anybody on the sex offenders' register to work in a Welsh school or not.
This may not be a devolved matter but at the very least it should be a matter of courtesy to tell the Welsh Assembly Government if such a person has been authorised to work in Wales. The job of tracking sex offenders appears to have been made more difficult by the fact that there are seven lists on which they can feature. After the Soham murders Michael Bichard recommended that these be amalgamated to form just the one reference point. However, we are told that this cannot be achieved until 2008.
That is not satisfactory and on Tuesday I will be urging the Welsh Education Minister to press her Westminster counterpart to move much more quickly on this issue.
This may not be a devolved matter but at the very least it should be a matter of courtesy to tell the Welsh Assembly Government if such a person has been authorised to work in Wales. The job of tracking sex offenders appears to have been made more difficult by the fact that there are seven lists on which they can feature. After the Soham murders Michael Bichard recommended that these be amalgamated to form just the one reference point. However, we are told that this cannot be achieved until 2008.
That is not satisfactory and on Tuesday I will be urging the Welsh Education Minister to press her Westminster counterpart to move much more quickly on this issue.
Comments:
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It'sa blindingly obvious that the maintainence of these lists needs to be done on a pan UK level and is not suitable to be devolved, however the decisions about whether to make an exception to permit employment in specific circumstances (presumably where efforts to recruit alternative, suitably qualified candidates have failed) should in principle be taken by the Welsh Minister if the school in question is in Wales.
I have to say i'm not convinced there is a legitimate public interest in publishing such decisions. This road leads to innocent paediatricians having to wash grafitti from illiterate yobs off their property.
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I have to say i'm not convinced there is a legitimate public interest in publishing such decisions. This road leads to innocent paediatricians having to wash grafitti from illiterate yobs off their property.
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