Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill - 23 new clauses and 207 amendments rubber-stamped in one day - this is not proper scrutiny
We no longer understand the complexity of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill which got its Third Reading in the Commons yesterday.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con) made the point that:
"207 amendments and 23 new clauses have been tabled by the Government, and nearly all were tabled during the past few days, despite the fact that the Bill completed its Committee stage some months ago"
These have all been rubber-stamped by the Commons in a single afternoon and evening, of so called debate.
To say that these add bureaucratic complexity to an already complicated Bill, is an understatement. We doubt that any employers or employees, who will be subjected to the new National Centralised Database by the Independent Barring Board can actulaly understand what they will be criminally liable for, once the Bill becomes law.
However, it appears, that there is still no clear definition of "harm" on the face of the Bill. None of our other initial worries about the Bill appear to have been addressed either.
We will try to puzzle out exactly what the new, heavily amended Bill now actually says, but the full text may take a few days to appear online due to the huge number of last minute changes.
This is not proper Parliamentary scrutiny of legislation.