HLE blogger Timothy Pitt-Payne QC presents his policy paper on employment vetting
"Getting the employment vetting system right is a challenge for both lawyers and politicians. Extremely difficult policy considerations are laden with legal complexities. Serious human consequences can arise from inadequacies and inequalities in the system.
The task is further complicated by an outmoded legal framework open to abuse by unscrupulous employers. This prevents a fair balance from being struck between the key policy concerns of individual fairness, rehabilitation and protection of the vulnerable.
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (ROA 1974), on which the current legal structure is largely based, seeks to protect ex-offenders from having to disclose information about “spent convictions”. In this modern information age, however, unprincipled employers need only to employ “enforced subject access” or turn to the internet to search for details of past convictions.
Moreover, the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) system is a massive exception to ROA 1974, often allowing access to “soft intelligence”—information about allegations that have not led to a conviction and may not even have been tested in court. An individual can
