Who will vet the vetters and protect my children from fear and mistrust?
ACCORDING TO the Government, the total number of potentially dangerous perverts and other “unsuitable individuals” in need of vetting is up to 9.5 million people. And it has the nerve to accuse the media of stoking up a panic about paedophile teachers. As a parent (the magic word to gain entry to this debate), I want to see my children protected against an atmosphere of fear and mistrust in which it is assumed that anybody who wants to work with kids must be suspect. But institutionalising a perverse attitude to adult-child relations now seems to be government policy. Some of the key measures announced by Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, yesterday simply bring forward the Government’s planned response to Sir Michael Bichard’s inquiry into the Soham murders of 2002. These were set out last year in documents such as Making Safeguarding Everybody’s Business: a Post-Bichard Vetting System — a semi-literate title that points to other pressing problems in our education system. But the me
