NCMA chief executive Gill Haynes gave evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, which is looking into the opening of the Criminal Records Bureau, and said many childminders could not afford to pay for the compulsory criminal record checks themselves.
The committee heard that, although volunteer workers will be exempt from costs, many other people applying for certificates will be low wage earners. The average net weekly earnings of a registered childminder are put at 106 a week. Ms Haynes believes many childminders would be unable to afford even as little as 10 per criminal record check. She said it was not unusual for four members of a childminder's household to be over 16 and therefore also in need of being checked.
Ms Haynes said, 'I envisage a huge falling out (from childminding) of people who already feel that they are being marginalised, in many ways... and feeling that these additional costs, perhaps of 40 or 50 per household, are just too heavy for them to bear at the moment.' The committee questioned Charles Clarke MP about the seemingly opposing Government policies of establishing a system of start-up grants for childminders and then charging them for a criminal records check. He said, 'There is an argument that if it is in the policy interest of, say, the Department of Education, the Department of Health, the Department of Social Security to encourage, for example, childminding...they should pay for it rather than the Home Office or somebody else paying for it.'
The Select Committee's report said, 'In the era of joined-up Government it is anomalous that, while one Government department gives childminders start-up grants, another is proposing to charge them for the record checks that they need before they can become practising childminders.
'We are concerned to hear that there has been no discussion of this issue between departments. The Government must find a joined-up way of meeting the costs of the Criminal Records Bureau, and we hope this will stimulate better co-ordination of other policies affecting low wage earners.' The new Bureau will issue three levels of certificates, known as 'disclosures'. Childminders, as people with substantial unsupervised access to children, will have to undergo the enhanced level of check, including spent convictions and police file information.
