To date only a summary of the report's main findings and recommendations have been published. Paul Burstow, MP for Sutton and Cheam, last week called on the Home Office, which oversees the CRB, to seek the agreement of Capita, which runs the CRB, to waive commercial confidentiality and to publish in full the report produced last autumn by an independent review team led by millionaire businessman Patrick Carter.
Mr Burstow, who is also an NSPCC ambassador in the House of Commons, said, 'This Government agency has delayed or postponed hundreds of thousands of checks on people who look after young children unsupervised, go into elderly people's homes alone, care for patients in hospitals, and work with the victims of rape, sexual offences and other crimes.'
Mr Burstow pointed out that the CRB had been expected to process 3.3 million Disclosures on criminal records of people in England and Wales in its first year of operation but had managed only 1.4 million - 57 per cent less than planned - and that 700,000 checks had been postponed. He described the CRB as a 'fiasco of an agency' and the situation as 'sheer incompetence', and added that the review team had 'found no evidence that the CRB has the capacity to cope with the levels of forecast demand'.
The CRB went live in March 2002, seven months late, with the assurance that all Disclosure checks would be processed within three weeks. However, last June it had to introduce a number of measures to improve its performance, including shifting the processing of applications to India, as checks on thousands of teaching staff and nursery nurses fell far behind schedule.
Mr Burstow called on the Home Office to revise the CRB's demand forecasts, financial estimates and business plan, for it to set 'a clear timetable for introducing checks on those who work with vulnerable adults', and to work with the voluntary sector to set up a new network of regional registered 'umbrella' bodies to process local requests for Disclosure checks and countersign applications to confirm the person's identity and the need for such a check.
Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate arrangements for vetting people intending to work with children or vulnerable adults.
