Q111 Mr Jenkins: It is the identify I am after.
Mr Gaskell: I will come to the identity but there were a number of points that lay behind your question, some of which related to cost, some of which related to process and some of which related to identity. I will answer the point specifically on identity. We do issue guidance to registered bodies about how they should carry out the identity checks. As Mr Lewis has already indicated we specify what documents they should examine. Coming on to the specific about passports, we do routinely check against the list that the United Kingdom Passport Agency keep of forged passports and we do that routinely. On that basis we have found a number of instances where people who have applied for disclosure have appeared on that list.
Q112 Mr Jenkins: Then that beggars the question, if I am an employer sitting there and somebody puts a passport in front of me and I look at the passport how can I check myself, how can I flag that up? Do I put the number on the form? Do you check it when it gets to you or do you check the driving licence number to ensure that the person is real?
Mr Gaskell: Perhaps Bernard can help me as to whether there is an access channel to members of the public, including registered bodies, to ask those routine questions.
Q113 Mr Jenkins: If I put my passport number on that form you check it.
Mr Gaskell: Yes.
Mr Herdan: There is no service currently available for a registered body to ask the Passport Service if that is a valid passport. We are doing a study about introducing a system like that for banks and financial institutions in the future. There is not a service like that today. What happens is the application is checked by the CRB when it is received, the passport number is checked against our list of forged passports, fraudulent and dead identities, as a result of which three people have been arrested and another five are under investigation at the moment.
Q114 Mr Jenkins: That is very interesting. As far as success is concerned are you achieving it?
Mr Gaskell: Absolutely. This is information clearly which is subsequent to the NAO Report.
Q115 Mr Field: If we had a system of ID cards and biometric testing it would make your job easier?
Mr Gaskell: It would certainly make the job of the people who are carrying out the identity checks and the whole disclosure service easier, it would improve and strengthen the process. Indeed the Home Office has recently conducted a consultation exercise through our registered bodies where we used finger-printing as part of the early stages of the disclosure process and they are analysing the results of that consultation to decide the next step is.
Mr Field: Mr Pindar, do you feel another contract coming your way?
Q116 Chairman: We will leave that. Mr Lewis, one last question, I am also worried about you how useful this Bureau is in helping the vulnerable. If you look at page 18, "The impact of the service on crimes against the vulnerable is not yet clear", and you will see under paragraph 2.19, "Research into trends on the number of offences committed by those in positions of trust in the work place or voluntary organisations" I would have thought it was a key point, I am rather surprised this is not already undertaken by the Bureau.
Mr Lewis: We do certainly want to find out as clearly as we possibly can whether the Bureau and its work is indeed delivering employers a more secure recruitment service. As I mentioned earlier on we do have some substantial evidence from surveys of employers that it is. It is clearly impacting and influencing their recruitment decisions. We are considering whether there is more research that we can undertake in that respect. The difficulty is in being able to separate out the impact of the existence of the Bureau and the greater security we can offer to employers from all of those other factors which influence levels of crime, levels of criminality and levels of abuse. That is the difficulty, trying to demonstrate an independent CRB effect. If I can voice a personal view, I have no doubt that the existence of the Bureau means that we have reduced the risk, reduced the risk significantly of employers recruiting unsuitable people for positions where they will have vulnerable children and adults in their care. I do not think anyone is pretending that this has reduced that risk to zero.
Q117 Chairman: Is that a personal view or an official view?
Mr Lewis: I am happy to have it as both.
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much for appearing before us. It is indeed true that it is going to end up as the highest bid. We accept Home Office changed the assumptions yet the Home Office had to change the assumptions because otherwise this would have become totally unworkable. This establishes that in future-this is where we cover lessons learned-when we are launching a new venture like this it is rightly undertaken and it is the duty of civil servants to warn them to have adequate pilot studies. I am absolutely convinced that if there was a pilot study a lot of these problems would have come out and no doubt we will wish to reflect that in our Report. Mr Lewis and gentlemen thank you very much.