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The Protection of Children Act 1999

I have always tried to be as non-political as I can when writing this blog, and on this matter in particular, will try and step as carefully as possible, since this is one of those cases where not only can I see both sides of the argument, but I don’t yet know enough about it, and the subject matter is entirely emotive.

I’ve been invited back to give a talk at my old school, which I left about 5 years ago, to a group of children attending as an arts festival thingy.  I’ve given talks at dozens – possibly verging towards the hundreds – of schools in the UK and elsewhere, and naturally agreed because, you know, it’s my old school.  The talk is scheduled to last 45 minutes on a day like any other in February, and my plan, as it stands, is to arrive, go in, say hello to the art teacher who taught me AS-Level Drama, and the mathematics teacher who I drew with when playing chess every Wednesday for 7 years.  (Except for those rare and largely wiped-from-memory Wednesdays when he utterly trounced me.)  I will then, under the beady eye of my old English teacher and, I suspect, a few others, give my talk to the children, and leave.

Now…

… for the first time in my life, I have been sent documentation to fill out under the Protection of Children Act 1999.  I must go into my school and under the beady watchful eye of an employee, give over my passport, birth certificate (which is in my parent’s possession, not mine, owing to a domestic bureaucractic hiccup), P60 from my present employer (I have none) and a recent utility bill showing my current address.  Furthermore, in the form I am requested to supply marital status, bank details, employment status, occupancy status, mother’s maiden name, and a referee to testify to my character.  The school will then pay £31 to a company called Capita who will, on behalf of the criminal records bureau, do a background check on me to ensure that I don’t have any criminal convictions, and after 4 weeks, I will be cleared to give my 45 minute lecture.  This disclosure, according to the government websites I’ve been skim-reading (and I apologise if I have any details wrong here, it has been one of those browsing-the-internet-while-burning-disks weeks) will only apply once, to this one event, on the basis that the next time I’m invited to talk at a school, I may have acquired new convictions.  (I have none, I hasten to add.)

Now…

… I have to step so carefully here, because in principal, I am all in favour of this law.  It is the ultimate, ultimate horror, one so horrifying that we hardly dare speak or write or think of it, the thought that children can be put at risk by the adults that surround them.  No parent would hesitate to take any measures necessary to protect their children, no one with a whit of humanity would expect anything less.

But if I am to deliver my passport, birth certificate etc. in person to every single school I visit, is this not the end of my ever visiting any school outside zones 1-4 in London?  Is this not the end of trips to Dundee and Wrexham, of Bristol and Reading?  How does this affect the Edinburgh Children’s Book Festival, or the festival in Bath?  I have been lecturing at and visiting schools since I was 15 years old; had this law come into force five years earlier, would I have been bound by it when still legally a child and yet also a visiting author?  For 45 minutes of supervised attendance at the school where I studied for 7 years, I must slog to the other side of town with documents I don’t even have to be vetted and cleared of crimes I have not committed and yes, I applaud the protection of children, but I also applaud reason in the execution of law, and I begin to wonder whether we are not teetering on that fine line of a law that could shut down through its sheer complexity and red tape a whole culture of bringing the world the school, as well as the school to the world.

Let me repeat; I lack sufficient information on this subject to make a final judgment, an absolute statement of too-much, too-little.  The protection of children is an unspoken law, the ultimate unspoken law – that children must not be harmed and it is the duty of the old to protect those too young to protect themselves – but I question whether this particular law may not do some damage, in its effort to do good.

I welcome all comments and debate on the subject!