Scottish Government admits it failed to conduct safeguarding review

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today criticised the Scottish Government for failing to complete a promised review of safeguarding in relation to elected representatives and their access to vulnerable groups. It committed to the review more than four years ago.

During parliamentary scrutiny of the Disclosure (Scotland) Bill in 2020, Mr Cole-Hamilton lodged amendments, which were intended to bring MSPs within the scope of the legislation. These included requiring them to comply with Disclosure Scotland’s Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme which helps to ensure people who are unsuitable to work with children and protected adults cannot do regulated work with these vulnerable groups.

Mr Cole-Hamilton’s amendments were rejected by the Scottish Government. However, during Stage 3 of the Disclosure (Scotland) Bill, Maree Todd, on behalf of the Scottish Government, proposed to commission and fund an independent review, to be chaired by ministerial appointment, that “would consider the issue of safeguarding in relation to elected representatives”.

Now, a new request on behalf of Mr Cole-Hamilton to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, answered by the Scottish Government, has confirmed that this review never took place.

Mr Cole-Hamilton said:

“This is a serious and considerable failure on the part of the Scottish Government.

“Nobody else is allowed to be alone with children or vulnerable adults without a basic check being done first, but there is nothing legally to prevent MSPs from doing that. There cannot be one rule for politicians and another for everybody else because history and inquiries have exposed the dangers of self-policing.

“I want experts to tell us how best to safeguard against the threat of people working in politics using their status to manipulate, target and exploit vulnerable people.

“We are now on our third children's minister since the commitment to commission and fund an independent review was made. How best to implement such a change deserves proper scrutiny, but for successive SNP ministers to simply do nothing is deeply disappointing.

“You can’t promise a review in order to convince MSPs to vote against my proposals being included in the bill, and then claim that there is no need to conduct a review because it wasn’t included in the bill.

“The Scottish Government need to apologise to Parliament and set out a timeline for this long overdue review to get to work.”