An Anglican vicar was vetted by the UK
Government’s child protection agency after he
questioned his Church’s child protection policy.

Rev Jeremy Hummerstone, formerly vicar of
Torrington in Devon, refused to undergo a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check by the  (ISA) on the
grounds that such vetting was not part of the original conditions of his
post.

Vetting is conducted
to make sure that those who work with children have not previously been
suspected of abusing a child.

Rev Hummerstone was
given the all-clear but had been reported by his diocesan safeguarding
advisor for “persistently or recklessly”
questioning child protection policies.

Critics say the case
highlights the over-zealous use of the vetting procedure.

The vicar was
one of 13,000 people reported for
investigation by the ISA in its first two years. Four per cent were later
barred from working with children.

Mr Hummerstone paid £10 to see the ISA’s file on
him and discovered it included claims that he had written “inflammatory”
comments about the child protection regime in his parish newsletter and on one
occasion pinned up a Daily Telegraph article on the subject, as well as copies
of private emails and reports of conversations.

He was eventually cleared by the ISA and has since
moved to the diocese of York, where he agreed to have a background check as part of the conditions for a
new job.

But he said he had been left scarred by fellow
clergy acting like the “Witchfinder General” and reporting him for “thought
crime”.

Now 72, Mr Hummerstone said: “I thought someone
had made an accusation against me, and I’ve seen careers ruined that way, but
all it was was this refusal to take a CRB check.

“It seems to me that people can get quite a long
way in making allegations before they’re stopped, and it can do a lot of
damage.”

Campaigners believe that in many cases, unfounded
or even malicious allegations are being made against innocent people,
potentially blighting their careers.

And while the Coalition has scaled back Labour’s
plans to vet one in four adults, with its reforms passing into law last week, it
has not altered the system by which allegations can be made.

Josie Appleton, director of Manifesto Club, a
group that has led opposition to the expansion of vetting, said: “Organisations
were required by law to report any suspicions to the ISA, which was a recipe for
encouraging hearsay and malicious accusation.

“Some individuals were apparently reported for
nothing more than eccentricity and a personality conflict with their
organisation. The fact that only 500 out of 13,000 were barred indicates that
the ISA is using its discretion – but it can take months for a person to be
cleared, by which stage the damage is done.”

Until a decade ago the Government just kept a
secret list of teachers who were banned from working with children, but Labour
established the Criminal Records Bureau to check if a wider range of people
working with young or vulnerable people had any convictions that should
disqualify them.

In the wake of the Soham murders, the system was
expanded further through the setting up of the Independent Safeguarding
Authority in 2009. Its officials were to keep a list of millions of employees
and volunteers who had been cleared to work with children and would be able to
consider unproven allegations made by managers, colleagues or members of the
public.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information
Act show that between January 2009 and February 2011, 13,486 cases were referred
to the quango “for consideration under its discretionary powers”. But only 557 –
4 per cent – led to the individual being barred.

Separate figures show that most of the referrals
(2,186 in 2010-11) were made by care home or home help agencies, with a further
945 coming from local authorities, 513 from the education sector and 41 from
faith groups.

Amid public outcry at the scale of the original
vetting scheme, which would have affected parents who set up a rota to take
children home from after-school sports, it was first reviewed under Labour and
then halted after the election so it could be returned to a “common sense”
levels.

However the ISA is still operating and has now
barred a total of 46,177 people from working with children, the vast majority
because of relevant past convictions, while the investigation of allegations
still takes place.

Under the new Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, the
CRB and ISA will merge and a narrower range of people will need to be checked
before they can work with children.

A spokesperson for the Independent Safeguarding
Authority said that the discretionary barring system has helped ensure that
“abusive care workers are not able to move jobs and harm elderly patients
again”, for example.

He added: “Our work in assessing referrals plays a
key role in safeguarding vulnerable groups including children – as does our
decision-making work with automatic barring cases.”