Theresa May to challenge Court of Appeal on CRBs

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Theresa May to challenge Court of Appeal on CRBs

1 February 2013

This week the Court of Appeal said what many of us thought - disclosing every conviction on a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check without any consideration of relevance is unlawful. Regardless, the Home Secretary seems intent on appealing the decision to the Supreme Court.

In my view, she faces an uphill task. Three senior judges reached this decision having heard from legal teams in three different cases, so being granted a right of appeal is far from guaranteed. More importantly, the decision makes sense. When a 55 year old man applies for a role in a school, does it really make any difference to his employability if he had a minor conviction or caution 35 years earlier? Such convictions would be irrelevant in almost every case.

What should flow from this is a simple change in the law to impose a duty on the police or the government to consider the relevance of convictions before adding them to the CRB certificate.

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