Fury over £150m criminal checks

MPS will this week condemn a criminal-record checks fiasco that cost £150 million.

In a damning report they will blame the Government over the botched part-privatisation of the Criminal Records Bureau.

Key functions of the bureau, set up to tighten controls on people applying to work with children, were handed over to congestion-charge operator Capita.

The Public Accounts Committee report says teachers and social workers were left idle and unpaid when checks were not completed. Many lost thousands of pounds in pay but have since been offered next to nothing in compensation.

The Government struck a ?250million deal with Capita to run the operation for 10 years from 2002. Forecasts of demand for the service were wildly inaccurate-and the cost spiralled to ?400million.

Labour MP John Trickett, a member of the committee, said earlier this year: "It has to be one of the most incompetently let contracts this committee has seen."

Tory MP Edward Leigh, the committee chairman, has said: "On the evidence before us, this was a completely unsatisfactory state of affairs."

When it handed Capita the contract, the Home Office assumed most requests for checks would come by phone. But the majority came in writing, causing work to pile up at the bureau's Merseyside HQ.

Computers used by call-centreoperators proved unable to cope with the task of keying in details from written forms. There was no system for prioritising urgent applications.

Problems came to a head when ministers ordered extra vetting of school staff after Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were murdered by school caretaker Ian Huntley.

The system, unable to cope with the increased demand, has since been speeded up and most checks are now completed within the deadline of two to four weeks.

The National Union of Teachers said a dozen of its members had lost ?2,000 or more as a result of hold-ups. All were offered "peanuts" in compensation, said the union, although some later received bigger payouts after their claims were upheld by Parliamentary Ombudsman Ann Abraham.

The NUT's senior solicitor Graham Clayton said: "These teachers lost money through no fault of their own. They were entirely the victims of administrative failure."

The Home Office said the CRB was under no obligation to pay compensation. A spokesman said: "The CRB's performance has been transformed since autumn 2002 and it is now able to process more checks more quickly than ever before."

Capita is Britain's biggest outsourcing business and made pre-tax profits of ?64 million in the first six months of this year. Chairman Rod Aldridge and chief executive Paul Pindar together own shares worth ?140 million.