Secret blacklist named people ‘not f it to work with children’

GOVERNMENT chiefs compiled a secret blacklist of people who were not allowed to work with children or become teachers, an inquiry has heard.

Education officials in Scotland began drawing up an ‘unofficial’ list of individuals deemed unsuitable to work with youngsters ‘in any capacity’ as long ago as 1950.

The names of those who had ‘committed an offence’ were then shared with Home Office officials to prevent them from working with children in England.

The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry heard that by the mid1950s, it became standard practice to circulate the names of people deemed unfit to work in childcare across the UK.

Prior to that, an ‘unofficial blacklist’ was kept in order to bar those already dismissed from working with children to seek employment in another part of the UK.

Professor Ian Levitt, emeritus professor of social policy at the University of Central Lancashire, told the inquiry that the former Scottish Home Department (SHD) ‘did operate such a list’ in order to root offenders out of the education and care system.

Professor Levitt, who is also an honorary professor at the University of the West of Scotland, was asked to prepare a report on the systems of inspection put in place by the government in respect of children in care between 1930 and 1968.

During his research, he said he discovered the ‘blacklist’. He

‘Root offenders out of the system’

told the inquiry in Edinburgh: ‘I did report on the development of, or the assistance of, a blacklist.’

‘Just to be absolutely clear that the Scottish Education Department and Scottish Home Department did operate such a list to ensure that those staff which had committed an offence would have their names circulated round the Home Office south of the Border and − I think there is a case here – the Scottish Voluntary Organisations Council as well.’

He said the blacklist came to light in the aftermath of inspections into approved schools such as Balnacraig in Perth which uncovered ‘certain specific issues attached to the regime’.

He said that a similar list existed south of the Border, with the names shared between the Scottish Education Department and the Home Office in London.’

Today, an official Disqualified from Working with Children List is kept by Scottish Ministers. Individuals are placed on this list when they have harmed or put a child at risk and have been dismissed from a job or moved away from contact with children as a consequence.

The national inquiry led by Lady Smith, which has cost nearly £10million to date, is looking into the historical abuse of children in care and is due to report in 2019.

The inquiry continues.