1 in 6 children is put on at-risk register by police

POLICE have labelled one in six children in one area of Scotland ‘at risk’ as part of a project to profile the population.

Officers have been amassing vast amounts of information about families as they go about their duties, and storing the details on a Vulnerable Persons Database (VPD).

But youngsters do not actually have to be in grave danger to be branded ‘not safe’.

Some files show how children appear on the database simply because they are deemed unhealthy – or not doing enough exercise.

Force chiefs believe earmarking people as ‘vulnerable’ and sharing the information with social workers and teachers will help prevent future crimes.

Campaigners claim it is a mirror image of the SNP’s controversial Named Person scheme to appoint a state guardian for every child, which was struck down by the UK Supreme Court last year.

Dr Stuart Waiton, a sociology lecturer at Abertay University, Dundee, said: ‘This is the start of a super nanny state. This doctrine of early intervention massively expands the state’s interference in personal and family life based on increasingly trivial everyday occurrences.’

The staggering scale of Police Scotland’s data project is laid bare in documents from Moray Council’s social work department. In that area alone, officers last year opened or updated files on nine children a day, with the dossiers then stored on the force’s VPD. A council paper states that police identified 3,204 youngsters (16 per cent of the population aged 18 or under) as at risk.

Officers registered their concerns under the so-called SHANARRI indicators (see Q&A above) devised by the Scottish Government as part of the Named Person scheme. Officers reported 407 children for being unhealthy, 196 for under-achieving and even 44 for a lack of physical activity.

Simon Calvert, of No To Named Persons, said the project was like a back-door version of the scheme.

Last night, Police Scotland’s head of public protection, Det Chief Supt Lesley Boal, said officers would use their judgment on the SHANARRI indicators as a guide to any well-being concerns.

Chief Supt Campbell Thomson, North East divisional commander, added: ‘We have undertaken an initial review of the information contained in the [Moray] report. This has indicated a potential counting error following retrieval of data. I have commissioned further work which will clarify this position.’

The Scottish Government and Moray Council said all personal information would be handled in line with data protection, confidentiality and human rights laws.