To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether care providers are informed when Criminal Records Bureau checks on their prospective employees are discovered not to have been correctly carried out; what estimate he has made of the number of such checks; and whether he plans to provide compensation to care providers for such cases. (222442)

I have been asked to reply.

All the quality control procedures at the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) are geared to achieving the highest levels of accuracy. In addition, the CRB carries out a post disclosure accuracy check that analyses all aspects of the disclosure application and its issue. This check was introduced in 2007 and is based on a statistical sample of disclosure applications and from that sample it can be ascertained that the accuracy rate for 2006-07 is 99.94 per cent. and for 2007-08 is 99.98 per cent. No comparative data are available before these dates and the CRB does not collate information by specific sectors such as the care sector or providers.

If, as a result of this additional check, the CRB needs to correct a Disclosure, it does so free of charge to the employer and the applicant.

The CRB operates a central database in order to record transactions that occur during the disclosure process, where applicants’ personal data provided on an application form are compared against information held by the police, the Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Although the CRB has access to conviction and other information through this process, the police and the other data sources above are the data owners of material held on their respective databases and as such are responsible for the accuracy of information held thereon.

As with any public sector organisation the CRB operates a Redress scheme where there has been maladministration.