The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2012

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Order)

The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 provides for there to be a police and crime commissoner for each police area in England and Wales outside London. Section 66(3)(c) of that Act means that a person is disqualified from being elected as, or being, a police and crime commissioner if the person has been convicted of an imprisonable offence. Article 3 amends the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (“the 1975 Order”) to permit questions to be asked about spent convictions in order to establish whether a person is disqualified from being elected as or being a police and crime commissioner, to ensure that any obligation on a (or a potential) police and crime commissioner to disclose convictions extends to spent convictions and to allow spent convictions to be grounds for disqualification from office as a police commissioner.

The 1975 Order permits questions to be asked about spent convictions and cautions in order to assess suitability for admission to various occupations listed in Part I of Schedule 1 and permits spent convictions and cautions, or failure to disclose them, to be a ground for excluding a person from those occupations. It also contains special provisions about social workers. Articles 4 to 6 amend the 1975 Order to simplify the way in which it covers health and social care occupations and to reflect recent changes in the way in which social workers in England are regulated.

Articles 7 to 11 make various amendments of the coverage by the 1975 Order of work with children and vulnerable adults. In particular, they secure that the 1975 Order is unaffected by the amendments made to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 by the the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. Without the changes made by those articles, those amendments would operate substantially to limit the range of cases in which the 1975 Order would permit questions to be asked, or allow persons to be excluded from certain types of work, and would thereby reduce the protection afforded by the 1975 Order to children and vulnerable adults. Article 11(3) introduces one limitation of the coverage of the 1975 Order: for those working with 16 and 17 year olds on work experience.