BRITAIN: Education secretary Ruth Kelly survived her Commons ordeal yesterday when she announced a total classroom ban on persons convicted or cautioned for any sex offence against a child.
Ms Kelly was still under pressure on a second front last night, as former Labour leader Neil Kinnock led a Westminster rally against the government's controversial proposals for independent "trust" schools free of local authority control. However, with an estimated 90 backbench Labour MPs now against the government's proposals, there was growing speculation at Westminster that ministers would orchestrate a compromise deal on the back of an imminent report by the Education Select Committee.
Meanwhile, speculation about Ms Kelly's political survival appeared to recede after Downing Street said Tony Blair thought her Commons statement was "excellent".
In the Commons, Labour MPs rallied to her defence, while the Liberal Democrat Ed Davey said Ms Kelly had "gone a long way" to restore public confidence.
However, Conservative spokesman David Willetts said there had been "an absence of real information and strong leadership" from the education secretary since it was first revealed that a PE teacher was permitted to resume work despite accepting a police caution for accessing child pornography on the internet.
As MPs on all sides pored over the dense detail of the education secretary's statement, Mr Willetts told Ms Kelly: "It must be for you and your conscience whether you are capable of regaining the confidence of parents and teachers who have suffered such anxiety, concern and uncertainty over the past 10 days."
Ms Kelly's first step in seeking to do so involved an expression of personal "regret" for the worry caused to parents. Pledging to overhaul the system to ensure "child protection comes first", Ms Kelly also insisted there should be "no witch-hunts against hard-working teachers" who had a right to be protected against malicious allegations.
As expected, Ms Kelly said she would legislate to remove from ministers the responsibility to determine individual cases. Pending legislation, she announced an independent panel chaired by the former head of Barnardos would assume that responsibility, and that she would abide by their advice.
Given the lack of coherence between List 99 - the blacklist barring people from teaching - and other lists kept nationally, Ms Kelly said in future that the automatic bar would apply on a single list to all persons convicted or cautioned for sex offences against children. Similar action would be taken against people who had committed any of a range of serious sex offences against adults.
However, Ms Kelly stressed the key "safety net" was the criminal-record check, which would in future be mandatory for all newly appointed school employees. Police would also investigate whether persons with convictions committed before the sex offender register was established should be barred.
Ms Kelly said her review had established 10 cases where registered sex offenders had not been placed on List 99 since 1997. Inquiries suggested none of the 10 was working in schools.
Since 1997, ministers and officials had also vetted 46 people whose offences were committed prior to the establishment of the sex offender register. In 32 of those cases, there was no evidence the individuals in question were working with children; one was working in education but assessed by police as giving no cause for concern; while preliminary checks into the other 13 cases showed no cause for concern, although information was not complete.
In total, some 88 sex offenders had been identified who would have been automatically barred under the new rules.