Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to assess how many people have had (a) offers of employment rescinded and (b) their employment terminated due to the time taken for Disclosure and Barring Service checks to be concluded.

No assessment has been made of the impact of timeliness on the numbers of offers of employment rescinded or terminated.

Disclosure and Barring Service performance is closely monitored and in the vast majority of cases (95%), disclosure certificates are issued within 8 weeks (2015/16).

In exceptional cases, where it is apparent that a delay is likely to cause undue hardship to an applicant, the DBS will do all it can to expedite the process by raising an escalation with the relevant police force.