Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has had discussions with the Scottish Government on the effectiveness of the (a) Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020 and (b) Protecting Vulnerable Groups scheme; and whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of updating the Disclosure and Barring Service check regime.

The disclosure and barring regime in Scotland is devolved and the UK Government engages regularly with the Scottish Government to ensure that the regimes work effectively together to keep the public safe.

We keep the disclosure and barring regime in England and Wales under constant review to ensure that it continues to strike an appropriate balance between keeping the public safe and enabling ex-offenders to move on with their lives.

On 9 April 2025, the Government published an update on its work to tackle child sexual abuse, available on GOV.UK: Tackling Child Sexual Abuse.

• By the end of 2025, we will introduce secondary legislation to create the ability for self-employed individuals, working in sensitive roles with children and vulnerable adults, to access higher-level Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks.
• We have introduced primary legislation to remove the supervision exemption in the Crime and Policing Bill.
• By 2026, working with ACRO Criminal Record Office & DBS, we will enable those making decisions overseas to have access to DBS barred list data.