Criminal Record Checks Could Be Compromised Over Trans ‘Gender-Switch’ Loophole: Report

Undated picture of the UK Home Office. Yui Mok/PA

A women’s rights group has warned that criminal record checks may be compromised owing to the creation of a “safeguarding loophole” that allows transgender people to conceal past identities from employers.

Campaigners are voicing extreme concerns that the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) regime could be at risk over the possible exploitation of a process called the Sensitive Applications route, in which individuals can withhold their birth name and gender from future employers in nurseries, schools, and hospitals.

The DBS is a part of the Home Office responsible for safeguarding in the UK so that employers can check criminal records of job applicants.

Kate Coleman runs Keep Prisons Single Sex, which was set up in 2020 to campaign for the right of female prisoners to single-sex provision.

Last year, she released a report focused on DBS (pdf) highlighting that the system for transgender people is creating a “new safeguarding loophole.” She argued that organisations requesting DBS checks cannot have confidence in the information that is disclosed.

The Sensitive Applications route gives transgender applicants the choice not to have any gender or name information that could reveal their previous identity disclosed on their DBS certificate. The right to conceal previous identities is not given to anyone else.

“The sacrosanct nature of this population, this sacred cast of people to whom the usual requirements of safeguarding just don’t apply because they’re awarded enhanced privacy rights, which don’t apply to anybody else,” Coleman told The Epoch Times.

The DBS was founded in 2003 amid calls to strengthen the criminal records system after the failure of authorities to find underage sex complaints against the child murderer Ian Huntley.

Safeguarding

Coleman stressed that when working with children or vulnerable adults, there are sex-based safeguarding considerations.

Through a normal DBS route, if someone has legally changed their name by deed poll, the organisation that requested the application and has statutory responsibility for safeguarding will be able to see all the names listed on the DBS certificate.

However, while transgender individuals are still legally required to inform DBS of their current and previous identities, a prospective employer is not entitled to know whether or not an applicant has used the Sensitive Applications route.

The report did not suggest that every person who changes their identity via a process of self-declaration does so in order to evade safeguarding, but that the process could be exploited by anyone who seeks access to children and vulnerable adults by hiding their preexisting legal identity.

The number of standard and enhanced applications that have been processed through the Sensitive Application route since 2019 is in the low thousands. The DBS processes millions of criminal record checks every year.

“I think people misunderstand that the DBS is simply a tool and safeguarding is not the totality of safeguarding. Getting the certificate is not the conclusion and the endpoint of safeguarding,” said Coleman.

If someone wants to volunteer to teach children at the local rugby club, for example, that will require an enhanced DBS and a check with the Children’s Barred List, a list of individuals who are banned from working with children.

Even if the DBS form comes back clear, Coleman said that the next step for many children’s clubs will be to make a few phone calls if there are different names.

“The first principle of safeguarding should be ‘why do you want to do this’ and ’are you suspicious’?” said Coleman.

“They will then check the names with other children’s rugby clubs to see if anything was wrong, even if nothing was ever proven,” she said.

“However if this was done through the Sensitive Applications route, all that will come up on the certificates will be the new name,” she added.

Coleman said that when she presents her evidence to safeguarding organisations, she either faces a “wall of silence” or is “told thank you very much, there’s nothing to see, it’s all actually fine.”

“It’s really scary,” she added.

Last October ministers said they were urgently looking into reports that convicted child abusers are changing their names to avoid detection by officials, though it is not known if the government is considering issues created by the Sensitive Applications route.

The Home Office did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

‘Public Safety Should Never Be Compromised’

The Family Education Trust, which researches the causes and consequences of family breakdown, told The Epoch Times by email that it found the information “extremely concerning.”

“The purpose of DBS checks are to ascertain whether a candidate has previous convictions and whether they might pose a possible safeguarding risk,” said Family Education Trust Senior Researcher Piers Shepherd.

“The Sensitive Applications Route enables candidates to evade such checks by hiding their past identities. This is extremely concerning especially given recent cases of men who identify as women gaining access to female prisons and other single-sex spaces,” he said.

“It is clear that the mainstreaming of transgender identities raises serious safeguarding issues. Public safety should never be compromised in order to advance the agenda of a small minority,” he added.

Other safeguarding and children’s charities did not respond to The Epoch Times.