Letters | 4 December 2010

Pecksniffian bureaucrats
Sir: I bought your 27 November issue purely on the promising cover illustration and was not disappointed. Josie Appleton’s masterly article (‘A common sense revolution’) held up to deserved ridicule the Criminal Records Bureau, a classic example of a very worthwhile idea hijacked by as big a bunch of Pecksniffian bureaucrats as ever wrung their hands. Of the many howling idiocies dragged whining and wailing into light, the crowning example was that of the cathedral flower guild who might have ‘paedophiles infiltrating’ their group because of a toilet-sharing arrangement with choirboys. On that basis, I would have thought it much more likely that a pervert seeking a happy hunting ground would apply to join the CRB, thereby gaining access to an unholy grail of informative documentation via their copious computerised records.
Peter Wyton
Gloucester

Sir: Hurrah for Josie Appleton and the Volunteers’ Revolt! I have twice refused on principle, after 36 years of trusted public service, to fill in CRB forms, first when serving for ten years as a governor of one of the best schools in England (six of them as chair); and then when volunteering to join ‘Good Neighbours’ in the town where I have lived for 35 years, to visit and befriend elderly fellow residents who are housebound or lonely.
If others want to check me out with the police, let them. But the present system is Orwellian; it evidently does not prevent law-breaking and abuse; it simply covers bureaucratic backs, while undermining the trust on which a healthy community depends. 
Sir John Weston
Richmond, Surrey



Sir: ‘A common sense revolution’ will have struck a chord with any dentists among your readership, who are shortly to be regulated by the Care Quality Commission. Registering under this duplicated and costly regulation requires dentists to travel to a small number of specified Post Offices and queue to have a special CQC-issued CRB form signed, in order that they can continue to offer dental care from next April, just to cover a totally theoretical risk.