I just received this email from a model flying enthusiast, showing how the vetting database is dissuading people from forming new clubs: ‘A local model flying club, due to reasons of its own lacklustre, has declined in membership to the point where it can no longer afford to pay the rent on both of its two flying fields. Accordingly it seems as if it will give up one of it’s fields come the years end. I and a few others were asked if we would be prepared to establish a new club at the field when it becomes vacant. Following discussions we…

The Home Office official, John O’Brien, gives a telling outline on Radio 4’s The Report (13 August) of who should be vetted. Someone should be vetted, he says, if ‘you get the opportunity to become familiar to them [children]’, and he says that ‘there is lots of evidence that the ability to build the relationship [with children] can lead to things like grooming’. He says that people who meet a group of children once should not be vetted, on the basis of ‘one-off contact not giving ability to form a relationship’ – but that organisations should be careful that non-vetted adults don’t…

Sir Michael Bichard, the man whose report into the Soham murders started the vetting database, is now having his doubts. In an interview in the Independent, he says that the regulations ‘need to be looked at again’ and that ‘there will always be situations where you could argue that the line has been drawn in the wrong place’. This shows the tide of opinion has shifted. It also reflects the fact that the government copied the database out of the report’s recommendations, almost without thinking about it. The desire to take ‘expert advice’ meant a social policy that was effectively copied up…