Monday, June 19, 2006

Should we reconvene Bichard?

Following on from my previous post about the possibility of "Megan's Law" in the UK, Elle Seymour raised an important point in the comments about the problem of serious sex offenders and information sharing by the police.

As Ellee mentioned, the issue first came to light after the now infamous Soham murders. In that case there was a fundamental disconnect in communication between Police forces which led to a known sex offender getting a job in a school. The fall out from that was the Bichard inquiry which concluded that there should be a police national IT system.

Coincidentally, the Labour MP Eric Illsley, asked the Prime Minister a question about Bichard last week in PMQs. Illsey requested that Bichard be reconvened to assess whether the IT project was on track for its completion date of 2010 and was not being held up by extreme delays (I wonder what he knows?).

Tony Blair's reponse was to say that he didn't think the inquiry needed to be reconvened and to his knoweldge the IT project was on target. Presumably like the NHS IT systems that are on target and on budget.

1 comment:

Ellee Seymour said...

You also need to bear in mind that paedophiles are very crafty and cunning, they can easily take on a false name and identity and slip the net. I don't understand how their minds work, so I have no solution to this, except they need to be locked away for many years if they have committed horrific crimes so innocent young people are protected.