The Home Secretary last week insisted that the Government agreed with all of the recommendations Sir Michael Bichard made in his report into the Soham murders. In a statement to the House of Commons, Charles Clarke claimed the Government was "totally committed to the full implementation of (the) recommendations".
But a closer examination of the Home Office's response to the Bichard inquiry suggests otherwise, and the biggest casualty is the proposed central registration system for everyone working with children.
A large-scale and complex problem
Bichard called for such a register to confirm that there is no known reason why an individual should not work with children. But the Home Office considers this too radical and its response to the Bichard inquiry outlines concerns that "the sheer scale and complexity of keeping track of such a large workforce ... would make this recommendation prohibitively costly and impractical to implement".
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