At the end of October, David Cameron announced a review to determine whether Islamist extremists have infiltrated every walk of life from schools to the NHS. This investigation will span across all public sectors to identify any areas of potential risk and deal with these issues accordingly. After the horror of the recent Paris attacks in November, public safety is a higher priority than ever and it is at the forefront of the British mind. Cameron is said to be working towards safeguarding against the threat of extremism by radicals into everyday British life and aims to tackle the problem of extremism in the UK completely. What does this mean for DBS checks and how important are they to protecting the public?

The Prime Minister has announced new powers for the Disclosure and Barring Service which will state that anyone who is convicted of extremism or terrorism will be treated in a similar way as paedophiles, meaning they will not be allowed to have contact with children or vulnerable people. Obviously, this will restrict these individuals from working in most public sector roles. Interestingly, this follows the Trojan Horse plot in Birmingham, which saw Islamist extremists attempt to infiltrate a number of schools and radicalise the children. This incident raised serious issues around safeguarding and highlighted the clear need for change in policy when performing background checks where extremism is concerned in order to provide the maximum information possible about candidates who apply for these roles.

However, problems of extremism don’t only lie in public sector and young adults can also be targeted through other channels. The government has also now extended their powers so that parents can now apply for their children’s passports to be withdrawn if they are at risk of travelling to another country to engage in extremist activity. This rule will soon be extended to under 18s in comparison to the under 16s rule that is currently in force. This is due to the fear that extremist groups such as Isis are now targeting more teenagers on social media claiming to speak in the name of ‘religion’. These groups are pretty easy to find, usually when teens are just searching for more information around their religion, and tend to see these groups positioning themselves as a family and ‘true believers’. Extremist groups like this tend to preferably target young women and people don’t know their faith that well, therefore leaving people unable to distinguish against more extremist viewpoints. Although these profiles are shut down when evidence of extremism is reported, there are no rules stopping people from setting up a new account instantly, making it extremely difficult to stop under current laws. More needs to be done to identify extremists in order to assist with safeguarding.

We need to be more aware of people who are attempting to infiltrate important sectors of British life and to do this, background checking is vital. DBS checks are used to protect employers and vulnerable people from being exploited and endangered, so it is obvious how much these changes can aid this overall goal once they are enforced.  It’s great to see the government adapting the policies as more is learnt about problems facing employers, especially in the public sector, and it will be interesting to see how many potential scandals can be avoided thanks to these new DBS check guidelines.