Independent Safeguarding Authority - Initial Criticism

Initial Criticism

Several prominent children's authors - who believed they would all be required to join the scheme in order to conduct talks in schools - have criticised the ISA. Philip Pullman called the scheme "outrageous, demeaning and insulting" and said he would no longer appear in schools because of it: "When you go into a school as an author or an illustrator you talk to a class at a time or else to the whole school. How on earth – how on earth – how in the world is anybody going to rape or assault a child in those circumstances? It's preposterous." Author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce said: "As an author you're never alone with a class. There's no possible reason for this, unless it's a revenue-raising scam." Former children's laureate Anne Fine said: "I refuse – having spoken in schools without incident for 32 years, I refuse to undergo such a demeaning process. It's all part of a very unhealthy situation that we've got ourselves into where all people who are close to children are seen as potential paedophiles." Lindsay Mackie, representing the literary charity English PEN, said: "The signal to children that the public space is to be defined as a potentially dangerous space – where the values of the worlds where the visitors work, whether it's in writing or engineering or family, are secondary to the definition of the adult as "vetted" or "safe" – is limiting and fearful. We are creating paranoia."

Others questioned the usefulness of the scheme, pointing out that it could not have prevented the Soham murders in the first place because the perpetrator, Ian Huntley, knew the victims through his girlfriend, not his job.