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Children’s authors and illustrators, Philip Pullman, Anne Fine, Anthony Horowitz, Michael Morpurgo and Quentin Blake have described the government's new legislation requiring them to enter their names on a database as "corrosive and poisonous" and will stop visiting schools from the start of the new academic year in protest.
Following a story broken in The Bookseller last week, the five authors all told The Independent that they object to the Home Office policy, which is intended to protect children from paedophiles, and would not be visiting any schools as a consequence.
The Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) is being managed by the Independent Safeguarding Authority, set up after the 2002 murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells by Ian Huntley, a janitor at their school. All individuals who work with children from 12th October will be required to register with a national database for a fee of £64.
Pullman, who has described the Home Office policy as like "Section 28" described it as "corrosive and poisonous to every kind of healthy social interaction". He said: "I've been going into schools as an author for 20 years, and on no occasion have I ever been alone with a child. The idea that I have become more of a threat and I need to be vetted is both ludicrous and insulting."
Fine said the scheme was "governmental idiocy". "The whole idea of vetting an adult who visits many schools, but each only for a day, and then always in the presence of other adults, is deeply offensive."
Morpurgo said the policy was "a nonsense" which would put writers off visiting pupils. "It's yet another example of the Government going way over the top," he said. "Writers don't go to schools for the money, they do it because they want to bring their stories to children and make readers of them."
Anthony Horowitz said the £64 fee had "a nasty feeling of a stealth tax about it". "Like so many of Labour's laws, it's just an ill-thought-out by-product of a general law to stop suspect people going into schools . . . A child who admires a writer has a great belief in that writer as a good human being. If you say that, actually, the guy who's writing this book could be a sick pervert and we've got to protect you from him, I think you're not exactly sending out the most positive message."
He added that last year was the National Year of Reading, during which the Government heavily promoted the practice of authors visiting schools.
Quentin Blake said the Government was guilty of "grotesque misunderstanding" about what happens on school visits, and that he would refuse to pay the registration fee if he was asked.
"A lot of these people are asked to visit schools because they are known already," he said. "You don't ask Philip Pullman or Michael Morpurgo because you don't know who they are, and you don't go to the trouble of being the Children's Laureate to pay £64 to have permission to talk to children. That is bizarre."
A spokesman from the Home Office said: "The UK already has one of the most advanced systems in the world for carrying out checks on all those who work in positions of trust with children and vulnerable adults. From October this year the new Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) will ensure these regulations are even more rigorous.
"The new scheme means every individual working in a field that requires more than a tiny amount of contact with children and/or vulnerable adults will have to be vetted. If they are passed, they will be placed on a register that says they are allowed to work in a regulated field. If they are barred, they will go on a separate register and it will be a criminal offence for them to try and obtain work in a regulated field, carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison. It will also be illegal for anyone to employ them."