Vetting rule ridiculous - Byron

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TV psychologist Dr Tanya Byron has branded plans to vet people in contact with children "unbelievably rubbish".

Dr Byron, who advises the government on internet safety, said the "ridiculous" Vetting and Barring scheme would fuel a culture of "paranoia" around children.

She was speaking at a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrat conference.

Anyone working or volunteering with children will have to register under the new laws - some estimate as many as one in four adults may be affected.

The rules, which come into full force in November 2010, were drawn up in response to the Soham murders, when Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were killed by school caretaker Ian Huntley.

'Paranoid'

But Dr Byron, who was appointed by Gordon Brown in September 2007 to investigate how to protect children from harmful video games and internet material, said: "It is about risk and it is about fear."

"We are a paranoid culture of extreme proportions and until we shift that we will not shift anything," she added.

Children are being denied an open childhood in which they are allowed to experience risk Tanya Bryon

She said Britain had a "risk-averse" culture in which "we can never take a proportionate and balanced view on anything when it comes to children".

"If you design society by taking a view through the eyes of the most vulnerable child then we completely screw up childhood for every child," she told the meeting.

She said young people faced more fear and discrimination in the UK than anywhere else in Europe and she said she felt "pretty despondent" that it would ever change.

Children were effectively being brought up "in captivity" due to "paranoia" about paedophiles generated by the media, even though there was no evidence they were at greater risk than in the past.

As a result, they were doing all of their socialising online - and even here their "space" was being regulated out of existence, she argued.

"Children are being denied an open childhood in which they are allowed to experience risk," said Dr Byron, star of the BBC's Little Angels, which follows families with difficult children.

Equal Rights

Dr Byron has worked in the NHS for nearly 20 years including specialising in drug dependency, sexual health and eating disorders. Her 2008 report recommended a shake-up in the licensing of video games.

The meeting also heard from 16-year-old Jessica Robinson who has started a Facebook campaign against youth discrimination, after being harassed by shopping centre staff for "being young," and Lib Dem young people's spokesman Baroness Walmsley.

The Children's Society is campaigning for equal rights for children to be included in the government's Equality Bill - something backed by the Lib Dems.

The Vetting and Barring scheme will apply in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and registration will become compulsory from November 2010.

A separate but aligned scheme is being set up in Scotland.

The government estimates up to 11.3m people in the education, care and health industries will eventually be on the database.