Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I move, That the Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

The police-vetting service contributes to public safety and national security by providing over 650,000 police vets each year to support approved agencies to make informed decisions about individuals, primarily appointing individuals to roles in contact with children and vulnerable adults. This bill provides a statutory framework for the police-vetting service and will provide clear and consistent policy for police and users of the service. It will clarify the information considered and the tests police apply before releasing information. This will assist vetting users to understand what to expect when engaging with the police-vetting service.

I note that the bill implements a key recommendation contained in a 2016 joint review undertaken by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Independent Police Conduct Authority to provide greater clarity around vetting. The bill sets out that the purpose of police vetting is to assist agencies with their decision making about roles that involve the care and safety of children, young people, and vulnerable adults; roles that involve the education of children or young people; roles that involve law enforcement or national security and immigration- or citizenship-related decisions.

The bill provides that a vetting request can only be made by an agency that is either required under law to obtain a police vet, or that police consider it appropriate to make a vetting request. A vetting request may only be made if it is related to the purpose of police vetting, and police do not require any person to be police vetted.

Around 14,000 agencies are approved by police to request police vets to assist with their decision making about individuals and circumstances that meet the purpose of police vetting. A police vet is only provided with the consent of the vetting subject and can only be provided to an approved agency. It is a point-in-time assessment of police-held information.

The bill provides that the criminal-conviction history must be released, subject to the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004. The bill also sets out the categories of non-conviction information police consider for release. These include active or past charges; warrants; infringement offences; demerit points; overseas convictions, if held; family violence incidents; investigations that did not result in charges; and interactions that the vetting subject has had with police. It is important to note that just because non-conviction information may be considered for release, it does not mean that it will be released. Non-conviction information may only be released if it is relevant to the purpose for which the police vet is sought.

Police are also required to take reasonable steps to ensure the information is accurate and not misleading. The bill also recognises that four categories of information are particularly sensitive and should be subject to additional disclosure tests before being released. This occurs where the information is subject to a suppression order, is about a person when they were under 18, where it relates to mental health or substance abuse information, or if it relates to involvement in family violence as a witness or a victim.

Ten percent of police vets include only a criminal-conviction history, and less than 5 percent include a summary of relevant non-conviction information. The bill requires police vets for children’s workers who are regulated under the Children’s Act to be updated when they are charged or convicted of a specified serious offence. This reflects current practice. The bill also enables police, in agreed circumstances and with the consent of the vetting subject, to arrange with an agency to provide updates on a police vet—for example, if a person was charged or convicted of serious offences.

The bill provides for the service to continue in substantially the same manner as at present. However, it also enables police to deliver future service improvements, which would require further investment in systems that could enhance public safety and increase the efficiency of the service. This includes enabling police to specify a class of individuals who could be authorised to request a police vet on themselves, noting that police vets will always be provided directly to approved agencies. This could enable the police vet to be provided to more than one approved agency at once, so long as they all need it for the same purpose.

The bill also provides an indemnity for police from liability for any actions taken in good faith responding to a police vet. This is similar to the approach taken in the Privacy Act and the Official Information Act 1982. Given the public-safety interest in providing police vets, I consider it appropriate to provide this indemnity, which will encourage police to err on the side of releasing information. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Labour supports this piece of legislation. It’s been a while in the making, but the improvements this makes seeks to protect vulnerable people from harm and it’s an important system that we believe provides reassurance in places where it’s needed. Police initiated the review via the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) back in 2016, and the review recommended that a statutory framework needed to be developed in order to address a lack of legislative policy direction and uncertainties and legal risks to all parties when police vets are conducted, and so this is a response to that inquiry, to that request from the IPCA.

This bill amends the Policing Act from 2008 and seeks to address the recommendations of the IPCA review. The proposed statutory framework will allow police-vetting services to operate as it does currently. However, the statutory framework seeks to provide additional clarity around the purpose and the scope of vetting, which is important for people’s privacy and rights. It will address who can access the police-vetting service, what information can and cannot be released to vet—as stipulated by the Minister’s speech. This framework will also enable the implementation of significant changes and improvements through provisions coming into force by regulation over the next two to three years. These additional developments are proposed by the Police in the space particularly for information technology, and that will no doubt be dependent on funding to enable police to have that funding for that IT platform to be in place for that to happen. We know that the storing of data, particularly in consideration to privacy, is critical.

Establishing this statutory framework that enables a police-vetting service to occur is an important fact as it sets out the purposes of what are we doing this for when people are being vetted. It sets out who can request a vet, requiring a request for a police vet made within the consent, and setting out the information that may or may not be disclosed, enabling an individual who is a member of a specified class of individual to make a vetting request to themselves and specifying the agencies they wish the police to vet is able to be disclosed. An example might be an individual may request that police vet about themselves be provided by police to a number of prospective employers instead of having each of the prospective employers separately request a police vet in respect of the individual, so it would save time in that space.

Having the statutory framework will provide a clearer legal and policy direction for police having vetting services, greater clarity on vetting service purposes, and also it will give greater consistency so we can have that framework in place. We want to make sure that, particularly if people are in charge of children or people who are vulnerable, the right checks and balances have been in place, and also that there is a framework in place so that people have trust and confidence that it’s working well.

This bill will require anyone subject to a police vet to consent to the request being made—that’s an important point. In line with the existing scheme, information provided in a police vet could cover anything from demerits to infringements to active charges, warrants for arrest, any other interactions between an individual and police, family violence incidents, police investigations, overseas convictions, and any other information that’s held by the police. The Police website says that vets can currently provide information, subject to name suppression, where that information is necessary.

It’s important to note that this is work that enables a great service that gives people security about children and other people being in charge of others and having that check in place. Police do an outstanding job at carrying out these checks and making sure that we have confidence in our system. This legislation, which has been in train for a number of years, enables that policy framework and certainty to be put in place. I commend the bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to speak about the Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill for its first reading in the House today. I’m happy to say that we support this bill, and our contribution won’t be too long given most of the points have already been outlined by the Minister and by my colleague Ginny Andersen.

Basically, we are in support of this bill because it means that we are able to do those really important checks when people are doing a particular type of mahi, particularly those where there is a more, I guess, vulnerable group of people involved—for example, if you’re working with children or you’re working in a particular job where these checks are necessary. This bill will mean that that process is a lot easier and a lot more streamlined, which is really important given there are 650,000 requests every year to vet individuals. That’s quite a big demand, and so we’re happy to do things to make that process easier and more streamlined.

There’s two important points that we want to point out around this bill. The first one is around privacy and the way that we retain that information about the individuals and making sure that where that information is shared, the privacy of that individual is protected under all circumstances, because this information can traverse some quite deeply personal details about decisions that that individual has made throughout their lifetime. The distribution of that information and that data has to be very carefully made, and the Privacy Commissioner has obviously made that point very clear that we have to be very careful with the ways that we look after and maintain that information. That’s one big consideration that we have around the privacy rights of individuals and the rights that they have over their information and the collection of that.

The second point that we really want to make on this bill is we want to make sure that, through the passage of this bill, information that is thought about individuals and things that they may have done in their life doesn’t prejudice their ability to go on to do further mahi in their lifetime. For example, you might have a person who committed a crime, it could have been a low-level offence at some point during their life, but we don’t want that person to have to continue paying for that mistake that they made in their life. We’re giving some consideration towards how long some of those convictions might exist with a person and to make sure that they’re not being punished again and again, particularly those who have been released from prison and the way that those convictions and those records still impact them even after they’ve served their time.

We’re concerned about this kind of double jeopardy situation where someone continues to be punished for something that they’ve done time for. That’s a consideration that we have and that comes from the belief that we have in everybody’s potential to turn their lives around regardless of their actions. I’m not saying that, if somebody has committed a particular type of crime, we should disregard that information; what I’m saying is that they shouldn’t have to keep paying for something if they have done their time, done their sentence, and then are trying to reintegrate back into society.

That’s, basically, our two considerations in a nutshell. It’s really around those privacy concerns and around the fact that when people have done their time and have demonstrated that they’ve been able to turn their lives around, we shouldn’t continue to punish them in the ways that they can access different forms of employment or continue their life without continuing to, I guess, experience that prejudice. That’s our point, and happy to support this and to continue to scrutinise this bill as it moves through the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill in this first reading. Look, I think this is a very important piece of legislation. It is going to be considered, as I understand, by the hard-working Justice Committee, and ACT will be supporting it in this first reading.

A lot has been already said by my colleagues across the House, but it is important that we get this police-vetting framework in place. I was surprised to learn, actually, of the number of vets that are done each year: 650,000. Out of the population of New Zealand, that’s a considerable number. These are very important processes and checks that are done. As the member from the Greens, Tamatha Paul, said, particularly when you’re dealing with vulnerable people, children, etc., it’s very important that this work is undertaken. I was also surprised at the number of agencies—some 14,000 agencies that actually do use the police for these vetting services.

This bill does tidy up, really, a recommendation—again, this has been touched on already—from this joint report way back in 2016; again, work done by the Privacy Commissioner and the Independent Police Conduct Authority. I think it is great that we’re actually bringing this bill forward. It’s going to put in place this framework to make sure that these really important processes that are done by the police are done in an appropriate way, a transparent way, and in a way where the people who are having the checks done on them do consent to it and they understand how that information is going to be used.

Again, I think it’s been well-traversed some of the things that it’s going to put in place, but really it is going to set out who can make these requests, how they’re going to be done, and really what is the service that the police are undertaking for these many, many agencies to make sure that people being engaged, particularly with vulnerable children and young people—that their education, their safety, their welfare are being properly vetted and that information’s being made available.

I’m just probably going to leave it there. I look forward to, again, seeing this when it comes before the select committee. We can look at it in more detail, but I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill. I’d first like to acknowledge the effort the police make. As we’ve worked through this process, we recognise that police will often respond to a change of policy or process or system and just get to work delivering the service that’s being required of them. This vetting process, I think, is one of those ones where police have been inundated, to some extent, on the demands in this vetting process. It has been important that they commenced work straight away, and they have delivered a very positive service to New Zealanders, ensuring that we make sure that people are qualified, that they are suitable for the roles they’re put into.

This delivery of a framework has been a long time coming, as we’ve alluded to, but I think it’s really important that we now get this right and ensure that we deliver a service and a system that is robust, that is reviewed, that is protected—particularly that police are given some level of protection indemnity. I know it’s been raised, this issue about whether someone should be allowed to be cleared of any previous wrongdoings and allowed to continue with their life. I think it’s important to note that the police-vetting process is presenting information. They are not making the decisions on who should or shouldn’t work; they are just presenting information. I think it’s really useful that when they present that information, they have some level of protection that they can deliver full, detailed information without that fear of if they misstep or misspeak—that there is a degree of indemnity to ensure that there is a really frank and honest exchange.

A lot of these vettings relate to people in positions that need to have the highest level of trust in them because of the roles and tasks that we’re putting them under. This process that’s been put in place, this piece of legislation, will be important as we move forward, not only in the process but also in the ability to recover costs and ensure that we are delivering a better public service by investing in the systems and processes and equipment that we will use to maintain and control this information. It is with pleasure, on behalf of New Zealand First, that we commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā rā tātou e te Whare. Tū ana hau ki te waha i ngā kōrero mō te Pāti Māori. E tautoko ana mātou i tēnei o ngā pire.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker, and also greetings to the House. I stand on behalf of Te Pāti Māori. We support this bill.]

We are in support of this bill, the Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill. We understand that police vetting involves background checks when people apply for certain jobs. Background checks are usually required for roles that involve working with certain children and vulnerable people, as well as Government roles, requiring a high level of public trust. It is not the same as the Ministry of Justice’s criminal-record checks, which provide information only about convictions.

Currently, there are around 14,000 agencies who can request police background checks on new applicants. The purpose of this bill is to clarify the law around this undertaking, including (1) who can ask what and about whom, and (2) the need for consent and what information can be gained.

In respect of mana motuhake, this bill does involve sharing data with employers, but this is mitigated by the need for consent. Another issue is the potential for double jeopardy—being punished multiple times for the same action—but this is mitigated by the need to ensure the safety of tamariki and vulnerable people.

Focusing on the safety of tamariki and vulnerable people is key for Te Pāti Māori. In respect of mana ōrite, I note that Māori are much more likely to come into contact with police. Māori are 37 percent of the people proceeded against by the police, despite being only 19.6 percent of the population. This law could disproportionately impact Māori because the police are more likely to hold data on Māori. We would like to hear more about these implications at the select committee.

In respect to mana mokopuna, Te Pāti Māori supports clarifying the rules around background checks that will ensure that those entrusted with taking care of our mokopuna are vetted appropriately. With a view to hear more about potential implications for iwi and Māori, Te Pāti Māori supports this bill in its first reading. Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do apologise to the House for maybe sounding a bit under the weather after a week of prize-giving in a two-day event at the Ashburton Show—a great show. I may have picked up a couple of bugs on the way, but I will do my heartiest to support this bill through its first reading today.

It appears that this will be another bill sent to the busy and effective Justice Committee, so I want to acknowledge my colleagues in the House on the Justice Committee, who will be preparing furiously for the long-awaited arrival of this bill, the 23rd bill to be considered by the Justice Committee in this Parliament. I was doing some statistics earlier on today. We have reported 11 back, we have 11 under consideration, and four are awaiting us on the Order Paper. My message to my colleagues on the Justice Committee is to maybe clear your diaries for the next couple of Mondays because we might be very, very busy in the lead-up to Christmas. Can I support—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Do I hear a kūmara speaking of its sweetness there, Mr Meager?

JAMES MEAGER: Well, I’m not too sure if the workload will be that sweet as we head into Christmas, but can I just say that this is a good bill that we will be supporting through the House. It puts in place and codifies the structures that currently exist for police vetting. I, like my colleagues, was a little surprised to fully realise that the vetting process isn’t actually in statute, and so some of the protections around privacy that should ordinarily be in place are not so.

The genesis of this bill has come from the 2016 report by the Privacy Commissioner and Independent Police Conduct Authority, which recommended that some structure and some rigour be put in place, because, after all, we are dealing with the situation where an agency holds your information and a third party is requesting that information, but not necessarily with your consent. When we do that, we must be doing that for very good reasons, and, Mr Assistant Speaker O’Connor, I suspect, given the history of some in this House—yourself included—of dealing with people in this area, including some offenders, we’d want to make sure that we are protecting children and we’d want to make sure that the people who work with children are thoroughly vetted. When we allow agencies to share information about individuals, we should do so with good intentions and good reasons in mind, and that is the protection of children and of vulnerable people.

I refer to some of the concerns back in 2017 from the likes of the Nurses Union, who were concerned, of course, about the extent of some of the information that was being shared. Hopefully, some of the protections that are in place in this bill will address some of those concerns. I draw members’ attention to some of the requirements in there about what the police-vetting service is required to do when a vet is made—some of the protections around vets against children. For example, I believe you will be unable to undertake a vet against an individual who is under 14—a child—and there are some additional protections in place when vets are being requested of workers and volunteers under the age of 18.

It’s important that we put this structure in place. It’s important that we modernise the law. A number of roles in our country are required by statute to undergo police vetting. That includes, of course, those working in schools and the education sector, nursing, healthcare, and the protection of children. I think this is a good step by the Government. We will be supporting it through the first reading, and I look forward to considering it as a member of the Justice Committee in due course.

Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. I fear for the Justice Committee, given that member managed to stretch out a speech on such an uncontentious bill for so long—I hope he moves business before the committee at a slightly brisker pace!

I’m not going to take up a great deal of the House’s time, because this is an uncontentious bill. It’s not got a lot of high policy. I think, if there is policy in it, it is about the use of what could be seen as private information and what’s, essentially, delving into and investigating the private affairs of an individual and balancing that against the need for public safety. That’s, at its root, what this bill is about.

As has been said on a number of occasions already, the rules and framework that’s proposed is one that largely has been adopted by the police already, with some finessing. It is absolutely proper that it goes to select committee, which is the right place to do that detailed work and make sure that we’re not being overly intrusive, and at the same time the police-vetting process is effective and prophylactic in terms of public safety. To be perfectly honest, at this stage of the debate, in my view, there’s not a great deal more to say, although I’m sure my colleague Tracey McLellan will have much more to say. I will simply commend it to the select committee and to this House.

Mr Speaker, I’m very happy, like everyone else seems to be today, to be supporting the first reading of the Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill. Just reiterating what our hard-working chair of the Justice Committee James Meager pointed out: that this legislation, to get it to first reading, has had a long gestation. When you look back at 2016 when the IPCA, the Independent Police Conduct Authority, and the Privacy Commissioner released the joint review into the police’s vetting service, that was their recommendation back then in 2016—coming up nine years ago—for a statutory framework for police vetting.

As the bill’s policy statement says, “The potential impact on individuals who are the subject of a police vet warrants a robust and transparent statutory framework being established to formalise the operation of the Police-vetting service.” Like others have said, I look forward to submissions and to working through this as part of the Justice Committee. I commend the bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Labour supports this bill, as several of my colleagues have said, and for good reason. I think it’s pragmatic and most of the issues or potential issues are pretty clear and have been worked through. I, like several other contributors today, was really surprised at how many police vets are done. I feel like I kind of remember when it came in—I’m not sure how long ago that was—but it may have just been as a younger person being fully aware that that’s something that the police did. It seems to have been well embraced and well used, which is relatively surprising given the lack of that regulatory framework. I think, following the review, it makes sense to put that structure in place just to provide that statutory framework.

One of the other issues, and I was just looking through the information, was that—notwithstanding the fact that this, essentially, just affords the opportunity for things to work as they normally do anyhow but with that regulatory framework and that backstop—the bill itself and much of the work and much of the consultation obviously started actually quite some years ago now. Whilst we talk about getting it to this stage, the public consultation actually sort of happened between May and July in 2018. At the time, there were 76 submissions that Police had received, and the Privacy Commissioner had also previously been consulted, so there’s been some legwork done in the background of this particular bill.

I did note, though, that the Privacy Commissioner, who was previously consulted, had some issue supporting the establishment—or certainly supported the establishment of the statutory framework but did have some concerns about the new section 54N, inserted by clause 5, which is “Indemnity for Commissioner and Police employees”. On the surface, when you look back through that information, you could see why that would need to happen, given that the police are providing the service of doing the vets for other organisations, so they wouldn’t want necessarily to hold the liability or be held accountable if something was to go wrong.

From the Privacy Commissioner’s point of view—it appears that there is some debate about whether they should or shouldn’t, given that the consequences for something going wrong could be quite drastic for an individual or a group if that wasn’t done properly. The Privacy Commissioner had raised the concerns with that provision. So, as we go through the select committee process, it will be interesting to see what other information comes to light or what other issues get raised by various submitters to the process, because, as the Privacy Commissioner said here, “Significant harms can result from the disclosure of potentially prejudicial information that may not be tested in a Court.”

I think, as a member of the Justice Committee—and a very busy committee, very ably chaired by one of the previous contributors, James Meager; I’ll just throw him a wee comment because it felt like he needed it from over here. It is a busy committee. I think sometimes these things can seem a little bit dry, but there’s some interest in here, and I look forward to hearing those submissions. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Once again, I rise as the final speaker on a bill that we have before the House today. Right now, it’s the Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill. For the benefit of listeners from home and from work, we’re at the first reading stage. As we heard earlier, but if they weren’t tuned in, this is a Government bill in the name of the Hon Mark Mitchell, our Minister of Police, and an excellent Minister of Police at that.

It’s good to hear that across the House at this first reading, there is support for this bill. I add my kōrero to those before me that I too was quite astounded that at this stage in Aotearoa New Zealand, we don’t actually have a statutory framework that allows for police vetting to work within.

I guess the question becomes: why is a framework important, in particular a statutory one? It’s for consistency. Consistency is so important. It’s so important, particularly when you’re dealing with people’s private information. When we, hopefully, establish this framework, there are those rules and those requirements and regulations that do need to be adhered to when vetting is being sought.

I look forward to being part of the Justice Committee, chaired by my good friend James Meager. I look forward to discussing these issues. We commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Policing (Police Vetting) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.