The government’s latest ‘child protection’ idea is positively harmful

Alsadair Palmer neatly sums up the absurdity of the government’s new child protection plans in the Telegraph:

“Once it receives your application, the ISA will invite people to submit information about you. The ISA’s officials will be looking for any claim to the effect that you have done something which might have caused “physical, emotional, financial or developmental harm” to a child. Don’t ask for a definition of such “harm”, for there is none – the term will be interpreted in any way the Government’s assessors choose.

Those assessors will not be required to ascertain whether or not “harm” actually took place, nor whether you were in fact the cause of it. They will only have to come up with a measurement of the seriousness of the harm you might have caused: a number between one and five. Then they will have to put a number (also between one and five) on the likelihood that you’ll do something similar again.