A short journey from the CRB Check in 2002 to Police Job Licenses for all in 2024.
by Jim Crouch for Future Universal News Corpse © 2024 - 'Having FUN with the News'
The Police Job Licensing Bureau an extension of the old CRB check is proving controversial yet again.
Currently around 4.9 million U.K. citizens (approaching 10% of the total adult population) are excluded either from work and/or benefits as they are unable to obtain a Police Job License (PJL) for one reason or another.
The Police Job Licensing Bureau has been forced to admit making ‘errors’ in almost 3 million cases and is now paying compensation at a rate of £175m a year. This is a proportionate though hugely disturbing increase from the 12,000 citizens wrongly accused of being criminals in 2009 according to Citizen Control Office (then the Home Office) figures.
According to Tahmeena Bax, recently appointed Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) a majority of these ‘errors’ are directly attributable to what is euphemistically called non-conviction data and includes informal records of demonstrations attended, any activity classed by the police as domestic terrorism, which can include membership of such apparently innocuous organisations as The National Trust and most damning of all, records of informal and non-attributable police notes and observations. All these records are now held for every citizen for 150 years.
The potential to license and control jobs in the U.K. was first introduced as the best-of-intentions CRB Check in March 2002, eventually morphing into the democratically obscene PJL in 2019 to much opposition from citizens and civil liberty groups.
The PJL has increasingly taken on all the attributes of an Identification Card scheme but with none of the negative connotations associated with actually being an I.D.Card. The apparent lack of an I.D.Card requirement for citizens in the U.K. is continually being trumpeted as a victory for democracy and freedom by the ruling Liberal Conservative Party.
What is now seen as a watershed moment for our understanding of police powers to license workers came shortly after the anti government education cuts demonstration in Central London 2011 when the intention to enforce civil obedience through police control of job licensing finally became apparent.
Then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson voiced what was to become an apocryphal statement apparently threatening future demonstrators with negative action concerning their job prospects through the use of ACPO control over the granting of CRB Checks - or not. (ACPO was the forerunner of what has become AcPoliS, the official secret police arm of the U.K. police force.)
Speaking at New Scotland Yard, he said there was a "stark contrast" between the violent scenes in Westminster and homes with crying parents and shocked young people when police arrived.
He added: “I would urge those who turn up for protests to think about the impact this could have on their future careers.”
From just over 3.8 million CRBs in 2008/09 with an estimated total of 11.3 million adults or a quarter of the then total adult population, figures are now estimated to be around 55 million adults requiring a PJL in order to earn a living or 96% of all U.K. adults.
Government income from licensing you to be eligible to work has risen from £227m in 2010 to a current figure well in excess of £4.3 billion.
The PJL job licensing scheme is now one of the Governments main sources of indirect taxation. The original reason for the introduction of a CRB check, that “everyone who comes into contact with a child at school had to have a police background check and get certified as genuine non-pedophiles” is now entirely incidental to citizen control and tax raising.
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