As the father of a child with a debilitating form of autism, Kenneth Palmer made a point of boarding the school bus to make sure his 10-year-old’s seatbelt was safely secured.

However, the 48-year-old from Glasgow had not bargained for the furore this simple action would provoke.

Palmer and the parents of other pupils at Our Lady of the Missions primary in Thornliebank, Renfrewshire, were banned from the bus because they had not been vetted by Disclosure Scotland, the body responsible for carrying out criminal record checks on adults who work with children.

Ultimately, the local authority relented but the episode left a bitter taste in Palmer’s mouth. His anger is compounded by the fact that he had already been vetted by Disclosure Scotland to run Sunday school classes at Holy Cross Catholic Church on the south side of Glasgow.

“I couldn’t believe they wanted us to get a certificate to allow us to simply put a seatbelt on our own children,” he said. “It was absurd and all of the parents rallied against it, we refused to back down. The council and bus company were hiding behind the legislation without wanting to see common sense.”

In the west end of Glasgow a school council’s chairwoman was unable to book a disc jockey for the Valentine’s Day disco because she didn’t have the necessary disclosure certificate.

In another authority, the driver of a gritter lorry was required to go through a disclosure check because his route took him into a school playground. What was introduced as a response to the tragedies of Dunblane and Soham to ensure that people with a history of dangerous criminal behaviour did not have access to children, has become a tool of overzealous bureaucrats and a back-covering device to reinforce a risk-averse culture that is only happy when every box has been ticked in triplicate.

The current law is designed to reveal whether a person whose normal duties entail working with children or vulnerable adults has criminal convictions that would make them unsuitable for the job. It was introduced the year after the Dunblane massacre, by the Police Act of 1997, to bring together all the information previously held on the Police National Computer, various government departments and local police forces and is now implemented by Disclosure Scotland, which was established by the Scottish government in 2005.

There are three levels of disclosure. The highest grade, an “advanced disclosure”, is required for someone who has extensive contact with children or vulnerable adults, including being in sole charge of them. This reveals all of a person’s convictions, whether or not they were “spent”, details of cautions, reprimands and cautions and any other comments the local police feel are relevant.

Disclosure is not, contrary to popular belief, necessary to organise a jumble sale, attend a PTA meeting or organise a mums’ running club. “We spend a lot of time persuading people that they don’t have to undergo the checks,” said Judith Gillespie of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council. “The trouble is that a lot of schools and authorities say that if you are going to see a child or have anything to do with a child, you have to be checked before you do it.”

While disclosure would have prevented Thomas Hamilton running a youth club or a Scout group, it would not have stopped him from marching into Dunblane primary school armed with two 9mm Browning HP pistols and two Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers and killing 16 children and one of their teachers. Local police had received complaints about his behaviour towards young boys, specifically that he had taken photographs of some of the youngsters semi-naked without their parents’ consent. An advanced disclosure would have made the stuff of local rumour a matter of official record.

If it was working as it should, the system would have sent alarm bells into overdrive when Ian Huntley applied for the job of caretaker at Soham Village College in 2001. Instead, a jaw-dropping list of errors meant a man who was named in nine allegations of rape, indecent assault on an 11-year-old girl and sex with underage girls and was described in a report on Humberside Police’s own local computer system as a “serial sex attacker”, was given the position and went on to murder Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

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