FOOTBALL authorities have been accused of being "asleep on the job" over the issue of protecting children from predators in a damning report into historical sexual abuse in the game.
MSPs said that the Scottish Football Association (SFA) has been "continually complacent" and that grave concerns remain over the safety of youth footballers in a largely unregulated environment.
An inquiry into the football grooming scandal by the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee found that there remains a backlog of background checks waiting to be carried out on men working with youngsters, and called for a complete revamp of the system which is supposed to offer safeguards.
The committee also turned its fire in the Scottish Youth Football Association (SYFA), accusing it of misleading government officials and MSPs about the amount of work needing to be done to ensure coaches are vetted properly.
Both the SFA and the SYFA are supposed to adhere to the the Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme was set up in 2011 as a registration system for all those who work with children and protected adults in Scotland, run through Disclosure Scotland.
However, The PVG scheme does not apply to volunteering, and MSPs have said it should now be made mandatory for all sports groups in the country to sign up to the scheme in the wake of the football grooming scandal.
Ministers plan to have new legislation in place by 2019, but the Committee believes action needs to be taken now to strengthen the PVG scheme and to ensure ‘unsuitable people’ are prevented from doing regulated work.
Neil Findlay MSP, Convener of the Health and Sport Committee, said: “Our evidence highlighted variations in how the PVG scheme operates in sports across Scotland.
"Ultimately, we believe the current system of PVG checks may not be preventing unsuitable people from doing regulated work with children.
"We’re talking about the safety of children - urgent action is needed now to strengthen the scheme as 2019 is too long to wait for new legislation."
He added: “In relation to football, we have raised serious concerns about the ability of the SYFA to ensure PVG checks are carried out efficiently.
"We cannot even now be confident that the SYFA is being truthful in relation to the size of their backlog and consequently that as an organisation they are committed to undertaking the appropriate PVG checking expeditiously."
"We consider the SFA to have been asleep on the job and continually complacent in this area. Based on the information provided, we are left with concerns about the current protections being afforded to youth footballers in Scotland.”
A spokesman for the SYFA said: "Whilst we have not yet received a copy of the report, the thousands of volunteers and the staff of the SYFA place the safety of Scotland's youth footballers at the heart of everything we do.
"We are one of the country's largest users of PVG checks and register thousands of new officials every year. We have tightened our procedures in recent months and are amongst the very best-performing youth sports bodies in the country when it comes to ensuring Disclosure Scotland checks are carried out in a timely fashion.
"We are very disappointed with comments that we in any way misled anyone about our procedures and have been open and honest in all our dealings with the Parliament.
"We will, of course, study the report in detail once we receive a copy and have a number of ongoing initiatives to ensure we continually monitor and improve our systems in this most vital of areas.
"We will also continue to work with our colleagues at the SFA, Disclosure Scotland, Volunteer Scotland Disclosure Services and the NSPCC to monitor and improve these systems."
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