By Steve Bargeton, political editor

URGENT CHECKS were under way yesterday to discover if any serious offenders in Scotland have escaped vetting as a result of a Home Office blunder.

Earlier this week it emerged information on Britons who committed serious offences overseas was left in files instead of being properly examined.

The cases include 25 Britons, convicted of rape in other European countries, whose details were not entered in the Police National Computer.

More than 500 serious offenders are being checked by the Criminal Records Bureau, which vets people who want to work with children, to see if any have applied for jobs in Britain.

The issue was discussed at the weekly meeting of the Scottish cabinet yesterday.

Justice minister Cathy Jamieson briefed ministers and put in place checks to see if anyone given the green light to work with children by the Disclosure Scotland vetting agency has an unknown overseas conviction.

“Our officials have been in touch with ACPOS and Home Office officials,” said a senior Scottish Executive spokesman.

“Disclosure Scotland have confirmed they are planning to run a check against the Home Office cases as they are entered onto the police national computer.

“This will ensure that the identities from the Home Office backlog are checked against Disclosure Scotland’s 1.2 million standard and enhanced disclosures issued since 2002.

“Disclosure Scotland will double-check all this as the information is fed into the UK computer.

“The message from Cathy Jamieson is—concern; we are doing all we can to make sure we get on top of this as quickly as possible.”

There were also demands for Ms Jamieson to make an emergency statement to Parliament.

“We need to know how this fiasco at Whitehall has impacted upon Scotland,” said Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie.

“It is a very serious state of affairs when potentially over 500 criminals, including murderers, rapists and paedophiles, could have returned to work in the UK without any record of their conviction on the British database, which is used by all of the UK’s police forces.

“When exactly was the Scottish justice minister informed of this situation?

“How many of the 500 criminals are based in Scotland?

“Whilst the fact that John Reid has met with senior officials would suggest that something is being done, is it a case of too little, too late?”

The SNP’s home affairs spokesman, Stewart Hosie, said, “John Reid has to take personal responsibility for this latest debacle at the Home Office, and ignorance is really no excuse.

“This is the same John Reid who has been taking time out of his job to attack the SNP, and claim in the most ridiculous terms that Scotland somehow isn’t capable of running Home Office functions.

“I have written to the Home Secretary asking him to detail how many of these missing offenders, particularly those convicted of the most serious crimes, are known to be resident in Scotland, and what plans the Home Office has to immediately identify where these people are.”

Liberal Democrat MSP Jeremy Purvis said, “This latest blunder shows that the reality of the Home Office is far from the rhetoric of John Reid, who assured everybody that he was coming in to fix the problems.

“We need assurance that Scottish people are not at risk.

“The Scottish justice minister must be open about how the Executive is involved in the investigation now under way, but inevitably there must be a UK solution as soon as possible.”

Chief Constable Peter Wilson, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, said police are liaising with the Executive and the Scottish Criminal Record Office to find out if and how Scotland is affected.

He said, “The Scottish Police Service stands ready to work with these agencies and to offer our support to address any issues arising out of the impact of the UK backlog in Scotland.”