Have you been ISA-cleared? If you want a new job then you had soon better be. According to Sir Roger Singleton, head of the Independent Safeguarding Authority (the aforementioned ISA), a clean bill of health from his fledgling organisation will become as important as a professional qualification for any aspiring employee. It will announce to the world that you are not a paedophile, that you have not assaulted a child and do not pose a danger to vulnerable old people. The state will have decreed that you are not a monster. If you are coming around slowly to the view that this country is going mad then confirmation came yesterday with Sir Roger’s comments in this newspaper. It is now, apparently, considered perfectly reasonable to regard the entire adult population as a potential pool of criminal suspects.

Regrettably the same paranoia has infiltrated New Zealand. It is now dangerous for an adult male to be seen with children - even his own. Few men now join the teaching profession due, anecdotally, to the fear of being seen as prospective paedophiles. Airlines won't seat children next to men.

SIR – I am part of a home-education group that meets once a week for three hours. I have been told by the council that the adults will need a Criminal Records Bureau check if we are to continue. I questioned this. No one is in loco parent is, as each child is accompanied by at least one of its parents. I expect to see the day when a mother needs a CRB check before being allowed to take her baby home from hospital.