COMPETITION ASSESSMENT
92. The principal sectors affected will be education, health, social care, faith groups, sport and leisure, with some impact on transport, supported housing, the prison service and the part of the retail sector which employs children.
93. The Act and proposals for secondary legislation are not expected to have any significant impact upon competition regardless of which of the options discussed above are pursued. For most organisations, disclosure costs are only a small part of recruitment costs but the Scottish Government will be sensitive to smaller voluntary sector organisations for whom compliance with disclosure requirements could be a significant burden.
94. In developing proposals for retrospective checking in the coming months, care will be taken to ensure that competing service providers are treated in the same way so that the cost burden falls equally. For example, there is no impact on competition by putting Edinburgh social workers onto the scheme before Glasgow social workers since this is a public service and anyway there is no overlap in the client group. In theory, it would not be fair to bring workers at one group of Edinburgh care homes onto the scheme before another because the first group would potentially face higher costs although, in practice, the effect on competition between businesses is minimal.
95. Fees must be paid in respect of individuals who are not exempt (i.e. because they are volunteers in the voluntary sector). The fee may be paid by the individual or the employer. Clearly, all employers offering the same type of service are affected equally by the level of fee. In the case that the employer does not reimburse the individual, the individual may regard the fee as a barrier to entry to regulated work, as opposed to other types of work for which no disclosure is required. I.e. there could be a very modest labour market distortion in comparison to other sectors. The proposed fees (which are unrelated to the individual's income) will obviously be more significant to individuals in lower paid parts of the regulated workforce. This effect is considered to be very slight given that many employers in other sectors will ask for basic disclosure for which a £23 fee is currently payable.