As the focus on students begins to dissipate from our newspapers following the resignation from the Office for Students of Toby Young, there are some issues that still need to be resolved. A simple resignation, even one that was opposed by people like Boris and Jo Johnson, Michael Gove from inside the Government and Julia Hartley Brewer and Fraser Nelson from outside of the Government is sometimes all that is needed to change matters and the organisation can then move on. However there are still some major issues to resolve in this case. On a matter of small issues, when Anthony Seldon who was Head at Brighton College, Wellington College and is now the Vice Chancellor of University of Buckingham was interviewed on Radio 4 he first spoke up for the good work that Toby had done regarding Free Schools, but then stated very clearly that due to the opinions that Toby had expressed in print and on twitter, he is not suited to work in the field of education! That surely raises questions about some of his other work. However that is not the main point of this blog.

Whilst the Toby Young issue was still unresolved, a contact of mine on twitter admitted that she had been turned down from a role as a result of her use of twitter. She had not written anything offensive on twitter and is not willing to say any more. However she is someone who I have been following on twitter for many years, she is not wrong to suggest her tweets are not controversial.

Another person whose job ended before it had begun, like Toby Young was a young person who was briefly appointed a the Youth Police and Crime Commissioner for Kent in 2013. Her tweets, like Toby Young’s were deeply offensive and once they came to light she resigned. The difference was that while Toby Young who is 54 had posted many of his comments in his mid to late 40’s as well as possibly in his 50’s, the young person concerned was appointed at the age of 17 and her tweets took place when she was aged 14-16. As this news report makes clear the PCC stated ‘Kent Police’s vetting procedures, which were used during the recruitment process, did not normally require social networks to be scrutinised for posts of this grade’ However the same report goes on to state On Monday, two of Kent’s Conservative MPs – Laura Sandys and Damian Collins – said the teenager should step down. Labour’s home affairs select committee chairman Keith Vaz also said he believed her views were “incompatible with holding office”.

“Even though these comments were written before she was appointed, few people would doubt that had she been 27, instead of 17, then she would have lost her job. It’s right that we expect higher standards from people with more experience in life, and those holding public office” Damian Collins (MP for Folkestone and Hythe)

“Her comments are totally unacceptable and I think the pressure on her to resign will grow.” Craig Mackinlay (now MP for South Thanet)

A survey by CareerBuilder suggests 70 percent of employers now use social media to screen candidates before hiring, which is up from 60 percent in 2016. According to Jobvite, 87 per cent of recruiters check potential candidates’ LinkedIn accounts, 43 per cent check Facebook, and 22 per cent check Twitter. This article in the Telegraph from July 2017 explains about EU Article 29 guidance which is intended to protect applicants from being screened in an unacceptable manner by employers. It adds that job applicants should not have their profiles summarily checked as part of the screening process, saying “employers should not assume that merely because an individual’s social media profile is publicly available they are then allowed to process the data”. It says scanning social media profiles is only allowed when “relevant to the performance of the job which is being applied for”.

The statement by Theresa May on Sundays Marr programme suggested that either no one in the Government had checked out Toby’s tweets and read his more disturbing articles, or else that they had failed to alert Ministers to them, or perhaps in the light of views from Jo Johnson, that the lower level Ministers had chosen to ignore the information and failed to pass it on to their more senior colleagues. Yet five years ago Ann Barnes and Kent Police were criticised for failing to do the same thing with someone whose role was a great deal less high profile. We have had many calls by MPs such as Amber Rudd for social media sites to reveal individuals who are guilty of posting illegal messages which is of course a very different matter to offensive tweets. However if high profile national roles such as the Office for Students is not see as being a relevant enough for the Government to check out tweets and articles, then we are in a very difficult place. A few weeks ago I launched a petition to call on Parliament to carry out a cyber security audit of MPs offices following some bragging tweets from MPs that they share their passwords around their office. Whilst checking social media is not in the same orbit as MPs protecting their offices, it all points towards a lack of credible understanding of how technology is both a powerful weapon for communication and also a threat to society.

We need Parliament and the Government to raise its game, not by one or two notches, but into a new paradigm.