Several authors are to stop visiting schools in England in protest at laws requiring them to be vetted to work with youngsters. The “vetting and barring scheme”, to be introduced in October, is a response to the 2002 Soham murders of two young children by school caretaker Ian Huntley. Philip Pullman, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo and Anthony Horowitz have hit out at the scheme which will be applied to everybody who has “more than a tiny amount” of contact with children.
