The expansion would mean individuals such as parents and guardians are also eligible as employers under the scheme, he said.

“Self-employed persons, for example, private tutors, tend to have more opportunities of having unsupervised individual contact with children ... so a relatively higher risk may be involved,” Tang said on the panel on security at the Legislative Council.

“Thus, we will expand the scheme to prospective self-employed persons in the first phase in the fourth quarter of 2024,” he added.

“Some volunteers will interact with children and mentally incapacitated people on a regular basis and some activities may involve high-risk situations such as voluntary teaching services and overnight exchange programmes,” he said. “Voluntary groups may not be familiar with all the volunteers.”

Tang said pending the results of the scheme’s first covering the self-employed and second phase involving volunteers, the scheme would be extended to all existing employees and self-employed people in jobs which have regular contact with children and mentally disabled.

He stressed that the scheme was voluntary-based, which means employers or voluntary groups can decide whether to conduct the check according to their own risk assessment.

The Sexual Conviction Record Check Scheme was launched in 2011 to allow employers of people undertaking works related to children or mentally disabled people to check whether potential employees have any criminal conviction for sexual offences such as rape, indecent assault, and voyeurism.

The scheme currently covers prospective employees, contract renewal staff, and staff assigned by outsourced service providers to other organisations.

Employers currently allowed to use the scheme are limited to organisations or enterprises.

Police had received over 619,000 new applications and 136,000 renewal applications since the scheme’s launch until up to April this year, Tang said.

The auto-telephone answering system has also received more than 720,000 inquiries regarding the outcome of the checks.

Tang said police would launch an online registration platform in the fourth quarter of this year to allow the public to submit documents and inquire about their applications.

A 24-hour fingerprint-taking service would be set up in six designated police stations across the city, he said, while self-service kiosks with fingerprint-taking functions would also be introduced by the end of 2025.

“The validity period of the check results will be extended from 18 months to 36 months, so as to increase the efficiency and capacity of handling applications,” he said.

“At present, the system is capable of handling about 60,000 applications each year. We expect that starting from the fourth quarter of 2024, the system will be able to process at least 210,000 new applications annually.”

When asked why some sexual offences such as bestiality were not include in the specified list of the scheme, Tang said the bureau would review the list from time to time and consider suggestions by the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong.

Lawmaker Elizabeth Quat said even with the list, there might not be enough protection for the children as the definitions of sexual offences are “outdated”.

“For rape as an example, it can only be committed by a man upon a woman. The definition of sexual intercourse under rape does not include other manners of penetration,” she said.

Quat also expressed concerns that spent conviction is not included in the scheme.

Convictions are considered as a spent conviction when an individual is not sentenced to imprisonment exceeding three months or to a fine over HK$10,000, has not been convicted in Hong Kong before, and has not been convicted again after three years.

Other lawmakers also raised questions on whether employers are able to check the overseas criminal conviction records if the potential employees had lived in foreign places before.

But Tang said the scheme only applies to records within Hong Kong, adding that employers can individually ask the employees to present overseas records without using the scheme.

Asked if the bureau would disclose information about all sex offenders to the public, Tang defended the scheme’s current arrangement as “ideal”, saying that societal views on privacy might vary and authorities need to consider those who were rehabilitated.