Very VERY occasionally, Boris Johnson will make an observation that almost makes sense, and this one almost does. I think as a nation we are gettinf towards a stage where we're hysterical about the risk and danger that our children are in.
The first point to make is that criminal checks on people working at schools and youth groups/clubs is a good thing. I'm not sure that there is an argument against that to be honest.
I think that the more interesting point is that we are perceiving the risk to be much greater than it is. If men are at the stage when they are scared to become teachers, then clearly we are doing something wrong. The majority of child abuse is from trusted family members, parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents and family friends. There is very little that can be done to stop random attacks in the street id the paedophile is not known to the law. I would hate to think that we are doing our children a diservice with hysterical fear, but I'm not sure that we're even quite at that stage yet, no matter what good old Boris says.