Scottish Government

BACKGROUND TO THE CONSULTATION

1.1 The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 ("the Act") was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 24 April 2002 and received Royal Assent on 28 May 2002. It came into force on 1 January 2005, introducing a general right of access to information held by public authorities. Subject to certain conditions and exemptions, any person who makes a request for information, in writing (or some other permanent form), to a public authority is entitled to receive it. The Act is promoted and enforced by a fully independent Scottish Information Commissioner ("the Commissioner").

1.2 In October 2005 the Minister for Parliamentary Business announced that there would be a limited review following the first year of the Act being in force. The purpose was to identify any requirement for fine-tuning which would ensure continued effective implementation of the Act. It would also assist in delivering on Ministerial commitments to review the Fees Regulations at least 18 months after they came into force. (The Terms of Reference for the review are attached at Annex 1) One element of the review would be a Public Consultation. This report outlines the process of public consultation undertaken and provides a summary of the responses.

CONSULTATION PROCESS

2.1. The consultation document was issued to Scottish public authorities covered by the Act, to user organisations and to others which had previously expressed interest in FOI. It was also made available on the Scottish Executive's consultation database on the website and linked to from the FOI web pages. A list of consultees is attached at Annex 2 and a list of respondees at Annex 3.

2.2. As well as seeking general comments, the Executive sought views on 27 specific questions covering 6 main topics. (A list of the questions is provided in Annex 4).

2.3. The consultation period finished formally on 31 March 2006, although a number of responses were received after this date (up until 28 April) and have also been considered during the production of this summary. A total of 128 responses to the consultation were received. Most of the responses were made available for public viewing in early May in the Executive's Library or on the website. ? of the respondees specifically requested that their responses were not published, a further ? were happy for their response to be published but did not wish their name and/or address to be quoted and ?? did not complete the relevant sections allowing for their responses to be published, despite reminders from the Executive. In the absence of explicit permission from the authors to publish, these responses have also been treated in confidence, although their comments have been included in the summaries that follow.

2.4. Responses came from a variety of people and organisations including individual members of the public, local authorities, educational bodies, health bodies and voluntary and campaigning organisations. Respondees, therefore, included both organisations which are obliged to comply with the Act and individuals/organisations which are potential or actual "users" of the Act. Of the main sectors subject to the Act, over two thirds of local authorities responded to the Consultation as did about half of the Health Boards. Universities Scotland provided a response as did around a third of individual Universities. ACPOS provided a single response on behalf of the police services. Responses also came from the Campaign for Freedom of Information, the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society, the Scottish Consumer Council and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. The Scottish Information Commissioner provided a response which has also been published on his website. The Commissioner's response was provided in the context of his capacity as the body responsible for enforcing and promoting the legislation and this was taken into account in the production of this report.

A chart summarising the wide range of respondees is included at Fig. 1 below.

Fig: 1 Respondees by sector

STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT

3.1 The consultation focused on the following 6 specific areas:

· Topic 1 - Coverage of the Act

· Topic 2 - Discharge of duties under FOI(S)A by public authorities

· Topic 3 - Fees/charging

· Topic 4 - Timescales

· Topic 5 - Prohibitions to disclosure of information

· Topic 6 - FOI(S)A section 31 guidance

3.2 The following sections provide an overview of the responses on these 6 areas. The summary sections provide a broad indication of the views and of the level of interest in a particular issue; they do not provide any indication of the range or depth of views, nor of the level or nature of the detailed points made. Further detail on this is provided in the Annexes on each section.

GENERAL POINTS

4.3 There were a large number of questions in the consultation paper, some of which were more relevant for public authorities subject to the Act than for users of the Act. This means that numbers of responses referred to vary throughout the report as not all respondees commented on each question. Respondees were assigned to a category to help with the analysis. Detail on this is provided in Annex 3. Additionally, in some instances where respondees made general comments not in response to a specific question we have tried to include their comment in our assessment of the topic or question to which it most closely relates.

4.4 Some respondees made comments or suggestions which indicate a misunderstanding of the legislation or which could not be considered for action at this point because to do so would breach the terms of the legislation itself. Ministers made clear at the outset of the review that there is no intention to amend the primary legislation at this point. In some cases clarification on these issues has been provided in the summary sections.

4.5 Some respondees were of the view that the review was being undertaken at too early a stage to make a useful assessment as to how the legislation is working in practice. It was also suggested that the consultation was not primarily focussed on user experience of the Act and that further research on this would be valuable.