Development and implementation of the UN Convention on Rights of a Child (UNCRC) Incorporation Scotland Bill: FOI release

Information requested

The total cost incurred by the Scottish Government, including Education Scotland and relevant directorates, in relation to the development and intended implementation of the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill, including:

• Internal staffing and planning costs.
• Legal or external consultancy advice.
• Education-specific implementation costs, including guidance, training, and materials prepared for schools.

You also asked for a breakdown by financial year from 2021–22 to 2025–26 (to date).

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve this budget data across the relevant policy areas would require searching all Scottish Government records, which would exceed the upper cost limit. Under Section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could consider contacting individual policy divisions to request specific budget from that area; this FOI response provides detail of the different policy areas within the Scottish Government. This would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

While we are unable to provide a direct answer to your question because collecting budget data across all relevant policy areas would exceed the upper cost limit, we have attached information relating to the Children’s Rights Unit (CRU) budget. The CRU has played a central role in planning and implementing the UNCRC Act, so this data may still be of interest.

Information relating to the CRU's UNCRC implementation budget from 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 is already available on the Scottish Parliament website in response to PQ S6W-23692 which can be found here. In response to your FOI request, we have pulled together the same information for 2024- 25 and April 2025 to July 2025.

In 2024-25, the costs were £4,300,113 which included the cost of:

• grant funding of organisations that are supporting public authorities to take a children’s human rights approach (such as Scottish Youth Parliament, Children’s Parliament, Together, Young Scot and the Improvement Service);
• grant funding of organisation that help children and young people to seek redress for rights issues (Clan Childlaw and Scottish Child Law Centre);
• grant funding of organisations delivering on children’s rights through the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention Fund;
• national funding of Unicef’s Rights Respecting School Award;
• work to develop guidance for children and young people on how to raise a concern about their rights and the promotion of child-friendly complaints process in partnership with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman;
• consultation with children and young people on the statutory Children's Rights Scheme;
• additional funding to the Scottish Human Rights Commission to support them to fulfil their new powers under the UNCRC Act; and
• the development of a national children’s rights Skills and Knowledge Framework.

Between 1 April 2025 and the end of July 2025, the costs were £1,325, 851, which included the cost of:

• grant funding of organisations that are supporting public authorities to take a children’s human rights approach (such as Scottish Youth Parliament, Children’s Parliament, Together, Young Scot and the Improvement Service);
• grant funding of organisation that help children and young people to seek redress for rights issues (Clan Childlaw and Scottish Child Law Centre);
• grant funding of organisations delivering on children’s rights through the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention Fund;
• work to develop guidance for children and young people on how to raise a concern about their rights and the promotion of child-friendly complaints process in partnership with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman;
• consultation with children and young people on the statutory Children's Rights Scheme; additional funding to the Scottish Human Rights Commission to support them to fulfil their new powers under the UNCRC Act; and
• the hosting of a national children’s rights Skills and Knowledge Framework.

These figures include the total staffing costs for the Children’s Rights Unit over these periods. Most, but not all, of this staff time was taken up with planning and implementing the UNCRC Bill/Act. It is not possible to provide you with the exact staffing costs associated with planning and implementing the UNCRC Bill/Act because, in line with usual practice, details of individual tasks carried out by civil servants, including the number of hours spent on them, are not routinely recorded because there is no business need to do this.

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The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.