Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment for SP Bill 77 documents: FOI release

Information requested

• all drafts of the Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment for SP Bill 77
• the names of any children’s organisations consulted during its preparation
• where children or young people were directly consulted, a description of the categories or groups consulted, without personal data
• any internal communications about the decision whether or not to directly consult children or young people, given the obligations created by the UNCRC Incorporation legislation in Scotland.

Response

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have all the information you have requested.

The Scottish Government does not have all the information you have asked for relating to a description of groups of children and young people consulted. The Scottish Government contacted GirlGuiding directly (see documents 9 and 10), however, page 6 of the CRWIA explains that while we ran a procurement exercise using the Children and Young People’s Participation Framework to find a paid supplier who could lead an engagement exercise with children and young people to gather their views on our proposal to restrict non-surgical procedures to people aged 18 and over, no suppliers responded. As a result we were unable to engage directly with children and young people. The procurement tender was sent to all suppliers on Lot 1 of the Children and Young People’s Participation’ procurement framework, that is Barnardo’s Scotland, Children in Scotland, the Children’s Parliament, Scottish Youth Parliament, Youth Scotland and Young Scot.

Some of the information you have requested is available online. The final version of the Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA) is available on the Scottish Government’s website. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

An exemption under section 30(c) of FOISA (prejudicial to the effective conduct of public affairs) applies to drafts of the impact assessment, as disclosure would be likely to undermine the freedom of the government to work on the development of policy. This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption.

An exemption under section 38(1) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information in the first document, namely the email address and name of the sender. This exemption is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

Despite this not being in the scope of your original request, to support your understanding of what was considered for the CRWIA I have also enclosed an extract from responses received to the recent public consultation on the regulation of non-surgical cosmetic procedures, for the question: What are your views on how the introduction of licensing and regulation of the non‑surgical cosmetics sector in Scotland and the potential of age restrictions might affect respecting, protecting and fulfilling the rights of children and young people as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? This extract shows the responses we received to this question.

About FOI

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.

FOI 202600511006 - Information Released - Consultation Q23 UNCRC children and young people

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Excel document

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105.9 kB

FOI 202600511006 - Information Released - Documents

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PDF

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317.4 kB