Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020 (Consequential Provisions and Modifications) Order 2025

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2025 Grand Committee

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Baroness Smith of Cluny) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this order today. It comes as the result of collaboration between the two Governments in Scotland and makes provision as a result of changes made to the existing disclosure regime in Scotland. The order before us, if passed, will be made under Section 104 of the Scotland Act. Scotland Act orders are a demonstration of devolution in action, and I am pleased to say that this Government have taken through seven orders since we came to power in 2024. I will now go on to explain the purpose of the order.

This order is in consequence of the Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020, which deals with the circumstances in which information about a person’s criminal history and other information held about them by the police and other law enforcement bodies can be disclosed. The disclosure Act seeks to modernise and improve proportionality in the disclosure system in Scotland. As a result, some changes have been made to the disclosure regime and this order is accordingly necessary to ensure the continued provision of conviction information, cautions, relevant police information and records of fingerprints that are held by UK law enforcement bodies to the Scottish Ministers for the purposes of the disclosure regime.

The order places equivalent duties on the chief officers of UK law enforcement bodies in relation to disclosure information, where relevant, to those which the disclosure Act places on the chief constable of Police Scotland. This ensures that the chief officer must provide information to the Scottish Ministers in the same way that the chief constable is required to do in Scotland. Without this order, there would be significant consequences for safeguarding across the UK, as the cross- border disclosure and information-sharing arrangements already in place under the Police Act—that is, the duties on and powers available to chief officers of UK police forces—will no longer operate. I beg to move.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, first, I am glad to be able to debate with the Minister. I had a conversation with her when she was first appointed, but this is my first opportunity to do that. I am obviously grateful to her for introducing this order.

The Minister has more expertise in this field than I have, but I had a look at the instrument—I can see why we need safeguarding, of course, and why there is a desire to tidy it up and ensure that there are comparable rules around the UK—and it would appear that some differences remain. In particular, the situation in Scotland is that where other, related issues are being addressed—in other words, non-criminal ones—the person who has their information disclosed has the right to make representations before it is disclosed to the applicant for the information. This instrument, as I understand it, says that where UK authorities are handing information related to other parts of the UK to Scottish authorities, they have to take that into account. Indeed, they have to apply that law, which is fine if that is what the law says, but I worry that police authorities across England, Wales and Northern Ireland will need to know that the law in that context is different. What assurances are there that that will be observed, and that information will not inadvertently be disclosed which the affected party has not had the right to test? That was highlighted in the statutory instruments committee’s comments on the order.

Although it is stated that the overall purpose of this SI is to bring more coherence, consistency and simplification to the system across the UK, it still leaves differences. The Scottish law basically says: “We have a standard, which doesn’t apply in England and Wales, but if you are feeding information into Scotland, you’re obliged to be aware of that standard”. My main question is: how are we to ensure that all the relevant people know about it, bearing in mind that we are talking about not just the police here but potentially about other related bodies that may have information?

Of course, at the other end of the scale in the changes that are made, all those who are employing people or taking them on as volunteers need to know what their rights are, what they can get and the circumstances in which they can get it. Given the change- over in volunteers, again, who is responsible for ensuring that? Presumably, it is Scottish officers in Scotland, but, obviously, it is other agencies elsewhere in the UK. I ask the Minister: what steps will be taken to ensure that the differences that still apply are understood by all the relative parties and do not lead to a situation where either information that should be disclosed is not or a person’s right to have it tested before it is disclosed does not apply? If that is the case, in effect, the law is being broken. What would the penalties be for any authority outside Scotland that broke the law? Is there any provision for a penalty in that case, or is it just unfortunate?