Protecting a child's rights to privacy in the Named Person
​scheme

​

​ Who
CLAN Childlaw provide legal and advocacy services for children and young people in Scotland.

​The issue
When the Named Person Scheme was proposed in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill, CLAN Childlaw raised its concerns about the risk of sharing information about a child without their consent.  They were concerned that it may make children and young people reluctant to access confidential services if they think their confidential information is going to be shared without their consent.

​The case
After the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 was adopted, it was challenged in court by the Christian Institute and others by judicial review. CLAN Childlaw intervened in this case as a third party to put forward the children's rights perspective.

The case resulted in the Supreme Court finding the information sharing provisions of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 incompatible with the right to privacy in article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This means the information sharing part of the Named Person scheme could not be implemented.

​The outcome
Initially in response to this Supreme Court decision, the Scottish Government introduced a new Bill around information sharing. 

However, the Parliament Committee scrutinising the new Bill stated that they  would not decide whether to approve the Bill or not until the Scottish Government had also provided them with an authoritative draft of the Code of Practice to accompany the Bill.

However, the expert group set up to draft this Code found that they could not produce a Code that would be user-friendly or sufficiently authoritative.

Therefore, the Scottish Government withdrew the stalled information-sharing bill, and repealed the named person parts of the original act.

Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, John Swinney MSP told MSPs: "The mandatory named person scheme for every child, underpinned by law, will now not happen."

Read CLAN Childlaw information about their intervention

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