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EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Order)

Overview

The Order makes provision in connection with the Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020 (“the Disclosure Act”). That Act deals with the circumstances in which information about a person’s criminal history, and other information held by police and other law-enforcement bodies, can be disclosed by the Scottish Ministers. It also makes amendments to the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007 and the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007 (Consequential Provisions) Order 2010. Being an Act of the Scottish Parliament, the Disclosure Act cannot address matters outside the Parliament’s legislative competence. It is, for example, outside the Parliament’s legislative competence to require a police force in a part of the United Kingdom other than Scotland to provide information to the Scottish Ministers for disclosure purposes. The Order’s principal purpose is to ensure that the disclosure regime created by the Disclosure Act operates correctly by making provision about those matters for which the Scottish Parliament could not legislate.

The Order is structured as follows:

  • Part 1 sets out the formal citation and commencement information usually found at the start of an Order. It also defines “UK law-enforcement body” and associated concepts which recur throughout the Order;

  • Part 2 places duties on the chief officers of UK law-enforcement bodies to provide, and review, information that mirror the duties imposed on the chief constable of the Police Service of Scotland by Part 1 of the Disclosure Act in connection with what that Act refers to as a Level 2 disclosure;

  • Part 3 places further duties on the chief officers of UK law-enforcement bodies, and others, to provide information for the Disclosure Act’s purposes;

  • Part 4 makes provision connected to the duties imposed by Parts 2 and 3;

  • Schedule 1 amends the Disclosure Act and other enactments in consequence of Part 2 so that they operate in relation to UK law-enforcement bodies in broadly the same way as they do in relation to the Police Service of Scotland;

  • Schedule 2 makes minor amendments to other enactments in consequence of the Disclosure Act.