Scottish government refuses to publish results

[Rhannion]

It’s in all our interests on here to note that the Scottish government REFUSES to publish the results of the consultations about GRC and self ID in OUR country! They are also REFUSING any Freedom Of Information requests on this results.

If you care about the truth and accountability in Scotland then it beholds you to get in touch with your SMPs and MPs. They work for us and must be held to account for any cover up or any slight of hand going on with regards to the rights of all of us , especially women and children. They clearly aren’t happy with the answers they got and are going to plow over our rights.

That's so weird. Can they legally do that?

What was the response to the FOI request?

The response was “ it’s too expensive “ 🤬🤬🤬

Please Have a look on the Feminist boards on Mumsnet for more information.

Our country is turning into a dictatorship

What was the actual FOI request? ‘It’s too expensive’ is a legit reason to not respond to FOI legally. If you can rephrase the question to narrow it down then that shouldn’t apply though?

It shouldn't be too expensive to email a digital set of results to a survey, or reports on the results. That's ridiculous.

@Vanishun

It shouldn't be too expensive to email a digital set of results to a survey, or reports on the results. That's ridiculous.

Yes I know, the whole thing stinks big time and the house of Sturgeon with its Stone Walls going to fall hard and fast soon.

Unless they've chosen to ignore the consultation (which wouldn't surprise me) the results must exist in some form for MSPs to use. So sending them out shouldn't be a stretch.

I suppose it depends what was asked. I’m not trying to be difficult, I do agree they should publish results of a consultation! I’ve worked on FOIs from the other end though and they can be tricky.

The ‘too expensive’ relates to staff time to pull all the information together. If you ask, “Send us everything you’ve got relating to that consultation” that would definitely fall under too expensive. If you ask “send us the raw responses to question 8”, or “send us all the correspondence between [date] and [date] about the decision not to publish”, that is much less likely to apply.

I think what’s tricky about this is the Scottish Government didn’t get the answer it wants...!
They are far more interested in gold stars from Stonewall etc than listening to the women in Scotland.
Women say No , isn’t that enough? !

I'm sure saw someone on the other thread mention that, as part of the consultation, the Scottish Government said that they would publish the information, going as far to get permission from people who submitted (often very personal) statements for public publication.

The fact they are now refusing to publish results means that that they are not following through on something they said they would do rather than it being a surprise to them for people to be requesting the publication of results.

Have just written to all my MSP's. A useful website for doing this is www.writetothem.com in case anyone wants to do the same.

It shouldn't even have needed to be a freedom of information request. The results of a consultation should have been published, full stop.

Utterly disgusted but unsurprised. Lots more information on this thread - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4293752-Scottish-Government-hiding-GRA-Consultation-results?pg=1

And if you twitter try #WomenWontWheesht

Well let's be honest the SNP aren't having a great time right now as they are being investigated for fraud 🤭

Between the missing money, the hypocrisy of various members of Green Party and SNP getting caught drinking in a pub in Edinburgh when they should not have been out of Glasgow, the various sex scandals, the lack of concern for the women, including Jo Cherry, who have had terrible abuse on line and the general disregard of women’s rights show that the Scottish Government under the SNP, the Greens , or Labour are not fit for purpose. Sad to say that the Torys are the only party in the UK who seem to know what a woman is.

First email I have had back from an MSP which wasn't a holding reply. Still not a great deal further forward though -

'The Scottish Government report that there is no timescale for the publication of results of the GRA consultation due to dealing with Covid as priority. But they say they are now arranging for the consultation responses to be independently analysed and will publish the analysis report in due course.'

In my initial email, I had been very clear that I understood that there would be inevitable delays due to COVID but asked for an approximate idea of when the analysis report would be published.

@Rhannion

It’s in all our interests on here to note that the Scottish government REFUSES to publish the results of the consultations about GRC and self ID in OUR country! They are also REFUSING any Freedom Of Information requests on this results.

Are you really that surprised? COnsultations whether on a local or national level are such a waste of money. They spend £££ devising questionnaires and setting up websites and publicising them, and paying people to analyse results, and end up doing what they had originally planned to do.

It's fairly clear that the responses were not in support of their stance that anyone who says they are a woman should be legally recognised as such.

Another email, this one from higher up the chain.

The independant analysis has apparently concluded and the report and organisational responses will be published 'in due course'.

It also states that the Scottish Government remain committed to reforming the GRA which doesn't exactly sound like they'll be taking any dissenting views into account.

They would have had the contract for analysing the results in place before the consultation even started. They would have estimated how many responses the consultation would get when they put the contract out. They might have got it wrong. Pretty sure there would have been a timescale in the contract, and the successful contractor would supply a report.

It would be hard to justify not supplying the facts in response to an FOI e.g. when was the contract sought and agreed, how many responses did they expect, what timescale was agreed.

Probably best I don't put an FOI myself for reasons I'll leave you to conclude.

Remember and ask for your FOIs to be reviewed, and you can escalate if you're still not satisfied.