JimM wrote:Does the Scottish parliament have the jurisdiction over Scottish census records?
Would they be able (if there was the demand) to lower the 100 year closure?
I believe that Ireland lowered their closure to release the 1911 census .... and other countries have a lower closure.
Would anyone have objections to a 75 or 80 year closure?
Just a thought
k
Jim
Jim
It is indeed not a reserved matter ! (For those furth of Auld Scotia, areas over which the Scottish parliament do not have control, and which are still under the control of the Westminster parliament, are referred to as "reserved" matters. Here endeth the lesson.
)
The problem is that the original 1911 census legislation apparantly gives a clear guarantee of 100 years closure. Even were it possible to persuade a group of MSPs to take up the issue, the reality is that the time that would be required to find parliamentary time for the necessary legislation, always assuming that it was successful, together with the lead time for the imaging and indexing, never mind the contractual processes of prequalification, tendering and contractor selection would mean that any gain in time over the curently planned release date might end up relatively modest. And that's without taking into account the likely opposition of GROS to such an earlier release. I've heard a
rumour that the 1911 release date for Scotland might be the 100th anniversary date to the day, as opposed to the following January.
The exceptional reason that led to the early release of the 1911 census for Ireland was the non-survival of 1891 and earlier Irish census material.
I think that you'd find that there wiuld be an outcry from the personal privacy lobby over any reduction in the 100 year closure rule.
David