Some of the language used in privacy notices can be specialised. The Information Commissioner's website provides a useful introduction to key terms and concepts.
Your views and expertise are essential to the working of the Scottish Parliament committees. When you provide information to a committee as a submission the Parliament will use this as evidence to help it make decisions and recommendations on the performance of the Scottish Government or other areas of interest within the committee’s remit.
We will also process the contact information (e.g. your email address) which you provide with your submission as this will be used by the Parliament to contact you about your response or to provide you with further information about the committee work you are interested in. Your contact information will not be published with the submission.
If you submit evidence to a committee, the Scottish Parliament will need your contact information to process your submission. This will usually take the form of a name and email address. Occasionally, this may include a mailing address if we receive information by hard copy or a contact telephone number if we need to discuss your submission with you. This is considered standard or normal category personal data.
Depending on what views and experiences you have decided to share, the content of your submission may include special category personal data.
Special category personal data includes information revealing an individual's:
The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB) processes any personal data you send to it in line with the requirements of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).
Personal data consists of data that relates to an identified or identifiable living individual.
The SPCB will hold any personal data securely, will use it only for the purposes it was collected for and will only pass it to any third parties with your consent or according to a legal obligation.
Further information about data protection legislation and your rights
The Code of Conduct places further obligations on all Members of the Scottish Parliament in terms of how they handle material containing personal data in the course of their Committee work.
Read the Code of Conduct, Section 7
Committees normally use Citizen Space, a third-party digital tool, to collect and analyse written submissions. Personal data is provided directly to committees from participating individuals using Citizen Space.
You will be asked to confirm that you have read and understood the content of this privacy notice before adding any information to Citizen Space.
The information you provide using Citizen Space will be processed by Scottish Parliament staff. Committee staff may make presentational changes to the information you have supplied in order to publish it. This will not interfere with the meaning of the content of the information you have submitted.
Unless your submission has been accepted on an anonymous or ‘not for publication’ basis (see below), all the information you submit to Citizen Space including your views, your name and any personal data you have provided (but not your contact details), will be published on the Scottish Parliament website. Your submission, including your name, may also be subject to analysis and included in the summary, which will become part of the public record.
Find out more about the terms and conditions of using Citizen Space in its Privacy Notice
Sometimes the Committee may accept written submissions which have not been submitted through Citizen Space. This may be as a Word or paper document. Once this information is in an accessible format, it will be uploaded and published on Citizen Space and saved to the Parliament’s digital records. We may have to format your submission before publishing it. We will keep your original information and the accessible PDF for our records. We may also keep your email if you have sent one. There is more information on how long we would keep your email and submission below.
One of the founding principles of the Scottish Parliament is to be open and accessible. If you would prefer to provide your submission in a form other than a written submission, we can accept submissions provided as video or audio files. This includes submissions provided in British Sign Language or a language other than English. If you require any assistance in doing so, please contact [email protected]
If you choose to provide your submission as an audio or video file, we will create a written transcript/translation of it to assist the Committee in considering it. This transcript together with your original submission will be handled and published together as one submission in accordance with this privacy notice, unless requested otherwise. We will hold your video or audio content and the written translation/transcription in a secure electronic format. The SPCB may share the content you provide to us with our third-party translation or transcription service provider (as appropriate) in order to obtain the translation or transcription of your video or audio.
Data protection law states that we must have a legal basis for handling your personal data. The legal basis for collecting, holding, sharing and publishing your personal data is that the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest (for normal category data) or substantial public interest (for special category data) in accordance with Article 6(1)(e) UK GDPR and section 8(d) DPA (for normal category data) or Article 9(2)(g) UK GDPR and section 10(3) and paragraph 6(2)(b), part 2, schedule 1, DPA (for special category data).
This means that if you decide to provide us with any personal data in the form of a submission, irrespective of format, we have a legal basis to use and publish that information and do not require your consent to do so.
If the person submitting evidence is under the age of 12 then we will ask the young person’s parent or guardian to confirm that they are happy for the young person to provide their evidence to us in the format they have chosen to do so.
The content of your submission will become a public record and may be transferred to the National Records of Scotland. The legal basis for this is that it is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest in accordance with Article 6(1)(e) UK GDPR and section 8(d) DPA or, for special category data, Article 9(2)(j) UK GDPR, and section 10(2) and paragraph 4 of Schedule 1 of the DPA.
In certain circumstances Scottish Parliament committees have the statutory power under the Scotland Act 1998 to require people to provide documentation or attend to give evidence. The legal basis for processing personal data in these circumstances is that it is necessary for a task carried out in the public interest in accordance with Article 6(1)(e) UK GDPR and section 8(d) DPA, or for special category data, Article 9(2)(g) UK GDPR and section 10(3) of and paragraph 6(2)(b), part 2 of schedule 1 to the DPA. If a formal notice is issued under these powers, it is a criminal offence not to comply.
The legal basis for collecting and holding your personal data for the committee contact list is that it is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest, Article 6(1)(e) UK GDPR and section 8(d) of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).
The task is to facilitate continued engagement of stakeholders with the committees which is part of the core function of the SPCB and is therefore a Crown function in accordance with section 8(d) DPA. However, you can unsubscribe from the contact list at any point, from which time we will cease to process your personal data (see below, under “Retention of personal data”.)
One of the founding principles of the Scottish Parliament is transparency and openness. It is standard practice for the committee to publish your submission on its webpage on the Scottish Parliament website. Your name and whether you live in Scotland and any identifying information from the content of your submission will routinely be published unless you have specifically requested that the submission is made in a non-standard format (see below). Once the submissions are publicly available, the committee may also discuss them in meetings or use them to demonstrate a point of view in written reports.
The committee may, on occasion, accept anonymous or confidential submissions. This means that we process your information in a non-standard format. If you request your submission to be treated anonymously, the committee will decide whether to accept your submission on that basis.
If your submission is accepted on this basis, it will mean that your name, contact details and any identifying information from the content will be removed before it goes online. Any quote from or reference to any of your answers or comments would not be attributed to you by name. However, the submission will be circulated in full to members of the committee and may be seen by relevant SPCB staff and possibly staff from committee Members’ offices.
If you have provided your submission as a video or audio file and requested anonymity, and that request is accepted by the committee, we would publish only the transcript of your submission.
If you do not want your submission to be published, you may request that your submission is treated as a ‘confidential’ (not for publication) response. Such requests are only accepted in very rare circumstances. In such cases the submission would not be published online or referenced in any committee report and would only be seen by relevant SPCB staff, the committee Members and possibly staff from committee Members’ offices.
If you wish to request that your submission is accepted on an anonymous or ‘not for publication’ basis, it is good practice to contact the committee clerks before making your submission.
The final decision on whether your views will be accepted either anonymously or as a ‘not for publication response’ is for the committee to take. If the committee turns down your request for your submission to be processed in the way you have requested, you can choose to withdraw your submission at that stage or work with the committee clerks to amend your submission so that it is in a form that you are content to submit for publication.
If you have submitted your views as audio or video content or in a language other than English and you wish to raise an issue about the way in which your content has been transcribed or translated, or if you would prefer your content to be published in a particular way, or if any other matters arise with regard to the format of your submission, then please contact the committee clerks who will handle these matters on a case-by-case basis. If you have a preference for how your submission is published as a non-standard format as noted above, please tell us about this when submitting your content.
In terms of video and audio content, please note that if your original format is to be used alongside a transcription/written translation of it, then your image and/or voice will be published on our website, shared in the public domain and retained as a historical record. If you would prefer us to use only the transcript/written translation and not publish or otherwise use your original video or audio submission, please let us know.
There may be a few situations where we may choose not to publish your evidence or have to edit it before publication for practical or legal reasons. For example, when we have received an extremely large quantity of submissions or where we receive a group of submissions which say similar or the same things. In that case, we would normally publish only a list of the names of people who have sent in their views.
We may have to edit or ask you to change your submission if it can identify another living person who has not specifically given their agreement to have information about them made public. In these situations, committee Members may have access to the full content of your submission, even if it has not been published in full.
The Scottish Parliament will not publish defamatory statements or material in submissions. This means that if you send in views about a particular person that may be considered harmful and untrue we will return the submission to you with an invitation to substantiate the comments, remove or redact them. In these circumstances, if the evidence is returned to us and it still contains material which we consider may be defamatory, it may not be considered by the committee and will be deleted from our systems.
If you have made a video or audio submission which contains information about another living person we may ask you to resubmit a new video or audio file as this cannot be redacted. We may also ask you to resubmit your video or audio submission if it is considered to contain defamatory statements.
The Scottish Parliament is licensed to use Smart Survey, which is a third-party online survey system, enabling the Scottish Parliament to collect and analyse written evidence submissions. Smart Survey is based in the UK and is subject to the requirements of data protection legislation.
Privacy policy for Smart Survey
Our privacy notice for Smart Survey users
The Scottish Parliament also uses Your Priorities, which is a digital tool for gathering views.
Our privacy notice for Your Priorities
The content of your submission will form part of the public record and will help create the evidence base upon which Members of the Scottish Parliament make decisions. Standard and anonymous submissions will appear on the website. Personal information contained within a public record will be retained in accordance with the Scottish Parliament records management policy and may be transferred to the Scottish Parliament archive at National Records of Scotland (NRS) where it will be publicly available. The original, unredacted versions of confidential and anonymous submissions containing personal data will be closed prior to transfer to NRS and will not be open to public access for a period of up to 100 years.
Personal Information submitted using Citizen Space will be retained on the digital platform for one month after the call for views consultation is closed or until the conclusion of the inquiry being undertaken by the committee.
Your name and contact details may be added to the committee’s contact list so that you can be kept informed of the outcome of the committee business you contributed to.
Further information can be found in our privacy notice for the Committee Office contact list
Individuals and organisations who submit evidence may also receive requests to participate in media/broadcast interviews. If this happens, you will be provided with the journalist's contact details and it will be up to you to decide whether you wish to contact them and agree to participate.
If you decide to do a media interview or be part of a case study, contact with the journalist can be facilitated by an SPCB communications manager. Once the interview/broadcast has been completed and the committee’s work concluded, your contact details will be securely deleted from the SPCB’s servers (unless you wish to be included in the contact list). If the occasion arises where the journalist requests your contact details, they will only be provided with your consent.
Any case study or media interview that you undertake will be publicly available on the relevant media or broadcast outlet indefinitely.
The Parliament has statutory obligations under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. This may affect the way that we deal with your evidence. In particular, you should be aware that if we receive a request for information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, we may be required by law to release the information to the person who has made the request – potentially even where the relevant committee has agreed to treat all or part of the information in confidence or publish it anonymously. Certain exemptions apply under Freedom of Information legislation, including an exemption for personal data, which we do not have to disclose to a requester.
In such circumstances, while we can assure you that your submission or name will not be circulated to the general public in the context of the relevant committee’s current work, we are unable to give you an absolute guarantee that the full submission will never be released in response to an freedom of information request.
In line with the principles underlying the National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland (2014), published by the Scottish Government, our staff may report a concern to the relevant authorities if they come across an issue during their work which causes them to think that a child up to the age of 18 may be at risk of abuse or harm.
Data protection legislation sets out the rights which individuals have in relation to personal data held about them by data controllers. Applicable rights are listed below. You can exercise your data subject rights in particular circumstances depending on the purpose for which the data controller is processing the data and the legal basis upon which the processing takes place.
The following rights may apply:
You have the right to request a copy of the personal information about you that we hold.
Further information on how to make a data protection "subject access request".
You have the right to ask us to correct the personal data we hold about you. We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date and you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.
You have the right at any time to require us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes. In addition, where we use your personal information to perform tasks carried out in the public interest then, if you ask us to, we will stop using that personal information unless there are overriding legitimate grounds to continue.
You have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:
Please note that the right allowing for deletion or erasure of personal data (right to be forgotten) does not apply in cases where personal data is processed for the purposes of the performance of a task carried out in the public interest.
In some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply, for example, where we are checking the accuracy of personal information about you that we hold or assessing the validity of any objection you have made to our use of your information. Where this right is validly exercised, we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.
Please contact us in any of the ways set out below if you wish to exercise any of these rights.
Where we use your personal information with your consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time and we will stop using your personal information for the purposes for which consent was given.
Please contact us in any of the ways set out below if you wish to exercise any of these rights.
We keep this privacy statement under regular review and will place any updates on this website. Paper copies of the privacy statement may also be obtained using the contact information below.
This privacy statement was last updated 1 October 2024.
We seek to resolve directly all complaints about how we handle personal information but you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office.
Or by phone at: 0303 123 1113
If you have any further questions about the way in which we process personal data, or
about how to exercise your rights, please contact the Head of Information Governance and Data Protection Officer at:
The Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh
EH99 1SP
Telephone: 0131 348 5281
(Calls are welcome through the Text Relay service or in British Sign Language through contactSCOTLAND-BSL.)
Email: [email protected]
Please contact us if you require information in another language or format