Scottish Catholic Observer

However the Scottish Government intends to amend the law, which will see a state guardian appointed for every child in Scotland, and then enact it as soon as possible.

“While acknowledging the Scottish Government’s desire to protect vulnerable children, legislation must always balance protection with the right of parents and children to live a family life in private,” Bishop John Keenan of Paisley, Co-President of the Catholic Church’s Marriage and Family Office, said. “While this legislation failed to strike a reasonable balance, hopefully the Scottish Government will now amend the legislation to get that balance right.”

Before the ruling was known, Bishop John Keenan of Paisley (above) had already called on the Scottish Government to ‘reflect a bit more on this one and find a better way to keep kids safe without undermining the family’.

“This Scottish Government scheme means that the State will designate an official to every child born in Scotland who has pretty undefined prerogatives to determine the wellbeing of the child and intervene over and against its parents’ natural rights,” he said. “There are times when the state has to intervene but to univeralise the idea is a step too far. It leads to regarding children principally as kind of wards of the state rather than as members of their natural families.”

The Judges found some proposals breach rights to privacy and a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The court said the aim of the Act is ‘unquestionably legitimate and benign’, but said specific proposals about information-sharing ‘are not within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament’.

The court has given the Scottish government 42 days to rectify the legislation, saying that in the meantime it ‘cannot be brought into force’.

A key finding from the ruling was that the law granted the power to disclose a ‘potentially very wide’ range of information on children and parents without their knowledge which was deemed to ‘result in interferences with rights protected by article 8 of the ECHR’.

Colin Hart, Director of the Christian Institute, which was one of the groups that brought the case said they were ‘very happy with today’s ruling which vindicates what we and others have been saying for years’.

“We all accept the good intentions behind this law but a universal data gathering scheme like this was always going to cause major problems,” he said. “The Supreme Court cited international human rights laws that protect the family and concluded, ‘Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way’. This strong endorsement of family autonomy will be welcomed by families all across the UK, including Christian families, who sometimes sense a creeping intolerance from government officials.”

Education Secretary John Swinney said the government would move to ‘provide greater clarity’ about information-sharing, and would still look to implement the legislation as soon as possible.

He said the government would start work immediately on the necessary legislative amendments and it would be implemented nationally at the earliest possible date.