Banning conversion therapy: FOI release

Information requested

• Request 34 - How much money has been spent on the Scottish Government looking into banning conversion therapy over the last ten years, with a breakdown of each year and what the money has been spent on?
• Request 35 - How many consultations has the government published about this topic and similar policies on banning conversion therapy over the last ten years, with a list of these?
• Request 36 - All briefings prepared for ministers regarding the banning conversion therapy January 2023 and the date of this FOI.

Response

The answer to your questions are as follows:

Request 34

As set out in the 2021-2022 Programme for Government (PfG) and in line with the Agreement with the Scottish Green Party, we committed to legislation in Scotland that will be comprehensive in banning conversion therapy practices as far as possible within our devolved competence. We are therefore providing details on our funding for ending conversion practices for 2021 onwards, given that prior to this, ending conversion practices was not one of our PfG commitments.

In 2022-2023, we spent £1,354 on the publication of the report and recommendations by the Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion Practices and the Scottish Government’s response.

In 2023-2024, we spent £23,000 on community engagement with people with lived experience of conversion practices in Scotland.

Request 35

The Scottish Government has published zero consultations on banning conversion therapy over the last ten years.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, under request 35 we have been unable to identify and locate some of the information that you have asked for without further information from you. The reason for that is a definition of “similar policies” in relation to banning conversion therapy would be required to respond to this part of the request. We have provided the information that we have been able to identify and locate to support your request. You may, however, wish to consider providing a definition in order that we can respond to that part of your request.

Request 36

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, under request 36 the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

Your request asks for “all briefings prepared for ministers regarding the banning conversion therapy January 2023 and the date of this FOI”. We interpret this to include any briefings prepared for Scottish Government ministers that include content relating to banning “conversion therapy”, or “conversion practices”. We have conducted a partial search for briefings relevant to the request. For example – a general search in the Scottish Government information management database and a manual search of specific files returns 152 documents containing relevant search terms indicating that the document could be relevant to your request. A similar search in the computer files of one staff member identified a further 25 documents that could be relevant to your request.

For this example, we estimate it would take 15 minutes per document to locate, determine relevance, retrieve and read, apply any redactions and provide the documents. At a cost of £18 per hour of staff time this brings the cost estimate to £796.50 using the initial search as an example. This search would need to be repeated across other relevant information management files, computer files and email mailboxes across the Scottish Government.

As a result, providing all the information requested would exceed the estimated figure. This example was based on search queries used in the information management system in general and specific team files. We expect that further documents would be found through a full search of all relevant files.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.