Civil Law and Legal SystemDivision
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Mx S McLean
Scottish Justice
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Our ref: FoI/17/00484
13April 2017
Dear Mx McLean
REQUEST UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION (SCOTLAND) ACT 2002 (FOISA)
Thank you for your request dated 17 March 2017 under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA).
Your request
You askedfor information about the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and whether thereis any document relating to it given or trained to Judges. You also asked whether it has been fully integrated into the Scottish Criminal Law system.
Response to your request
In relation to your first query, the Scottish Government is not involved in providing training for judges. Responsibility for training the judiciary is for the Lord President, as head of the judiciary in Scotland.In practice, the Lord President delegates responsibility for judicial training to the Judicial Institute for Scotland, of which he is President.
You can find information about the Judicial Institute on the Judiciary of Scotland website at you may wish to contact the Judicial Institute at
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.
Your second query asks whether the ICCPR has been fully integrated into the Scottish Criminal Law system.
When the UK ratified the ICCPR in 1976,it undertook to adopt such legislative or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to the rights recognised in the Covenant. The United Nations Human Rights Committee is the guardian of the ICCPR and the UK submits a report to the Human Rights Committee every five years on the measures adopted to give effect to the rights protected by the ICCPR. Further information on the reporting process is available at the Human Rights Committee website here -
The rights guaranteed by the ICCPRalso overlap in important respects with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The Scottish Governmentrecognises the importance of international human rights treaties, such as the ICCPR, and is committed to working with Scottish civil society and bodies such as the Scottish Human Rights Commission to explore how to give further and better effect in Scotland to rights set out in United Nations and other international treaties.
The Scottish Government also contributes actively to UN monitoring processes which evaluate performance against international obligations. In the last reporting round under ICCPR (June-July 2015), thecommittee asked specifically about measures taken to give effect to all Covenant rights not covered by the Human Rights Act 1998 in the domestic legal order.The Scottish Government response is contained at paragraph 1-2 of our position statement ( and the UKGovernment response is in paragraphs 7-10 of its formal submission (
Your right to request a review
If you are unhappy with this response to your FOI request, you may ask us to carry out an internal review of the response, by writing to Neil Rennick, Director of Justice,Scottish Government, St Andrew’s House, Regent Road, Edinburgh, EH13DG. Your review request should explain why you are dissatisfied with this response, and should be made within 40 working days fromthe date when you received this letter. We will complete the review and tell you the result, within 20 working days fromthe date when we receive your review request.
If you are not satisfied with the result of the review, you then have the right to appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner. More detailed information on your appeal rights is available on the Commissioner’s website at:
Yours sincerely
CATHERINE HODGSON
St Andrew’s House, Regent Road, Edinburgh EH1 3DG/