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While the Public Records (Scotland) Bill cannot right the wrongs of the past, it will ensure the same problems don't occur in the future, the Minister for Culture and External Affairs said today.

The Bill is designed to improve record keeping across the public sector, strengthening transparency and accountability, as well as helping to secure the records of vulnerable people.

It will fulfil one of the main recommendations of the Historical Abuse Systemic Review (the Shaw Report of 2007) which found that poor record keeping often created difficulties for former residents of residential schools and children's homes, when they attempted to trace their records for identity, family or medical reasons.

Giving evidence to the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee, Fiona Hyslop said:

"We owe it to former residents and survivors of abuse, indeed to all future generations in this country, to make improvements to the way public authorities deal with records."

The Minister added:

"I am sure many of us have heard harrowing first hand accounts from constituents who have been in care and whose earlier lives are worryingly blank because the records about that time are disjointed, deficient or have simply disappeared."

Under the proposed legislation, named public authorities across Scotland, which include the Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament, local authorities, the Scottish Court Service, the NHS and others, will be required to produce and implement a records management plan to be approved by the Keeper of the Records of Scotland.

The Keeper will produce guidance on the form and content of plans, and will be given powers to scrutinise their implementation. Where authorities engage private or voluntary organisations to carry out functions on their behalf, the resulting records created by those organisations will be covered by the legislation.

The Keeper's powers to review compliance with records management plans will apply only to public authorities, and not private or voluntary bodies.

The Minister continued: "The Keeper's role simply relates to management of records and not to powers over access to confidential records.

"The Bill makes no change to existing laws on access and is completely separate from Freedom of Information legislation. The Bill will not make records public property. Records created and used by voluntary bodies remain under their control. The Bill focuses on ensuring records are managed properly for future retrieval.

"We have been talking to CoSLA and the voluntary sector about these matters and will continue to do so as the Bill progresses through the Scottish Parliament."

The independent 'Historical Abuse Systemic Review: Residential Schools and Children's Homes in Scotland 1950 and 1995' led by Tom Shaw was initiated by the previous administration in 2005. Tom Shaw's report was published on 22 November 2007.

The Shaw Report identified that thousands of records about children's residential services were generated between 1950 and 1995, but the law at that time was not effective in ensuring these records were preserved. The result was that many former residents were unable to get access to their own records and were deprived of information about their childhood lives.

The Shaw Report recommended that "the government should commission a review of public records legislation which should lead to new legislation being drafted to meet records and information needs in Scotland. This should also make certain that no legislation impedes people's lawful access to records. This review's objectives should address the need for permanent preservation of significant records held by private, non-statutory agencies that provide publicly funded services to children."

In the light of the shortcomings in relation to preservation of historical records and access rights that were identified by the Shaw Report, the Keeper of the Records of Scotland was asked to undertake a review of public records legislation and his report was published in October 2009.

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