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Legislation falls into two categories – primary and secondary
legislation. Primary legislation comprises Acts of Parliament. Acts
often make provision for related, but more detailed, regulations
to be issued by means of statutory instruments. These statutory
instruments are known as secondary legislation. In Scotland, the
same relationship exists between Acts of the Scottish Parliament
and Scottish Statutory Instruments. This page deals with primary
information legislation. We also have a page with secondary
information legislation.
The full text of all the statutory instruments and Scottish statutory
instruments mentioned below can be found on the Office of Public
Sector Information website.
Data Protection Act 1998
This Act is designed to ensure the fair and lawful processing of
the personal data of living individuals. It obliges organisations
to provide a reasonable degree of confidentiality for information
about people, and to respect their privacy. The Act has come into
force by degrees and initially related only to personal data held
on computer systems. However it now also applies to personal data
held in paper based files.
You can find out more about how the NAS has implemented policies to
ensure our own compliance with the Data Protection Act in the data
protection section of this website.
Human Rights Act 1998
This Act incorporates into UK law rights and freedoms guaranteed
by the European Convention on Human Rights. Some of these rights
can have a bearing on what records are created and kept, and on
access to information.
Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
This Act came fully into force on 1 January 2005 and introduced
a statutory right of access to all types of recorded information of
any age held by Scottish public authorities, subject to certain conditions
and exemptions. The Act is promoted and enforced by a fully independent
Scottish Information Commissioner.
You can find out more about how the NAS is complying with the Freedom
of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 on our freedom
of information pages and read the Model
Action Plan, which was written to assist Scottish public
authorities in the development of records management arrangements
which comply with the Freedom of Information Scotland Act (2002) section
61 Code of Practice on Records Management.
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