Scots who didn’t f ill in census: 300,000 Prosecutions: Zero
Final twist to SNP’s shambolic survey
THE controversy over the SNP’s handling of Scotland’s shambolic census intensified last night after it emerged that not a single person is being prosecuted for failing to return the forms.
Refuseniks who did not to fill in details about everyone who was in their home before the census deadline were warned they risked being taken to court and fined up to £1,000.
Despite the threat, almost 300,000 people failed to complete the census on time, even though the Scottish Government extended the deadline by more than a month.
Final figures published by National Registers of Scotland show the completion rate was 86.6 per cent – far short of the 94 per cent needed for the information-gathering exercise to be considered a success and 10 percentage points below the response rate achieved in the rest of the UK.
However, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) has told The Scottish Mail on Sunday no prosecutions are being pursued, with a spokesman saying: ‘We can advise that no cases have been reported to COPFS from National Records Scotland at this time.’
Opposition politicians said the lack of prosecutions was further proof the SNP had mishandled the census. Tory MSP Sharon Dowey said: ‘The primary reason for the dire response to the census was the SNP’s determination to do it differently from the rest of the UK, just for the sake of it.
‘It’s hardly surprising that no legal action has been taken against members of the public. Prosecutors would hardly know where to begin when almost 300,000 households failed to respond to the SNP’s woefully mishandled census.’
Liberal Democrat MSP Willie Rennie said: ‘The Scottish Government took a series of baffling decisions which hamThe strung the census before it began and then, when problems inevitably emerged, did not do anywhere near enough to get it back on track. It’s been another display of SNP incompetence.’ census is considered a vital tool for the government to understand the details of citizens’ lives to plan public services, and the one in England, Wales and Northern Ireland went ahead in 2021.
However, SNP Ministers decided to run their own census – and delayed it until last March. The Scottish census allowed trans people to state their sex, with the answer not having to match the one on their birth certificate.
Despite the response rate in Scotland being 94 per cent in the last UK-wide census in 2010, officials lowered the target but said they expected all parts of the country to achieve more than 85 per cent.
Six of Scotland’s 32 council areas failed abysmally to meet the objective, with the City of Glasgow’s performance the worst at 80.1 per cent.
Critics highlighted that having to extend the deadline and send canvassers door to door in a desperate bid to increase the uptake cost taxpayers another £9.76 million on top of the £138 million initial bill, and the completion rate still lagged far behind the 97 per cent figure across the rest of the UK.
‘It’s another display of SNP incompetence’