Third further supplementary evidence from
the Scotland Office
PUBLICATION OF
SUB-CONSTITUENCY
ELECTIONS DATA
You will recall that I wrote to you on this
subject on 13 December, following your recommendation to me on
behalf of the Committee that the elections data held by the Scotland
Office should be published. I had been intending, by now, to approve
release of elections data from the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections
at a sub-constituency level. However, the Scotland Office very
recently received a letter from the Electoral Commission setting
out their strong legal objection to our release of the data. Our
opinion is that we are legally entitled to release the data and
that it is in the public interest to do so.
However, while this legal uncertainty exists,
I have decided that it would be inappropriate to proceed with
release of the data We intend resolving this uncertainty as quickly
as possible and will update the Committee on this matter in due
course.
David Cairns MP
Minister of State, Scotland Office
13 March 2008
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