Scottish government spent overall on the hate crime bill: FOI release

Information requested

How much has the Scottish government spent overall on preparing the hate crime bill and planning to implement it, with a breakdown of these costs?

If too much or unable to find this information, how much have you spent on advertising the law, including a breakdown of costs and what outside organisations have you paid to help?

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. We are unable to give details for example of the cost of providing training to Police Officers and Police Support Staff as this is information that is not held by the Scottish Government. Police Scotland may be able to provide you with some of this information. Similarly we are unable to provide details of the costs related to training Court Service staff.

I can advise that Scottish Government provided Police Scotland with an additional £300,000 of funding to allow them to update IT systems in relation to the Hate Crime and Public Order(Scotland) Act 2021.

No advertising has promoted the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. For the purposes of this request we have presumed that you are referring to the hate crime public information campaign ‘Hate Hurts’, which ran in March 2024. The total budget for the campaign was £389,689.50 which covered development, production, usage, public relations, website, partnerships and paid-for-media. SMARTS PR & Creative Agency’s were commissioned to create and launch this campaign.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.