King's Printer for Scotland: annual report 2023 to 2024

Activities and developments

Activities and developments: 1 April 2023 – 31 March 2024

3.1 7 ASPs received Royal Assent between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024 (see Annex a). 

3.2 5 Explanatory Notes to ASPs were published in this period (see Annex b).

3.3 380 Scottish Statutory Instruments were registered and published (see Annex c), plus an additional 57 draft Scottish Instruments.

3.4 In 2023 to 2024, the legislation.gov.uk editorial team continued to capture new amendment information and publish updated versions of legislation, with the goal of bringing primary legislation up to date being completed. In 2020, the team expanded the scope of legislation to be updated, to include selected secondary legislation (SSI’s made since 2018, assimilated secondary EU legislation and high priority older SSIs), and introduced a new measure for tracking progress. Since 2020 to 2021, legislation.gov.uk has tracked the proportion of page views of revised legislation showing as being up to date (i.e. with a green amendment status). This measure recognises that the status of a piece of legislation will change over time, as new amendments are made, as well as maintaining a focus on the most commonly accessed Scottish legislation. At the end of 2023 to 2024, 93% of revised legislation page-views were up to date, with there being an aim to increase this to 95% and maintain it at that level moving forward. In addition, 4,695 amendments have been applied to Welsh language versions of legislation increasing our provision of bilingual revised legislation.

3.5 A total of 4,496 amendments from Acts of the Scottish Parliament and Scottish SI’s published between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024 were recorded and published on legislation.gov.uk by the editorial team, out of a total of over 52,493 amendments recorded for all jurisdictions (i.e. 9% were made by Scottish legislation). The overall annual number of new amendments from both Scottish legislation and UK legislation decreased in this period by 21% for Scottish legislation, while increasing by 12% for UK legislation. During this period, a further 748 updates were made to the texts of Scottish Primary legislation, as well as 4,430 updates to Scottish SI’s. In total 5,178 Scottish amendments were applied, accounting for 5% of the total 110,400 amendments applied to UK and assimilated EU legislation. There were 158 amendments made by Scottish legislation that affect assimilated EU legislation, and 370 pieces of Scottish legislation have been affected by EU Exit legislation, totalling 7,477 amendments.

3.6 In order to ensure Scottish, UK and assimilated EU legislation can be kept up to date with the changes to the law following the UK’s departure from the EU the Legislation Services editorial team have identified and published over 157,000 amendments from EU Exit SIs and SSIs. These amendments are in the process of being incorporated into the texts of legislation on legislation.gov.uk. Of these amendments, the domestic impact on Scottish legislation includes 370 items of Primary and Secondary legislation affected by EU Exit legislation, comprising over 7,477 amendments.   

3.7 The year saw further substantial progress in establishing the new browser-based legislation drafting and amending tool, named Lawmaker, as the primary tool for drafting all legislation in the UK and Scotland. Lawmaker is managed by The National Archives on behalf of a partnership between the Scottish Parliament, Parliamentary Counsel Office, The National Archives, The Office of Parliamentary Counsel, and the UK Houses of Parliament. This browser-based tool is replacing a range of tools that are used by the partners to prepare and amend draft legislation, reducing the cost of publication, and improving the presentation of bills and amendments online. It has improved the ability of the Scottish Parliament to manage and integrate bill and amendment information (for example permitting the auto-updating of bills, and enabling a user to see how a particular amendment would alter the text of a bill if agreed to). By taking an open standards-based approach, Lawmaker allows for well-structured and organised bill and amendment data to be made available via data.parliament.scot.  

3.8 In the year 2023 to 2024, the Lawmaker service continued to be managed by The National Archives on behalf of its partners, with there being an ongoing roll-out of the service to UK and Scottish primary and secondary legislation drafters. All Scottish Bills in 2023 to 2024 were drafted on Lawmaker.

3.9 Lists of new Scottish legislation are made available every day online.

3.10 There were two FOI requests for staff working for the KPS in 2023 to 2024.

3.11 Staff working for the KPS provided copyright management advice in the following areas:

• KPS advised a team within Chief Nursing Officer’s Directorate on securing Crown copyright in work commissioned from a third party supplier under contractual arrangements with the University of Edinburgh [February 2024].
• Scottish Government sought advice on copyright terms in a participation agreement in which the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) sought an assignment of IPR in a Crown copyright dataset [February 2024].

Financing the King’s Printer for Scotland

3.12 Under the Scotland Act 1998, the King’s Printer of Acts of Parliament is appointed KPS. The KPS is also the Keeper and CEO of The National Archives, and by agreement with the Scottish Government, the Keeper provides the necessary resources to support the work of the KPS. In consideration of this, the Scottish Government has agreed to pay The National Archives an annual management charge covering the period 1 April to 31 March (inclusive) each year.

3.13 This section covers the management charges for 2023 to 2024. The management charge for this period is £103,766. These figures are based on the actual level of work undertaken in relation to the operation and maintenance of the legislation.gov.uk platform, and the compiling of legislative amendment data in relation to Scottish legislation in that year.

3.14 An analysis of the management charges (exc. VAT) between staff costs and non-pay costs is shown below with the previous years’ costs included for comparison: