Scottish Prisoner Voting Survey 2022

Annex B: Survey Privacy Notice

The Scottish Government takes the security of your data very seriously. This statement sets out why we need your information, what we need and how we will use it.

Why do we need data about you?

The information from the attached survey will be used to gain a better understanding of the views of those serving sentences of 12 months or less with regards to voting in Scottish elections at both local government and parliamentary levels.

Your responses will make a valuable contribution to our understanding of how changes to legislation in relation to prisoner voting are working in practice.

Lawful Basis

Under data protection law we are required to identify a 'lawful Basis' from Article 6 of the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UKGDPR) – in this case, it is "performance of a task in the public interest" (commonly referred to as 'public task'). Furthermore, Section 6 of the Franchise Act placed a legislative requirement on the Scottish Ministers to review the operation of the prisoner voting provisions

How will we collect information?

Analysts in the Scottish Government have been working with the Electoral Management Board for Scotland (EMB), the Electoral Commission (EC), Scottish Prison Service and Scottish Assessors Association to organise this survey.

All prisoners serving a sentence of 12 months or less are invited to take part in the survey so that we can gain a better understanding of your views on voting in Scottish elections. Taking part in the survey is entirely voluntary and anonymous. We will not ask any questions which can be used to identify you nor questions on your political beliefs or who you voted for. Rather we wish to understand what your views are on voting both previously and while serving your current sentence.

How will the information be used?

Outputs from the survey will be developed into a report which will be shared between the organisations involved in the design of the survey for research purposes, namely to develop a better understanding of the views of prisoners who are eligible to vote in Scottish elections.

As stated above all responses will be treated as anonymous and you will not be identified within any report that is produced.

Your Data Protection Rights

Under data protection legislation you have a number of rights available to you:

Right to be informed about the use of your data – this is done through this privacy notice

Right of rectification, to have verifiably inaccurate data we hold corrected or updated

Right to have your data deleted, where we do not have an obligation to retain it

Right to object to or restrict our use of your data, where we do not have an obligation to process it

Rights related to automated decision making – we are not using this data to make decisions about individuals

You can read more about your data rights at the Information Commissioner's Office website.

Please note that these rights are not absolute, and may be subject to exemptions under the Data Protection Act 2018. Where an exemption is applied to a requested right you will be informed of this.

Contacts for Further Information

To contact the Scottish Government analysts leading on the this project, please contact Arfan.iqbal@gov.scot or call 07738368420.

If you wish to make a complaint about our use of data, you can contact the Scottish Government's Data Protection Officer at: dataprotectionofficer@gov.scot.

If you have any concerns about how your information is being used, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the supervisory authority responsible for data protection in the UK. More information is available at their website.