Chamber and committees

I appeal for Willie Rennie to wait for the international steering group to do its work and for parliamentary colleagues on the portfolio committee who will be looking at it to do theirs. If he then has further questions, I am quite happy to entertain any requests for further information that he does not think is in the public realm at the appropriate point. I am sure that the NRS will publish all relevant documentation and data.

I go back to the initial point that Willie Rennie made. Forgive me, I cannot remember whether the Liberal Democrats supported or opposed the extension. [Interruption.] I believe that the Liberal Democrats did not support the extension, which is disappointing because it took 4.3 per cent of additional cost to secure a result that will mean that the census is built on “solid foundations”, to quote the census experts, and I would have thought that we would all have welcomed that.

On 28 April, I announced to Parliament that the census collection period would be extended until the end of May to give additional time for people who needed it to complete their returns and fulfil their personal legal responsibilities.

We have now reached the end of Scotland’s census 2022 collection period. I am pleased to announce that almost 2.3 million households provided a response, which means that we have achieved a national response rate of 87.9 per cent. Progress has also been made across the country, with 10 local authorities achieving return rates of more than 90 per cent, 28 authorities exceeding the 85 per cent mark and all achieving above 80 per cent.

Scotland’s census 2022 was designed to be a digital-first census, in recognition that that is the most convenient, most accessible and simplest channel for the majority of people. However, even with that innovation, it was never an online-only census; paper options were available throughout to all who preferred them. That is reflected in the split of returns received, which was 89 per cent digital to 11 per cent paper.

I extend my thanks to all households who have played their part and provided a response. Their participation in this once-in-a-decade exercise is hugely important. Their responses will enable better decisions to be made about things that matter, and will help local authorities, businesses and the Government to plan a wide range of vital public services to improve the lives of people living and working in Scotland.

The purpose of the extension period was to drive up national response rates further but also to ensure high levels of returns from each local authority, and to even out variability of returns as much as possible. In context, that means that, since 1 May, which was the original date for closing the census, the national response rate has increased by 8.7 percentage points, from 79.2 per cent, with more than 200,000 additional households being enumerated during May.

The second published target was to achieve a response rate of 85 per cent or more for each local authority area. Significant progress has been achieved in that respect since the beginning of the extension period. On 1 May it had been achieved by only one local authority; it has now been achieved by 28.

I announced to Parliament that up to £9.76 million more investment might be required to deliver the extension to the census collection period during May. That additional funding will be considered during the budget revision process and will be based on the actual additional costs that have been incurred. It is currently forecast to be around £6 million, which equates to 4.3 per cent of the lifetime costs of census 2022.

During the extended collection phase, National Records of Scotland and the Scottish Government implemented a wide range of interventions to increase return rates further. A significant multichannel awareness campaign was continued, including social media, radio and television advertisements reminding people of the importance of completing their census and their legal responsibility. Key milestones were announced periodically by social and print media to increase awareness.

Continued help and support to complete the census were available via the census website and a free helpline. During the census collection extension period, more than 30,700 calls were handled by staff at the contact centre, with more than 214 language interpretations having been offered and 5,314 telephone data captures undertaken.

In addition to the more than 8.8 million letters and postcards that were issued to households, 556,828 paper questionnaires were issued. Census field staff also undertook more than 1.68 million household visits across Scotland, providing in-person support, including doorstep capture, to those who needed it. Seventy-eight per cent of non-responding households received at least one visit. That was a huge feat that was realised only through the hard work and dedication of enthusiastic individuals, which I was able to witness first hand during my own field visit in Easterhouse.

During the extension period, a number of field events took place to encourage census completion where possible, or to generate call-backs from the contact centre until the end of live collection. Those events focused on parts of the country in which there were lower response rates, and on engaging with young people and students, as well as with minority ethnic communities. Locations included faith centres, supermarkets and universities, with field staff being available to assist with census completion at each site.

I would like personally to thank the hundreds of field staff, contact centre agents and census officials who have worked tirelessly over the past few months, providing invaluable support to the people of Scotland to help to ensure that their voices were heard.

Householders also received a range of additional information through the post, including a third reminder letter, a postcard and a further reminder letter for those who had started, but not finished, their census online.

National Records of Scotland also continued to work closely with a wide range of public, private and third sector organisations and faith leaders and representatives. I would like once again to thank those organisations sincerely for their hard work and support in continually promoting the census.

Finally, I would like to thank members again for their support in promoting the census, both at the national level and locally with their constituents. I know that many of them recently took time out of their busy schedules to visit census staff during field visits.

It is clear that there was a need for the extension; unfortunately, there remains a portion of Scotland’s households that have not completed the census. That is despite a large-scale public awareness campaign, millions of letters and more than 1.68 million field visits. It is important that we understand why that happened so that lessons can be learned for the future of the census.

To that end, in the last week of the census collection period, a data collection exercise was undertaken by field staff to understand the reasons for non-completion by householders. Although many reasons were offered by householders, by far the most common, at 35 per cent, was that they were “too busy.” That suggests that changes in society’s attitudes to the census and completing it have had a significant part to play. Once it has been evaluated, this exercise, combined with market research and global experiences, will provide valuable insight into the reasons for non-completion across Scotland.

However, the professional body that is responsible for running the census—NRS—regards the extension to the collection period as a success. It has enabled more than 200,000 additional households to complete their census and has enabled the majority of local authorities to achieve return rates that are greater than 85 per cent, with no authority’s rate being below 80 per cent.

The improved national return rate and the important coverage across the country provide NRS with the confidence to conclude that it is in a good position to move on to the next element of the census—namely, the vitally important census coverage survey—then to the statistical estimation and processing work that is required to deliver high-quality census outputs.

Based on the significant improvement that has been achieved, NRS is satisfied that it was appropriate to conclude the public awareness campaign and field force enumeration on 31 May, as announced. As happened in the censuses that were carried out in the rest of the United Kingdom and in previous censuses, over the coming weeks, NRS will accept late postal and digital returns that have been delayed for legitimate reasons.

Filling in the census is a personal legal responsibility, and allowing people who have previously refused to respond a window in which to do so is standard procedure. In line with previous censuses, anyone who has directly refused to fill in the census has now been written to and given a final opportunity to do so before NRS begins the process of referring them for potential prosecution. However, decisions regarding prosecutions remain a matter for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

Scotland’s census, in common with other modern censuses, combines a number of elements. Following the collection phase, NRS is now focused on planned post-collection quality control and assurance work, which includes the census coverage survey, which is the second-largest social research exercise in Scotland after the census itself.

The census coverage survey launches on 13 June; the survey was also done in 2001 and 2011 in Scotland. It is a separate survey from the census, and although it covers a much smaller number of Scottish households—about 1.5 per cent, or 53,000 households—it is still the second-largest social research exercise in Scotland after the census itself. It is conducted door-to-door by staff who carry identification, and it ensures that a comprehensive and accurate picture of return rates across the country has been recorded. The census coverage survey provides important information that, along with other administrative data, enables statisticians to estimate the nature and volume of missing census returns, and to deliver the statistical database that is used to deliver outputs.

Over the coming months, statisticians within NRS will also make use of administrative data sources to improve the quality of the estimation work, thereby delivering high-quality population and characteristics data.

An international steering group of global census experts has also been established by the registrar general to help to steer the work of NRS as we move forward from the collection element of the census. The steering group, which is chaired by Professor James Brown, has acknowledged that we are in a strong position from which to move forward. I welcome the contributions that that group will make to steering NRS’s statistical and methodological work over the next few months. That will support NRS to deliver both the census coverage survey and its work to identify the appropriate administrative data that can support quality assurance work.

I am aware that, in recent weeks, much has been made of the response rate, particularly in the light of pre-census targets. I take this opportunity to reassure the people of Scotland that a return rate of 87.9 per cent is a good level of national census returns and puts us in a strong position on which to build.

In conclusion, through a combination of census returns, individual administrative data, the census coverage survey and adjustments using aggregate administrative data, NRS will be able to proceed effectively with the next phase of the census, which is to produce the high-quality outputs that are required by data users.

Finally, I say that one of the aims of Scotland’s census 2022 programme is to make recommendations for future censuses. There have been many important lessons learned over the past few months, and there is much work to do to understand what has worked well and what could have been better. I am clear that the evaluation of Scotland’s Census 2022 will reflect on that in order to make informed recommendations for the future.

The NRS plans to start publishing results from the census approximately a year after collection, in 2023. Results will be laid before Parliament and made available in a clear and usable form for all users.

Absolutely. I think that I have updated members on how many translation services were offered in the extension period, in addition to the earlier period of the census, across a wide range of languages. If there is any evidence that there is still work to be done in communities for which English is a second language, we absolutely need to learn about that.

I look forward to the work that will be undertaken by the steering group, and if there is anything that can be done to ensure that people fully understand the process in future censuses, that is absolutely a lesson that needs to be learned.

That is one of the most searching questions that we have had this afternoon. It goes to the heart of trying to understand why there has been a group of particularly hard-to-reach households and individuals during the census.

I am asking myself that question. There were households that received a multitude of correspondence in a variety of formats, and houses that were visited not just once but in many cases twice, three times, four times or five times, and still a significant percentage of people were saying, “I didn’t know it was happening”.

To my mind, that is absolutely the lesson that needs to be learned, because my fear is that that phenomenon is not a one-off. I think that those of us who knock on doors, as we do at election time, will understand some of the phenomenon that I have been trying to describe, but it is something that the international steering group, the Scottish Parliament and the committee will want to look at very closely. If we can get an answer to that challenge, I think that we will be able to see the same kind of percentage returns as in previous censuses.

Having said that, I think that there is a particular challenge with a part of Scottish society. Incidentally, I do not think that this phenomenon is just in Scottish society but will be seen elsewhere. All of us will have to try to work out whether traditional means are meeting the needs of people who do not understand, realise or, perhaps, want to realise that they need to take part in the census.

I did. Just to correct the record, it is not the case, which may be some reassurance to Willie Coffey, that people were only being directed to online returns; they were not. Paper copies were made available by enumerators throughout the country. If that is indeed what people wanted to use to make their return, that is what was made available to them, as was the ability to make a data capture of their return together with enumerators at the doorstep, if that is something that they wanted to undertake. Either the help of the enumerator or a paper copy is what was available to people on the doorsteps of Scotland during the extension period.

Those are exactly the questions that will be looked at by the international expert panel. Those are the questions that we will all want to know the answers to, not least the NRS. However, we are still in the phase where we have just finished the census collect period, and although participation is not being publicised people are still sending in returns. We will then move on to the next stage of the process, so we will have to wait a short while—I hope that it will not be too long—before we can understand the answers to the questions that Ross Greer is asking, which are, frankly, exactly the right questions.

I fear that I do not have time to go into the list of local authorities in order to share with colleagues the difference that the method made during the census extension period, which was most marked in areas that previously had the lowest return rate. It was an extremely effective intervention to get the return rates up.

However, in many parts of the country, notwithstanding multiple visits to households by enumerators, a significant number of householders did not take part in the census. That is at the heart of the lesson that we need to learn from the census to build on the solid foundations that we know we have had, because independent census experts have told us so.

No.

The Scottish Government is clear that we must remain close to the EU and continue to protect the high standards that benefit our country. The people of Scotland have spoken in a referendum and they voted overwhelmingly for pro-EU parties in last year’s election. Their will is clear. That is why we will continue to align with the European Union where it is possible for Scotland to do so under the devolution settlement. We will not stand by while the UK Government is intent on a race to the bottom.

The policy statement that we are considering is largely about the “how”. Our intention is to align where possible by subject-specific powers, or by primary legislation where necessary. For example, in June, we used regulations under powers in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to ban single-use plastics—a move that was proposed and scrutinised by the Scottish Parliament, as members would expect. Where powers are not available or would not allow us to align effectively, we will consider the use of the continuity act power.

The transparency of decision making by Scottish ministers is of the utmost importance. We will report annually where the continuity act power has been used, where its use has been considered and where its use is planned. Our policy statement reflects that, as well as setting out how we will meet other considerations that are required by the act. How we will decide on the power’s use is described, reaffirming our commitment to engage with relevant stakeholders just as we do on other legislation. We take transparency very seriously and our approach goes further than is required for other legislation, as we will lay statements specific to the measure in question so that Parliament can scrutinise exactly why we believe that we need to use the power.

Following representations from the CEEAC and RAINE committees, we have been happy to offer additional information to support transparency. We will provide an annual forward look that will reflect on the European Commission’s legislative programme, setting out where the Scottish Government expects to prioritise alignment and where that might not be possible. We have offered to append information to all relevant legislative policy notes and consultations. That goes beyond the requirements of the continuity act and the information that is required for other legislation, and it will allow the Parliament to fulfil its duty of meaningful, effective scrutiny of the Executive.

The Opposition motion is simply an attempt to distract from that party’s calamitous Brexit and its on-going efforts to undermine Scotland’s retained EU law, as well as from the devolution settlement. Our commitment to Europe remains steadfast, as is our commitment to transparency to the Parliament. I advise the Opposition to reflect on that in considering the motion.

The continuity act was introduced in response to Brexit, to ensure that Scottish ministers are able to protect the world-class standards that Scotland has enjoyed as a member of the European Union. It bears underscoring yet again that Scotland was removed from the European Union against its will and that, as we see daily, there are no benefits of Brexit.