Scottish Government

A little while back I did a post on Operation Motorman.  As stated in that post I made a MASSIVE boo boo in the fact that I thought, originally, that this was a UK operation to take back Northern Ireland NOT an investigation into phone hacking (As it was).  It got me thinking that I would like to know more about the operation to take back part of Northern Ireland. Which got me thinking about the other two big political governments in the UK which is the Scottish Government AND the Northern Ireland Assembly.  

This got me a thinking.  You see both of these bodies generate files and they both have a LOT of powers.  So the thing is, do they follow the same principals as the national government.  Do they send files to the national archive and to they have a retention instrument which stops files going into the public domain.

I am going to deal with the Scottish Government here purely because they got back to me first. So I asked the Scottish Government:

1) Do you send files to the National Archive in London. if so please can you tell me the time frame you keep files before sending.

2) If the answer to the above question is no, please can you tell me if you have your own national archive which is similar to the one in London

3) The UK government have retention instruments which prevents files being passed to the National Archive in the interests of security. Please can you tell me if you have this power.

Let’s address these questions point by point:

1. The Scottish Parliament has its own “National Archive” which holds files from the government. It is called the National Records of Scotland and is sent there in accordance with a Memorandum of Understanding.  
2. The Scottish Government DOESN'T have a retention instrument.  It releases all information after 15 year to the public UNLESS it has personal information

This surprised me.  It basically mean that as soon as the clock chimes for 15 years they are released.  This is amazing as it means that no matter what is done you can read about it.  It means that there is no hiding place for Scottish Politics.

I love this.  At the moment I can't think of something that would need to be hidden\kept from public view by the Scottish Government but that is not the point.  At some point ALL government drop the ball and try and stop that ball being viewed. The Scottish Government just shows it to you after 15 years.

This makes me think about the Irish Government.  I wonder if they have a similar system.  The being said I have thought about something to ask the Scottish Government.  During the Independence debate in 2014, the Scottish government stated that they would get rid of all nuclear weapons. Do they still have the files on this?