Scotland’s Named Person Scheme: A case study of Article 5 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in practice

The Scottish Government’s proposal to introduce a “Named Person” scheme was intended to improve child protection and wellbeing in Scotland, by allocating an identified Named Person to every child in Scotland. The scheme was met by considerable concern from a range of parties, and was challenged in the courts on the basis that the data sharing provisions infringed the data protection and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (echr) privacy rights of children and parents. As a result of the complexities of introducing lawful data sharing provisions, the scheme has now been scrapped, without ever being introduced. However, at no point was there any sustained analysis of the impact of Article 5 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (uncrc) on the Named Person scheme: to what extent would the Scottish Government proposals have helped parents meet their obligations under Article 5? Or would they in fact have infringed parents’ and children’s rights? This article provides a case study of Article 5 in practice, by setting out the background to the now-defunct Named Person scheme, before going on to analyse its interaction – and compliance – with the State Party’s obligations under Article 5.