The Act Crown application Section 257 – Crown application: criminal offences
296.The Act applies to the Crown by virtue of section 20 of the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010. In line with usual practice for Acts of the Scottish Parliament, section 257 has the effect that the Crown cannot be found criminally liable in terms of the offences created by the Act, such as those set out in sections 155 (offence of concealing etc. documents following information notice) and 156 (offence of concealing etc. documents following information notification). However, through the mechanism in subsection (2) any unlawful conduct on the part of Crown bodies can be declared unlawful. Subsection (3) has the effect that section 257 does not exempt civil servants from criminal prosecution; this has particular relevance to the offence in section 19 (wrongful disclosure of protected taxpayer information).