The launch of the Scottish Government's Named Person scheme will be delayed for a year, the education secretary has said.

The moves comes after the Supreme Court found aspects of it to be unlawful.

John Swinney made the announcement in a ministerial statement to MSPs on Thursday.

The child protection policy was planned to be rolled out across the country on August 31.

In July, the Supreme Court found the information sharing provisions within the scheme were incompatible with the rights of a child as defined under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

It is now scheduled to begin in August 2017.

Under the scheme, all children in Scotland from birth to their 18th birthday will be assigned a named person to be a single point of contact for their welfare concerns.

Despite the delay, the education secretary says the government remains "committed" to the policy.

Swinney said: "We recognise that information sharing has been an important issue for practitioners and the public alike.

"We want to ensure that there is a clear consensus across Scotland on how information sharing should operate.

"That must include the essential principle of consent and the rare occasions when this is not appropriate to require or to seek it."

The Scottish Government will now begin a three month consultation period on the policy.

After the consultation the education secretary will return to Holyrood to outline his future plans to implement the scheme.

The Scottish Conservatives have called on Swinney to scrap the scheme repeatedly in recent months.

Scottish Labour's education spokesperson Iain Gray has asked the Scottish Government to remove 16 and 17-year-olds from the policy.

Swinney has said he will consider the proposal.