Coronavirus (Scotland) (No.2) Act 2020: fourteenth and final report on the Scottish Ministers' responses to requests for information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002

Report on the Scottish Ministers’ handling of requests for information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 for the period 27 July to 30 September 2022.

This document is part of a collection


Introduction

SG/2022/197

Purpose of report

The Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 ("the first Act") responded to the emergency situation caused by the coronavirus outbreak. It contained a number of temporary measures to ensure that essential public services could continue to discharge their functions in the way that they were intended to. These included temporary amendments to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 ("FOISA"). One of these emergency measures in relation to FOISA remained in place during the reporting period to which this report relates, ending 30 September 2022.

FOISA was temporarily modified so that:

  • the Commissioner and Scottish public authorities are enabled to issue formal notices under FOISA electronically.

From 1 October 2022 this temporary provision has been superseded by an equivalent permanent provision within the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) Scotland Act 2022 providing for notices to be issued by electronic means going forward.

The Coronavirus (Scotland) (No.2) Act 2020 ("the second Act") made further provision about the emergency situation caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Paragraph 12 of schedule 4 to the second Act provided that while the temporary modifications to FOISA made by the first Act were in force, the Scottish Ministers must report to the Scottish Parliament on certain aspects of their responses to requests for information under FOISA. This requirement is referred to in this report as "the coronavirus FOI reporting requirement".

The requirement to lay these reports has how expired, as of 30 September 2022. However, for completeness we have produced this final statutory report in the series, to cover the final period during which emergency provisions remained in force.

The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002

FOISA came into force on 1 January 2005. It provides a statutory right of access to information held by Scottish public authorities. These range from the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government to local authorities, NHS boards, higher and further education institutions, doctors and dentists, among others.

Requested information must be provided unless it is subject to one or more exemptions, as set out in FOISA. If a requester is dissatisfied with the response received to a request or does not receive a response, he or she can ask the authority to review its decision or handling of the request.

The Commissioner both promotes and enforces FOISA. Requesters who remain dissatisfied with the conclusions of an authority's review of their request can appeal to the Commissioner for a decision.

Existing reporting arrangements

While the second Act introduced the coronavirus FOI reporting requirement, the Scottish Ministers (and other Scottish public authorities) report on their FOI performance in terms of several existing reporting arrangements. We have summarised these existing arrangements to provide wider context for this report, and in the interests of promoting access to them.

The Scottish Government reports monthly to the Commissioner on its FOI performance. This arrangement was put in place in April 2017 and the Scottish Government agreed targets to improve response times, with a target of 85% of request and review responses to be issued within the relevant deadlines in FOISA and the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 in 2017, 90% in 2018, and 95% by 2019. We publish our performance figures proactively on the Scottish Government website[1], with the most recently-published figures relating to June 2022.

In common with all other Scottish public authorities, the Scottish Government reports quarterly to the Commissioner on a wider range of statistics in relation to FOI performance. The quarterly returns are published via the Commissioner's statistics portal[2], with returns required approximately six weeks after the end of each quarter to give authorities time to collect the necessary data and report it to the Commissioner. The Commissioner's website contains detailed information about the list of statistics that have to be provided, and details about what should be submitted[3].

The Scottish Government also publishes an annual report on their handling of information requests, and have done so since FOISA came into force in 2005. These reports are accessible on the Scottish Government website[4], with the most recent report relating to the handling of information requests in 2019.

Contact

Email: FOI@gov.scot

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