Correspondence on reducing emissions from the fishing industry: EIR release

Information requested

Any correspondence (including emails, attachments, typed or handwritten notes, letters, notes/records of phone calls, minutes of meetings, briefings or otherwise) within the Scottish Government regarding reducing emissions from the fishing industry, since May 2021.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39 (2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested (attached separately as a PDF file).

As per regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we are not required to provide any information that is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another format. This applies to one document which is in scope for this EIR and which can be accessed following this link: project-specification-assessing-greenhousegas- emissions-from-scotlands-fishing-fleet-updated.pdf (climatexchange.org.uk)

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

An exception under regulation 10(4)(d) of the EIRs (unfinished or incomplete information) applies to some of the information you have requested because it is material which is still in the course of completion. We have withheld two reports at this time as they are currently still in draft and not yet complete [Review of fishing practices which have been adapted in commercial fisheries around the world in order to help mitigate the sector’s contribution to climate change and Assessing greenhouse gas emissions from Scotland’s fishing fleet].

This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. We recognise that there is some public interest in releasing this information as part of open, transparent and accountable government and this will be met by our planned publication for both reports by 30 June 2022. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring that unfinished or incomplete information which is still in being worked on or is under active consideration is not disclosed when it might misinform the public or give a misleading impression of the Government’s view or position on the matter to which the information relates.

An exception under regulation 10(4)(e) of the EIRs (internal communications) applies to all of the information you have requested because it is internal communication between Scottish Government officials about reducing emissions from fishing.

This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of release of the information. For clarity, nothing has been withheld under this exception.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

List of released documents - 202200293896

File type

26 page PDF

File size

382.9 kB