Cost to tax payer of Scottish independence UK Supreme Court case: FOI release

Information requested

The amount of tax payer money that has been spent by the Scottish Government on the recent Court case in the UK Supreme Court to rule on the possibility of Scotland holding another Independence referendum.

Response

Some of the information you have requested is available from the Scottish Government website. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. However, in the interests of being helpful, we have provided links to the relevant material below: Independence referendum Supreme Court referral: legal costs - gov.scot.

The spending on the Lord Advocate’s reference to the Supreme Court as published on 22 September 2022 was on external legal fees. An additional £350 has been spent on Supreme Court filing fees. As set out in our responses to PQ S6W-09691 and PQ S6W-11576, the Scottish Government intends to proactively publish information about the costs of the litigation and will be publishing updated costs of the reference, including a breakdown of them, in December. Accordingly, an exemption under Section 27 (information intended for future publication) applies to some of the information you have requested. This exemption allows public authorities to refuse to disclose information if they already plan to publish it within the next 12 weeks. The reasons why this exemption applies are set out in Annex B.

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.

202200331746_Annex_B

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