Document regarding Ferguson Marine contract offering for the building of new ferries: EIR release

Information requested

With regard to the document confirming which Scottish minister agreed to proceed with offering Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited a contract for the building of new ferries in October 2015 has been located and provided to Parliament". You asked for the following information:

1) Where the document was found, specifically where it had been located; and

2) Who in the Scottish Government workforce located (found) the document.

Response

The answer to your questions are below:

1) At 10:37 on Wednesday 11 May 2022, the Director or AMFC was informed that the search undertaken by a member of staff from Scottish Government’s Information and Technology Service (iTECS) had located a response to the submission dated 8 October 2015, from the Minister for Transport and Islands dated 9 October 2015. This was not contained on the Scottish Government’s electronic Record and Document Management system (eRDM), but rather in an email exchange between the former Director of Financial Management and former Director of Procurement, stored in a file which would not (and should not) have been accessible to staff who had conducted earlier searches.

2) A member of staff from Scottish Government’s Information and Technology Service (iTECS) located the document.

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.

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.