Justice Directorate and Ministerial Portfolio expenses over £500: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/03026
Date received: 15 December 2017
Date responded: 12 January 2018

Information requested

You asked for more details (emails, notes, correspondence, invoices, receipts) and an explanatory narrative for two electronic Purchasing Card (ePC) transactions over £500 for the month of October 2017: Directorate for Justice, Funeral Services Limited for £1188.00 and Ministerial Portfolios, www.johnlewis.com for £679.00.

Response

The answer to your question is the Directorate for Justice hired a limousine on four occasions costing £1188. Suitable cars are hired to convey Officers of Arms on duty in uniform to take part in State events, including Parliamentary Proclamations and processions relating to the Opening of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. These specific costs covered: the Opening of the General Assembly, the Proclamation of the New Parliament, the Sunday Service of the General Assembly and the Scottish National War Memorial Service. It was used by the Lord Lyon and eight other Officers of Arms to get to and from each ceremony.

The other transaction for Ministerial Portfolios was for furniture at a cost of £679. A coffee table was purchased and delivered from John Lewis for the Ministerial Portfolios team. It is regularly used for events, meeting and media interviews with members of the government. The events table is used for routine meetings and media interviews. It replaces a table that had become unsafe to use.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exemption(s) under section(s) s.38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information. The reasons why that exemption(s) applies are explained below.

Reasons for not providing information

An exemption applies:

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information you have requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it (names/personal details) would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998.

This exemption 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 exemption.

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