Protection of Wild Mammals review & Code of Practice: foxhounds packs - costs: EIR release

Information requested

You asked the Scottish Government to confirm:
1. the financial cost attributed to the Scottish Governments Lord Bonomy review of the Protection of Wild Mammals Scotland Act 2002.
2. the financial cost in establishing the Scottish Government chaired stakeholder group formed to establish a Code of Practice for Scottish Mounted foxhounds packs.

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.

The answer to your questions are included in the following tables in ANNEX A

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 exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information). The reasons why that exception(s) applies are explained in ANNEX B to this letter.

Annex A

Review of the Protection of Wild Mammals Scotland Act 2002
Ian Bonomy (salary costs)			+
Norman Dowie (salary costs)			+
Millennium Hotel, stakeholder event			£241.66
Enterprise car hire, 21/9/18			£78.50
APS publishing			£261.55
Apex waterloo evidence gathering session 22/9/16			£217.00
Radisson Blu, accommodation in Edinburgh 21/9/16			£342.00
Total			£88,297.01

Code of Practice for Scottish Mounted foxhounds packs
Ruaraidh Nicolson (salary costs)			+
Royal Botanic stakeholder event 9/10/17			£309.50
Hospitality *			£123.12
Total			£432.62++

+ Redacted
++ This data has been suppressed to prevent other redacted data being deduced through subtraction.
* Exact costs for hospitality for each of the meetings held at the Scottish Government could not be identified. Estimated cost would be £123.12 based on the purchase of tea, coffee and biscuits for 10 people for each of the following dates; 13 May 2017, 14 Aug 2017, 17 Jan 2018, 21 Feb 2018, 13 March 2018, 9 April 2018

Reasons for not providing information - Annex B
An exception applies

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

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