Amendments to the Climate Change Bill - correspondence: EIR review

Information requested

Further to my letter of 12 June 2019, I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) for any information, briefings, advice, emails or analysis in relation to the amendments to the Climate Change Bill to set a legally binding target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 for the period between 01 January 2019 to 11 May 2019.

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 regulations.

I have concluded during my review that the request was not properly handled in terms of the relevant legislation and the exemption applied. A different decision should therefore be substituted.

Response

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

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 exceptions under regulations 10(4)(e) (internal communications), 10(5)(c) (legal professional privilege) and 11(2) (personal information) of the EIRs applies to that information. The reasons why those exceptions apply are explained in the Annex to this letter.

As you will appreciate, the amendments to the Climate Change Bill were lodged in the Scottish Parliament and considered by the Environment Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. We have not included any information that is also available on the Parliament’s website at: https://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/Bills/108483.aspx.

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.

FOI-19-01346 - Information Released

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