Correspondence relating to the Referendum Scotland Bill: FOI review
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
Information requested
Copies of all emails that include the phrase ‘Referendums Scotland Bill Team’ (including in the message, email signature or an attachment).
Response
I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for “copies of all emails that include the phrase ‘Referendums Scotland Bill Team’ (including in the message, email signature or an attachment)”. The reference number of our original response is 202000106129 and it combined responses to a number of other requests seeking the same information for different dates. I reviewed information covering all of the dates in your original requests.
I have concluded that the material provided in our response was only partial and additional relevant information does exist, which is detailed in this response. When the original requests were handled, we failed to search the electronic system that holds replies to correspondence and freedom of information (FOI) requests. Please accept our apologies for this oversight.
The information that was missing from our original response consists almost exclusively of responses to FOI requests from you. Section 25 of FOISA exempts information from disclosure where the requester can reasonably obtain the information without asking for it under FOISA, which in this case applies to information already provided to you. For ease of reference, I have listed the reference numbers of all of the relevant FOI responses to you at Annex A of this letter. The rest of the information that should have been provided is at Annex B of this letter.
An exemption undersection 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party (i.e. names/contact details of individuals), 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 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.
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.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrews House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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