Covid-19 outbreak following Nike conference held in Edinburgh: FOI Review

Information requested

1) You made at least 45 redactions of text, of unspecified length, in the FOI release responded to on 5th June 21 and published on 14th June 2021 (202000038482), due to an assessment of the information as being "out of scope"

Please provide all the information for all of these redactions listed in this FOI release stated as "out of scope" in full, and insert these back into the FOI released document in the same order as the redactions occur.

2) Please provide copies of all Incident Management Team reports related to the Nike conference investigation outbreak forwarded to government, government officials or ministers during the investigation of the outbreak by the IMT. Please provide copies of all the formal reporting received by government in accordance with the guidance document requested below.

3) Please provide a full copy of the version of the "Management of Public Health Incidents: Guidance on the Roles and Responsibilities of NHS Led Incident Management Teams" that was operating at the time of the Nike Conference outbreak in early 2020.

Response

Further to my letter of 22 July 2021, I have now completed my review of our failure to respond to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA). In accordance with section 21(4) of FOISA, I have also reached a decision on your request.

I have establish the reasons for our failure to respond on time was entirely due to the significant volume of correspondence we are receiving at this time. Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in responding.

I have provided a response to each of your questions below :

Question 1
I have reviewed the content released as part of request 20200038482 and have included in Annex A  all the information deemed out of scope of the previous request.

Exemptions under section s.30(b)(i) and s.30(b)(ii) of FOISA still applies to some of the information you have requested. 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 for the same reasons that were established previously.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (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 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.

Question 2
This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

The Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for because it is the responsibility of the relevant NHS board to call for an Incident Management Team (IMT) in response to public health incidents. Part of the remit of an IMT in responding to public health incidents will be to produce a full Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation (SBAR) or IMT report for the NHS board Clinical Governance Committee.

In this instance you may wish to contact NHS Lothian and/or Public Health Scotland to make further enquiries and to request any SBAR or IMT reports that are held in relation to this matter.

Information on contacting NHS Lothian can be found at: Freedom of Information (FOI) (nhslothian.scot)

Information on contacting Public Health Scotland can be found at: Freedom of Information (FOI) and Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) requests - Contact us - Public Health Scotland

Question 3
Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

The Management of Public Health Incidents guidance published on 27 June 2017 was in effect at the time of the Nike Conference on 26 and 27 February 2020. The purpose of this guidance is to provide guidance to NHS boards in preparing for, and managing public health incidents in collaboration with partners, such as local authorities for example.

The complete guidance can be found at: Health Protection Scotland - Management of Public Health Incidents: Guidance on the Roles and Responsibilities of NHS led Incident Management Teams. Scottish Guidance No 12 (2017 edition) (nrscotland.gov.uk) An updated version of this guidance was released in July of 2020 which included updates in legislation relating to Covid-19. I have included a link to this below for your convenience.

The updated guidance can be found at: HPS Website - Management of Public Health Incidents: Guidance on the roles and responsibilities of NHS led Incident Management Teams No 12.1 (2020 edition) (scot.nhs.uk)

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 - 202100222971 - Annex A

File type

125 page PDF

File size

795.4 kB