Funding of Stonewall or any associated subsidiary by Scottish Government: FOI release

Information requested

1. In respect of each of the years 2015-2021, please confirm what funding has been provided to Stonewall or any subsidiary of Stonewall by:

The Scottish Government

2. Please specify whether the funding in 1 above has been in the form of:
(a) direct grants for unlimited purposes;
(b) direct grants for limited purposes (in that event, stating the purpose);
(c) payment for goods or services (specifying the relevant goods and services).

3. Where the funding in 1 above has been by way of payment for goods or services, please specify:
(a) what analysis has been conducted to ascertain whether these goods or services meet contractual and/or legal requirements;
(b) what contractual or other recourse exists to reclaim in respect of goods or services that are defective, substandard or delivered in contravention of the law;
(c) what steps are being taken to seek recourse for any such contractual or legal shortfalls.

4. In respect of the payments referred to in 1 above, please state:
(a) What criteria were applied in deciding to make payments by way of direct grants;
(b) What tendering process was conducted with regard to provision of goods or services;
(c) What alternative suppliers of goods or services were considered.

Response

I am able to provide some of the information you have requested. Please see attached document showing all payments by the Scottish Government to Stonewall between 2015 and 2021. I have indicated in the document where the payment is in the form of grant funding and where it relates to payment for a particular good or service. I consider that this provides all the information you have requested in part 1 and part 2(c) of your request. You may also wish to note the following other recent FOI releases which also discuss payments to Stonewall in 2019/20 and 2020/21: Payments made to Stonewall Equality Limited: FOI release - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) and Communications between Scottish Government and Stonewall Scotland: FOI release - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

In regards to other points while our aim is to provide information wherever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. This is because it would be necessary to individually check and collate large number of records in relation to each of the grant payments made to Stonewall since 2015. We have estimated that locating, retrieving and providing all of that information would take in excess of 40 working hours of staff time. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you may wish to request further information about particular payments from the attached schedule, or about our funding of Stonewall in relation to particular aspects of its work. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

Whilst I cannot provide the full level of detail you have requested, I can nevertheless offer the following by way of information regarding our grant funding of Stonewall, and our engagement with them regarding the work steams that funding supports.

In relation to point 3(a)-(c) and points 4(b) and 4(c) of your request, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. As you will see from the attached schedule of payments, we have made no payments to Stonewall for goods. Those payments which relate to services are either for attendance at conferences, training or other events run by Stonewall or are for the Scottish Government’s membership of Stonewall or its Diversity Champions Programme. These are not subject to formal procurement processes or to competitive tendering. No recorded information held about these payments is relevant to the matters raised in points 3(a)-(c), 4(b) or 4(c) of your request.

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 - 202100254000 - Information Released - Annex

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