Receipts and invoices for costs relating to Scottish Government's attendance at COP27: FOI Review

Information requested

Original request - 202300345663

“Please provide the receipts for the Scottish Government's delegation to attend COP27. This includes any officials, ministers or their staff who attended the conference from the Scottish Government. I am looking for the invoices/booking confirmations for any travel, accommodation, food, office costs etc, associated with the trip.”

Response

Further to my letter of 28th April, I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) to:

“Please provide the receipts for the Scottish Government's delegation to attend COP27. This includes any officials, ministers or their staff who attended the conference from the Scottish Government. I am looking for the invoices/booking confirmations for any travel, accommodation, food, office costs etc, associated with the trip.”

I have concluded that a different decision should be substituted.

It had originally been surmised that the information requested was a breakdown of the costs relating to Scottish Government’s attendance at COP 27, which was already publicly available on the Scottish Government website. As such, an exemption under section 25(1) of FOISA (information otherwise accessible) was applied. However, the review concluded an incorrect interpretation has been applied to your original request and I apologise for this error.

I now attach information from the receipts and invoices, as requested.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal data relating to third party) applies to some of the information requested because it is the personal data of a third party, i.e. the names of individuals. This information is identified in the table provided. Disclosing this information 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.

An exemption under section 39(1) of FOISA (health and safety) applies to the former First Minister’s travel itinerary, specifically the details of the flights taken. Costs of the flights have been released. I have reviewed the application of the public interest test in consideration of this exemption and have concluded that, while there is a public interest in release of the limited information that has been withheld under this exemption for reasons of transparency and accountability, this is outweighed by the public interest in maintaining safety and security of the First Minster and other protected individuals. Disclosing the travel details of the former First Minster, who was in receipt of police protection at that time, would present a security risk to them and could reveal information as to how police protection is provided and managed on overseas trips. This could increase the vulnerability of the First Minister and other protected individuals on future overseas trips.

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 202300349440 - Information Released - Annex

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