Delivery of 19 climate action policies: EIR release

Information requested

On 18th April 2024, Màiri McAllan, Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Net Zero and Energy, announced a package of 19 climate action measures in the Scottish Parliament. Details of the 19 policies were published here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/climate-change-action-policy-package/

For each of the 19 climate action policies announced on 18th April 2024, please provide the Scottish Government’s assessment of whether, as of 3rd February 2025, the policy has been delivered, or has not been delivered. For each policy which the Scottish Government assesses as having been delivered, please provide any information held by the Scottish Government which demonstrates that it has been delivered.

Response

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.

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, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I enclose a copy of all of the information you requested except in respect of policy 6 where there has been an exemption applied to some information. An exemption has also been applied to personal data in respect of policy 10. The reasons for these exemptions are highlighted below.

Some of the information you have requested is available from The Scottish Parliament website in response to various parliamentary questions: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/questions-and-answers/.

Some of the information can also be found on the Scottish and UK Government websites: The Scottish Government - gov.scot and Welcome to GOV.UK.

Specific links are detailed in the enclosed copy of the document containing the information that you have requested. Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. In this response I have endeavoured to provide links to all relevant publicly available information. 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.

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 an exception(s) under regulation 10(4)(e) (internal communications) of the EIRs applies to that information. The reasons why that exception applies are explained in the Annex to this letter.

ANNEX

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

An exception applies

An exception under regulation 10(4)(e), of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested. Regulation 10(4) (e) of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (the EIRs) allows a Scottish public authority to withhold internal communications. This has been applied as officials must be able to have free and frank policy discussion.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. We recognise that there is some public interest in release because of the interest in the 18 April Policy Package progress. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring that officials’ ability to have free and frank policy discussion before arriving at a conclusion.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have 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 exception 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 exception.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202500450850 - Information released - Annex

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