Email and chain referred to in material released under previous request: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Information requested
1) In the below documents the following passage exists:
"(as per your email of December 8th 2023)"
I specifically request this email and its email chain too” in relation to Mr James Hamilton.
Response
Some of the information you have requested has already been provided to you in response to a previous FOI request (our reference 202400400853), document 3 of the reply pack issued to you on 21 March 2024. This is the section of the email chain referred to in your request, containing emails between the dates 21 December 2023 and 12 January 2024.
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 access to this information then please contact me again and I will send you a further copy.
A small part of the email of 21 December 2023 was out of scope of your previous request 202400400853 as it was not in connection with the matter of whether Mr Hamilton held material. This section has now been released in response to your current request. The material from after 21 December 2023 has already been made available to you.
An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount 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 https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG