Climate Change Committee’s report on Scotland’s Carbon Budgets: EIR release
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.
Information requested
1) When the Scottish Government first received the Climate Change Committee’s report on Scotland’s Carbon Budgets that was published on 21 May 2025. Please provide the exact date and time.
2) The first draft of Gillian Martin’s comments on the report and all subsequent drafts until the final version was approved and sent. Please provide the full correspondence starting from the date on which the first draft was written, include all comments and feedback from those involved in the drafting process up until the comments were signed off and sent to publications who requested a response on the report.
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 exception 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 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, 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.
Question 1
The Scottish Government received an embargoed copy of the Climate Change Committee’s report on Scotland’s Carbon Budgets on Monday 19 May at 08:57.
Question 2
I have included copies of the information you have requested in Annex B.
On reviewing materials within the scope of your request, exceptions have been applied in line with the EIRs. The exceptions applied can be found in Annex A.
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