Ministerial travel costs: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for the Cabinet expenditure on First Class Travel / Business Travel by Air / Rail or other means, the number of tickets purchased and any onward travel costs (not associated with Parliament business), and for this to be provided for each Parliament term.

You clarified on 6 June that you were interested in First Class and Business travel, not in any case being Economy class, which I have taken to mean specifically First Class and Business Class travel.

You also clarified that the scope of your request should be limited to the 5th and 6th Scottish Parliaments. 

Furthermore, you asked, in relation to each trip, how many of those travelling were Ministers and/or officials.

Response

For members of the Scottish Cabinet, the expenditure on First Class and Business Class travel was as follows:

Table 1: Travel costs – First class

Period	Domestic rail	Domestic air	Overseas rail	Overseas air
July 2023 to February 2025	Not applicable	Not applicable	£0	£0
May 2025	£236	£0	£0	£0

Table 2: Travel costs – Business class

Period	Domestic rail	Domestic air	Overseas rail	Overseas air
July 2023 to February 2025	Not applicable	Not applicable	£331	£8,779
May 2025	£0	£0	£0	£0

The costs provided in Tables 1 and 2 represent the costs of tickets purchased for travelling to and/or from engagements. The website listed below gives total costs for each engagement.

We are refusing some of your request, for the following reasons:

1. Much of the information you have requested is released regularly by the Scottish Government on its website at Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts - gov.scot. The information published to date covers the period May 2016 to February 2025 (that is, from the commencement of the 5th Scottish Parliament). Within this collection of documents, class of travel is published for domestic travel. 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 internet access to obtain this information from the website listed here, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

2. Under section 27(1) of FOISA we do not have to give you information that is due to be published within 12 weeks. The details of Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts for March and April 2025 will be published at the link above, and it too will include class of travel for domestic travel. May 2025 falls outside this exemption and that information is included in Tables 1 and 2.

3. Some of the information you have requested is not held. Personal information contained in records relating to journeys taken before 1 June 2023 (that is, encompassing all of the 5th Parliament, and some of the 6th) has been deleted in accordance with recordkeeping practice, such that individuals, including Ministers, cannot now be identified. For airlines that use non-industry standard fare bases, the class of travel is not discernible by inspection, and that information is therefore not held. The number of tickets purchased for a given journey is not recorded routinely, and for one overseas flight and two overseas rail journeys, the class of travel was not recorded. Lastly, all travel costs incurred by the Cabinet are associated with Parliamentary business, and therefore no other travel costs exist. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that we do not hold this information.

4. In your clarification you asked for information about the number of travellers on each trip and whether each was a Minister or an official. I should point out that a public authority is not required to accept an expanded or broadened scope, provided in a clarification request, as part of the original request.

However, you may wish to know that information of this type is already substantially available via the website listed above.

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.