Business case and proposal for commissioning Reach Advocacy Ltd: FOI Review

Information requested

Original Request: 202500467478

The Business Case & Proposal for Scottish Government’s Commissioning of Reach Advocacy. Delivering quality assured advocacy and human rights qualification and training, across four government portfolios (15th of October 2024).

Response

I have now completed my review of our response to your “request for review of the handling of our FOI(S)A requests dated the 19th of June 2025.

Please see attached letter, outlining our concerns and dissatisfaction at the handling of our three FOI(S)A 2002 requests sent to:

1. The Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise
2. The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice
3. The Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport”

Under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) regarding your dissatisfaction at the handling of 202500467478 from which you identified four significant issues:

• The manner in which request was handled, particularly concerning the amalgamation of three separate Ministerial Directorate responses into a single response, making this difficult to navigate and obfuscating origin.
• The handling of our FOI requests by the Drug Policy Division, who we did not write to. This raises issues around GDPR obligations owed to us, as well as the lack of communication prior to the imposition of their involvement.
• The application of Section 38(1)b as an exemption to withholding crucial information on the relevant decision makers from each of the four Ministerial Directorates we sent our Business Case to. The application of the is exemption failed to provide evidence satisfying the strict eligibility criteria for its application and clear causal link to ‘endangerment’ of staff.
• The FOI responses raise real issues and concerns surrounding the observable difference in information obtained, between an earlier FOI request to the Drug Policy Division [16th of December 2024 - Reference: 202400442125] and these three, all seeking the same level of information on how our Business Case & Proposal was handled, from the four Ministerial Directorates

This letter concerns the request to the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise. I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed, with modifications.

I will take each of your points in turn to explain my decision:

• I agree that the original combined response to all three FOIs was difficult to navigate and that the origin of correspondence was not clear. Each individual request should have been responded to separately, providing any in scope information for release. Providing one combined response does not meet our obligations under the legislation and does not adequately provide any rights to review or subsequent appeal given each request is subject to its own escalated process.

Please accept my apologies that we did not provide a clear response to each of the individual requests that were submitted. Steps have been taken to avoid any repeated occurrence in the future. As part of the review I have ensured that the relevant information for each case has been stored accordingly and I have reviewed for the purposes of each separate case. See Annex.

• Whilst the original correspondence was addressed to “Natalie Don-Innes MSP, Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise”, when a Minister receives correspondence relating to Freedom of Information requests the case itself is completed by officials who are the subject matter experts on the policy subject itself. They in turn respond on behalf of the Scottish Ministers who are the public authority under FoI(S)A. Therefore whilst a Minister or Cabinet Secretary may receive the correspondence directly to their office the response could be provided from any official working in the specific policy area in the Scottish Government on their behalf. In this instance the Drugs Policy Division was identified as the appropriate business area to undertake the request and provide the response to your request We do not consider that there are GDPR obligations owed to you as the request is handled on the basis of information held by the Scottish Government.
• Section 38(1)b was a valid exemption to apply to redact personal information for those individuals who are junior Scottish Government officials. Guidance has been provided which outlines a general policy that the SG standard approach is to redact the personal information of officials who are below the grades of senior officials such as Senior Civil Servants, Directors, Deputy Directors and Special Advisers who would have lesser expectation of privacy under FoI(S)A. Whilst all officials are public servants the Scottish Government has provide a policy which is in tandem to the briefing on the application of section 38 provided by the Scottish Information Commissioner to which I have provided a link below. As such with each request any personal information held is reviewed, in favour of disclosure and where it is deemed appropriate under our general policy to withhold the specific information, it is not released. . I have corrected this within the documents attached. Further guidance surrounding the application of section 38 – Personal information can be found on the OSIC website: OSIC briefing - Section 38 - Personal Information. I apologise that the rationale behind the application of the exemption was unclear, but has been confirmed now with the additional explanation above surrounding senior officials’.
• Each request for information is treated on its own merit with its own considerations by the official leading on any specific request. Therefore there may at times, be some differences in relation to the handling of the information that is in scope of similar requests especially where there is a significant lapse in time between their submission to the authority. I have reviewed the level of detail provided previously and as in that response I have provided a summary of how your proposal was considered by the Office of the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise below.

Summary

Whilst the initial request was addressed to the Minister for Children, Young People and the Promise, the correspondence was forwarded to the Human Rights Division with the expertise who has in turn provided the response on behalf of Scottish Ministers (see Document 1).

The Deputy Director of Equalities Division was content with the response provided by the Human Rights Division for their interests (Document 2). The response to the REACH proposal provided by the Human Rights Division is referred to in Document 3 and the details for reasons are provided in Document 4.

The Human Rights Division and Equalities Division, responding on behalf of the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise concluded that the proposal does not have a strong link to their priority outcomes for implementation work in the short term.

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.

FOI 202500477830 - Information Released - Annex

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