British Business Awards dinner information: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Information requested
1) The full guest list of the event attended by the Deputy First Minister on 18 June 2025 with Anas Sarwar and Lord Haughey.
2) Whether any Scottish Government officials accompanied the Deputy First Minister at this dinner. Please also provide any notes or minutes held by the Scottish Government that documented what happened during this event.
3) Whether any actions were taken by the Scottish Government following this event as defined in the Scottish Ministerial Code.
Response
The Deputy First Minister attended a dinner on the evening of Wednesday 18 June with Lord Haughey and Anas Sarwar MSP. This was the Ultimate Political Dinner Party Prize from the British Business Awards, which was held on 24 April 2025.
On request 1), the answer to your question is the Scottish Governments records show the dinner was attended by the Deputy First Minister, Anas Sarwar MSP and Lord Haughey.
On request 2), Scottish Government officials were not present at the dinner. Please see attached Annex A with regards to the meeting note held in the official record. We are unable to provide some of the information because an exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information, this is 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 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.
On request 3), no actions were taken by the Scottish Government following this dinner engagement.
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