Meetings held between Scottish Government ministers and the Depute Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP): FOI release

Information requested

1. All correspondence between Scottish Government Ministers and their special advisers and Keith Brown MSP. This should include all email correspondence with and from his MSP email, SNP email and any other email accounts used by Keith Brown since 6 May 2025. 

2. All meetings (including virtual) Keith Brown MSP has attended with any Scottish Government official since 6 May 2025. This can include, but should not be limited to, meetings where Scottish Ministers or special advisers were present. Please provide a list of all attendees of these meetings, minutes taken of these meetings and any actions that were taken following the meeting.

3. All correspondence between Keith Brown MSP and all officials working in the Scottish Government’s constitution directorate since 6 May 2025. This should include all email correspondence from his MSP email, SNP email and any other email accounts used by Keith Brown since 6 May 2025.

Response

Question 1:

A trawl of ministerial private offices and special advisers was conducted. Please find the releasable information at Annex A. An exemption under section 25(1) of FOISA applies to some of the information within the Annex. 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, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to the remainder of the information located, this is because it is personal data of a third party, i.e information relating to members of the public whereby Keith Brown is contacting Scottish Ministers on behalf of constituents, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles inArticle 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.

Question 2:

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a trawl of all SG officials. It may help if I explain that we file our information according to the subject matter, not by reference to names of individuals. Under Section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could specify the subject matter(s) of the meetings you are interested in or restrict your request to a specific business area of the Scottish Government, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

Question 3:
This is a formal notice under Section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not hold the information you have requested. A trawl of officials in the constitution directorate was conducted and no information was found.

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 202500487575 - Information released - Annex A

File type

PDF

File size

80.2 kB