Ministerial correspondence relating to A96 Dualling project and the A96 Corridor Review: FOI release

Information requested

Copies of all correspondence, exchanges, emails, memos, letters, or other documents relating to the A96 Dualling project and the A96 Corridor Review, sent or received by:

Patrick Harvie, in his capacity as a Minister and/or as an MSP; and

Lorna Slater, in her capacity as a Minister and/or as an MSP;

including any communications with, from, or within the Scottish Government, its officials, Transport Scotland, or other relevant public bodies.

Please include all correspondence created or received between 1 January 2021 and the date of this request.

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 exemption 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 exemption 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 exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, 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.

Please find enclosed the requested information within Annex A to this letter.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. The speech and exchange by Patrick Harvie MSP, then Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants' Rights, in Parliament on 2nd November 2022 can be found on the Scottish Parliament website using the following link: Meeting of the Parliament: 02/11/2022 | Scottish Parliament Website

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998. This exception 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 exception.

The information withheld in the disclosed documents are details that would identify individuals such as names, email addresses and telephone numbers.

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 202500490320 - Information released - Annex A

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